Last week, the Antiplanner was fortunate to be a part of a small group of people who met with Dan Wenk, the superintendent of Yellowstone Park. Among the topics of discussion were the reintroduced wolves. At the time 66 wolves were released in 1996, there were more than 25,000 elk in the park, which everyone agreed had led to serious overgrazing.
Wolves hunt a bull elk in Yellowstone. NPS photo.
Most biologists predicted that the wolves would only reduce the elk populations by 20 to 30 percent. In a demonstration of how poor their models were, feasting off the elk allowed the wolf population to grow to more than 1,000 within a decade, while the park’s elk population declined by close to 80 percent.
