Has The Reintroduction Of Wolves Really Saved Yellowstone?

https://www.popsci.com/article/science/have-wolves-really-saved-yellowstone/

Recent science suggests that, while important to restoring Yellowstone Park's ecological health, wolves
are not the primary solution. Let the fighting commence.

By Emily Gertz
March 14, 2014

The story goes something like this: Once upon a time, we exterminated the wolves from the Rocky
Mountain West, including the part that would become Yellowstone National Park. We thought this was a
good idea because wolves frightened us, and also because they ate the domestic livestock we liked a lot
more.

But then interest in environmental conservation took hold. Scientists discovered that without wolves
present in Yellowstone to hunt and kill prey, the elk population grew so large it ate up all the young willow
trees until there were none. This affected the habitat of many other animals and plants in harmful ways
and the ecosystem became unbalanced. Or, as science puts it, we caused a harmful “top-down trophic
cascade” by removing an apex predator, the wolf, from the food web.

It followed that returning the apex predator might right that balance; and field biologists began to find
some evidence for this idea, even as popular support increased for bringing wolves back. So with
conservation ethics and ecological science in pretty good alignment, we re-introduced the wolves to
Yellowstone, where today they scare away the hungry elk herds from the tasty young willows. Thanks to
the wolf, balance has been restored.

Or not? Earlier in the week, field biologist Arthur Middleton got a big reaction from readers when he
asked, "Is the wolf a real American hero?" in the opinion pages of The New York Times. "This story —
that wolves fixed a broken Yellowstone by killing and frightening elk — is one of ecology's most famous,"
he wrote. "But there is a problem with the story: It's not true."

We now know that elk are tougher, and Yellowstone more complex, than we gave them credit for. By
retelling the same old story about Yellowstone wolves, we distract attention from bigger problems,
mislead ourselves about the true challenges of managing ecosystems, and add to the mythology
surrounding wolves at the expense of scientific understanding.
Animated discussion ensued in the comments (which The New York Times actively curates for signal
over noise), with some readers protesting that the wolves have been crucial to Yellowstone's ecological
revival. “Inside Yellowstone—which is where the writer is talking about even though his research was
done outside Yellowstone—elk are what wolves eat,” commented well-known conservationist Carl Safina.
“As a PhD ecologist myself, it's hard to see how 60% fewer elk could affect vegetation as much as
before.”

Journalist Emma Marris, who recently wrote about wolf/ecosystem science for the journal Nature, finds
that Middleton's stance aligns with a growing body of evidence. "It's an evolving understanding that
started out with a really beautiful and simple story, and is just getting more complex," says Marris, author
of the book Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World. "There's legitimate scientific
disagreement here. But I think it can't be denied that the beauty of that story plays a role in how much
attention it gets."

Some of the recent studies suggest that trophic cascades in land-based ecosystems are more “center-
out” than top-down, composed of many, many radial lines of cause and effect, continuing to change over
time. This shifts our understanding of apex predators as “keystone species” whose presence makes or
breaks a healthy ecosystem.

“Every population of wolves has a different, interesting story going on with them,” says Marris. 'In some
places there are not enough of them, in some places people are concerned there are too many. And in
some it's a question of how they're interacting with the rest of the ecosystem.”

At Yellowstone, despite the re-introduction of wolves, the willows are not actually recovering as well as
was hoped. One reason, Marris found, may be that wolves don't actually scare elk away from their
preferred feeding areas, as earlier research suggested they might. “When elk are really hungry, they're
going to take their chances with the wolves,” Marris says.

Another reason for poor willow recovery may be that the wolves came back to Yellowstone too late to
affect the fate of another animal population: the beavers. “Elk populations were really high while the
wolves were gone,” says Marris. “That was caused by the absence of wolves, but also presumably by
human management decisions, climate, and other factors."

Elks and beavers competed for the same food: willow. The elks won, beaver numbers dropped, and so
did the extent of marshy habitat. "Without beaver dams creating willow-friendly environments," Marris
says, "the willows can't recover."

In reporting her article, Marris learned that beyond the pages of scientific journals, the gaps between
researchers who do and don't support the apex predator theory are really fairly narrow. Generally it's
accepted that there is a lot more involved in balancing an ecosystem. “But some still believe carnivores
are somewhat special in their top-down effects on the ecosystem,” she says. Wolves generate a lot of
emotion as well as attention because they've become a bell-weather for the fate of wilderness.
“Everywhere wolves exist,” says Marris, “they tell stories about how people and wild things make peace,
or don't make peace, in the 21st century.”

What's most at risk as we debate the role of wolves in the ecosystem seems to be our hope for a really
straightforward story that explains what's going on around us.