Lessons From The Wolf

Wolves may be “unwitting restoration biologists” states Jim Robbins, a freelance  journalist out of Helena, Montana.

He explains the positive effects wolves have on the ecosystem. Playing russian roulette with wolves’ lives only serves to marginalize this vital apex predator.

Wolves can work their magic outside of Yellowstone and Glacier National Park, if only wildlife managers would allow them to live in peace, instead of killing them to please two, small interest groups.

If only……

Lessons from the Wolf

  

 

Several scrawny cottonwood trees do not usually generate much excitement in the world of ecology. But on a wind-whipped August afternoon in Yellowstone National Park’s Lamar Valley, William J. Ripple, a professor of botany at Oregon State University, stands next to a 12-foot-high cottonwood tree and is quietly ecstatic.

 

“You can see the terminal bud scars,” the bespectacled Ripple says, bending the limber tree over to show lines that mark a year’s growth o f a foot or more on the broom-handle-size trunk. “

 

You can see that elk haven’t browsed it this year, didn’t browse it last year and, in fact, haven’t browsed it since 1998.”

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Posted in: gray wolf/canis lupus, biodiversity

Tags: “Lords of Nature”, appreciating wolves, wolves and trophic cascades