Troubled homecoming: through reintroduction programs, predators are returning to the wild, challenging our expectations and fears

E: The Environmental Magazine, March-April, 1998 by Tracey C. Rembert, Jim Motavalli

The pack of six gray wolves raise pointed noses to the wind, catching the scent of an intruder invading their frigid Wyoming territory. Up on a hill, behind a snow-capped boulder, a mountain lion crouches, whiskers raised, and growls in warning. Knowing her cubs are nearby, she lets out a piercing, defensive roar. The wolves, agitated, branch out and dart up the incline, paws kicking up snow and debris as they give chase, encircle, and bring the lioness down in a nearby clearing. Jumping on her back, the dominant, or "alpha," male yelps as the lioness' claws open a vicious gash on his side. Others are injured too, but the lioness can't fight off an entire pack. She is killed,her body left to become carrion. A group howl resounds in the Lamar Valley at Yellowstone National Park, telling nearby intruders that these wolves have reclaimed their long-lost territory.

Such primal scenes are becoming more and more common in the northwest, where reintroduction programs beginning in 1995 have brought gray wolf numbers up to 90 in Yellowstone National Park alone. Now the park has a new hierarchy. Biologist Bob Crabtree and his team have documented 30 instances of coyotes chased off by wolves, and sometimes being killed. Wolves have also been on the receiving end of these new predator confrontations: One newly resident female wolf was killed by a mountain lion along Rock Creek, east of Missoula, Montana.

As some ranchers continue to resist the reintroductions - and a federal judge's ruling threatens to have the wolves removed - biologists are studying the effects these long-absent predators are having on the area. As wolves have moved in, mountain lions and coyotes have been driven out or killed. But because wolves leave carrion behind, foxes, raptors and others have made a swift comeback.

The lay of the land is also changing. Because of wolf threats, elk that once lingered in the open around stream beds now congregate in wooded copses. Such grazing shifts have altered the landscape, creating ideal habitat for animals like the black-hooded falcon and the kit fox, which feed on the field mice migrating to the taller brush grass. But will biologists' tampering with wildlife numbers cause greater, more devastating effects? And what about species already in trouble? Will these new predators be their undoing?

Though reintroductions continue to be hotly debated among conservationists and wildlife officials, American views towards wildlife - particularly towards large predators - are undergoing an historic metamorphosis. The Washington, D.C.-based Defenders of Wildlife (see Conversations, this issue) says public appreciation and curiosity is at an all-time high concerning wolves and other large predators in North America. With the successful reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone (after their complete extermination by bounty hunters and predator control agencies in the 1920s), people are now supporting wolf programs from Arizona to North Carolina and New York to Washington State.

What had been a remarkably successful reintroduction process, however, is now clouded by legal complications. Last December, U.S. District Judge William Dowries ruled in a lawsuit brought by opponents of the Yellowstone program that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) had violated the law by declaring the wolves an "experimental population"' That designation, he said, denies them - and any lone native wolves already in the park - the full protection of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). He was, in effect, siding with The National Audubon Society and the Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund, which opposed the experimental designation, though the two groups support the reintroductions.

Because the judge stayed his own order pending appeal, it will not have any immediate impact on the wolves, and both Defenders and its partner, the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), are appealing. "We won't let a bad interpretation of the law take [the wolves] away again," says NWF President Mark Van Putten. The ruling could become moot if USFWS redesignates the wolf population as fully protected under the ESA, but that would take a second rulemaking and a long and fractious public process. "That's not a good solution," says Defenders President Rodger Schlickeisen. "Shoving wolves down the public's throat is not in the long range a winning strategy." In the meantime, the wolves stay where they are.

THE NEW RULES

"The clash of species has been very interesting to watch," says John Varley, Yellowstone's scientific research director. There are now almost 100 wolves in the Yellowstone ecosystem. Not a lot of animals, conservationists say, but a big impact, the ripple effect from what might be called "the circle of carrion." When, for instance, the Druid Peak wolf pack brought down an elk below Jackson Ridge, they quickly ate their fill, then wandered off, leaving the kill for a succession of opportunists. First ravens and magpies, then coyotes, get to feast on the wolves' leavings, completing a cycle of life that was interrupted for 70 years.