To animal-lovers and environmentalists, this is news comparable to the return of the prodigal son. There had been no confirmed sightings of wolves in Yellowstone since 1926, when the U.S. government finished its brutally effective extermination program by killing off the last squirming pup. In fact, the black canine with white markings in the gory breakfast scene–photographed by a commercial crew shooting a wildlife film in the park–could be a wolf-dog hybrid, released by an unhappy owner.
Despite the uncertainty, the film and photos released by Busch Productions Inc. last week set off, well, howls. Tourists were delighted: to Old Faithful and majestic elk, add the prospect of eerie cries in the night. Indeed, at a “voting booth” run by the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife since June, 97 percent of the 25,000 ballots favored reintroducing wolves to the park. “I’m so ecstatic I can hardly stand it,” said Renee Askins, director of the Wolf Fund, who has pushed for the endangered animals’ return. But for many ranchers and neighbors of the park, the report was their worst nightmare come true.
Already, wolves had been meandering south from Glacier National Park since 1986 (map). About 50 now live in Montana. Subdivisions and highways were thought to block the way to Yellowstone, so in 1982 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed moving 10 breeding pairs of wolves to the park. Nearby residents erupted at the idea of using taxpayer money to move a predator within striking distance of hamburger on the hoof and children on the porch. The irony is that ranchers would probably be better off if wolves were introduced deliberately rather than allowed to come back naturally. Reintroduced wolves would be designated an “experimental population”: government agents could kill any enjoying a veal dinner on private lands. But if the wolf makes it back to its ancestral home on its own, it will be entitled to all the protections of the Endangered Species Act, and ranchers will risk a $50,000 fine and five to 10 years in prison for shooting one.
Even some environmentalists feel that it might be better if the wolves did not come back by themselves. Hank Fischer of Defenders says that “when wolves recolonize by themselves, sometimes they make bad choices about where to show up,” missing prime habitat or choosing an area too close to humans. More important, if Montanans cannot be assured of the right to protect their herds thanks to the “experimental” designation, they might be more tempted to surreptitiously kill any wolves they see (at least 11 have been killed since 1986). Among political appointees at the National Park Service, many of whom oppose reintroduction, “there’s a lot of consternation” about the sighting, says one official, because “if there is a natural population developing it changes the whole ball game.”
But does the latest sighting really mean that visitors will once again hear the wolf’s unearthly howl echoing through the Yellowstone valleys? Over the last 20 years, there have been a dozen or so credible reports of wolves in the park; this one stands out because it was the first captured on film, allowing scientists to examine the evidence. (Even if the earlier sightings were of wolves and not coyotes or dogs, no packs ever formed.) The creature on the 11-minute film is too large to be a coyote, and acted in a way a wolf-dog hybrid probably would not have. “Although we can’t be sure, its behavior at the kill indicates that it probably had not been domesticated,” says Hank Fischer. It seemed to be caching meat in the sagebrush, as wolves do, and showed no fear of the grizzlies, says F&WS’s Steve Fritts, which would be natural for a creature that had lived with bears in Montana but not for one raised as a pet. Still, even a wild wolf cannot start a pack unless it finds a mate.
Yellowstone rangers will keep an eye out for the wolf over the next few weeks. They won’t decide until at least next month whether to track or capture it to determine, through genetic testing, whether it is truly a wild wolf. This week F&WS will hold hearings in several Western states on the environmental-impact statement required before wolves are reintroduced to Yellowstone. “We’re pressing for the reintroduction in 1994,” says Fischer. That’s far from assured: Congress, swayed by anti-wolf Western congressmen, has regularly snatched money from the reintroduction budget and demanded new studies before wolves could be returned to Yellowstone. No one, it seems, has much respect for Congress anymore: even the gray wolf may have taken matters into its own paws.
