Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

Most children grow up listening to stories such as Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Little Pigs where the wolf is often portrayed as the bad guy. Unfortunately, this misperception doesn’t change with age, even adults associate wolves to be wild, dangerous and unruly. Fair enough, wolves are dangerous, but they are also key players in balancing nature’s delicate ecosystems. In fact, it wasn’t until cottonwood trees disappeared (unanticipated consequence) that the folks managing Yellowstone National Park realized the true importance of wolves.

Here is the short story. Once upon time there were many gray wolf packs living in Yellowstone National Park. Living nearby were ranchers raising cattle. Every once in a while the wolves would leave the Park and help themselves to locally grown, grass-fed, free range, USDA beef. Well, the ranchers didn’t like this one bit and started complaining, a lot. They complained so much that the US Government sponsored the Predator Control Program (intended consequence) in effort to remove/eliminate the wolves from the Park. Needless to say, that was the end of free lunch for the wolves. One by one the wolves were eliminated from the Park and all the ranchers lived happily ever after. Well it was a happy ending for ranchers, but it was a sad day when Park management looked at an aerial photo of the Park and realized all the cottonwood trees had vanished. But how did all the cottonwoods disappear? Logging was not allowed and there was not a forest fire that could have destroyed them.

After some research it became clear that the removal of wolves was directly correlated to the disappearance of the cottonwood trees. When the wolves were taken out of the eco-system it allowed the elk to graze in areas they normally wouldn’t due to predation. The elk started grazing in areas such as meadows and areas near streams and they ate cottonwood trees, saplings and seeds, which increased the stress of the cottonwood population and decreased the quality of the ecosystem. This caused an effort to re-introduce wolves into the Park and thus an increase in the wolf population. This is an example of nature responding to critical changes in the eco-system which could have been accounted for if the policy makers would have looked at the system as a whole.