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Wolves of
Yellowstone
Cambria Novelly
Environmental Studies
2022
 Introduction
Although wolf packs once
roamed the Americas, loss of
habitat and extermination
programs led to their demise
throughout most of the
United States by the early
1900s. The northern Rocky
Mountain wolf (Canis lupus)
was listed as an endangered
species by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service in 1973.
From 1995 to 1997, 41 wild wolves from Canada and northwest
were released in Yellowstone National Park. This led to many
different views and people arguing over it is the right decision
to reintroduce wolves back into North America. Currently 90
wolves are roaming in Yellowstone National Park.

Research Question
There are two main questions I am focusing on with this

project. The first one is, how have the wolf packs in
Yellowstone grown, expanded, or changed in disbursement
roughly over every ten years? The second question is, has
agricultural overlap with wolf pack territories increased or
decreased since 2015?

Study Area
I am focusing my research on Yellowstone National Park
and the surrounding areas which possibly are also part of the
different Yellowstone pack's territories. Overall, the data
mainly takes place in Wyoming with small amounts in
Montana.
 Methods

The main tools I used when answering the first question of

how the wolf packs in Yellowstone have grown, expanded, or
changed in disbursement roughly over every ten years. The
first step was to download the data from the Multi-Resolution
Land Characteristics (MRLC), as well as the National Park
Service (NPS). After inserting the wolf territory data for 1995,
2005, 2015, and 2019, as well as the NLCD Land Cover for
2015, and 2019. With this data, I performed an intersection
between the 1995 wolf pack territory and 2019 wolf pack
territory data, to create Figure one. This step was then
repeated twice more with 1995 wolf pack territory data and
2005 wolf pack territory data, to create figure two. Then finally
one last time to create an intersection between the 1995 wolf
pack territory data and the 2015 wolf pack territory data, to
create figure three. These steps gave me answers to the first
question. The next step I took was to answer my second
question has agricultural overlap with wolf pack territories
increased or decreased since 2015? The first step to getting
closer to the answer to this question is to first reclassify the
Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) data for 2015
and 2019 so that only the cultivated crops and hay/pasture
parts of this data are visible.Then we will switch these
reclassified MRLC data from a raster to a polygon so that it
could then be run through a intersect tool with the wolf pack
territory data. This 2015 and 2019 agricultural data is shown in
figures four and figure five. 2015 agricultural data will then be
intersected with 2015 wolf pack territory data, this data is then
created in figure six. I did the same thing with the 2019
agricultural data and the 2019 wolf pack territory data to
create figure seven.
Results
To answer the question, how have the wolf packs in
Yellowstone grown, expanded, or changed in disbursement
roughly over every ten years? The wolf packs of Yellowstone
have changed range dramatically over the two ten-year
sections since the first release of wolves back into
Yellowstone. Originally three packs were formed when NPS
and USFWS released fourteen wolves into Yellowstone in
1995. When NPS checked back in 2005 there were fifteen
packs of approximately 118 wolves in Yellowstone. In 2015
there were 98 wolves in 9 packs throughout Yellowstone. This
helped to determine that there was an increase in the
disbursement of wolves, if you look at figures one thru three
you will see that wolf pack territories become more dispersed
throughout the park as time goes on. There is also an increase
in wolves within the park during this there is a steady incline
in the wolf population it is increasing even if there was a little
bit of a downturn from 2005 to 2015. Overall, the population
seems to be doing well and reclaiming its old habitat while
also maintaining and increasing its population. The second
question focused more on the main issue many humans have
with the reintroduction of wolves. This is how their territories
overlap with farmland potentially putting farm animals at risk
of being hunted. From the data being compared in 2015,
there were twenty-two plots of cultivated crops and
hay/pastureland that overlapped with small parts of the
snake river pack territory. However, it is less in the 2019
model in which there are only seven plots of cultivated crops
and hay/pasture that overlap with 3 different pack territories.
The majority of these overlaps are with Mollie's pack. Overall,
there was a large decline in overlap with cultivated crops and
hay/pastureland and wolf territories meaning that wolves
hunting farm animals is less likely to occur.
 Data Sources

Cassidy, k a. (2021). Yellowstone Wolf Project Reports.

National Parks Service. Retrieved May 16, 2022, from
https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/wolf-reports.htm

Dewitz, J. (2016). NLCD 2016 land cover (CONUS). NLCD 2016

Land Cover (CONUS) | Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics
(MRLC) Consortium. Retrieved May 16, 2022, from
https://www.mrlc.gov/data/nlcd-2016-land-cover-conus

Dewitz, J. (2019). NLCD 2019 Land Cover (CONUS). NLCD

2019 Land Cover (CONUS) | Multi-Resolution Land
Characteristics (MRLC) Consortium. Retrieved May 16, 2022,
from https://www.mrlc.gov/data/nlcd-2019-land-cover-conus