Why Wolves are Essential to Ecological Health (and Good Fire)

Making sure predators are taken care of has ripple effects all the way down to forest health

When I was seventeen I attended

A Defenders of Wildlife “wolf conference” in Seattle, WA. I was a baby environmentalist then. A year before, I’d been hitch-hiking up and down the west coast, homeless. Somehow I got saved; offered a spot at an alternative high-school in Olympia, WA. From there, I took community college classes through the state’s running start program.

I’d always been obsessed with predators of all sorts, but wolves especially. That year, 1997, was two years after wolves were re-released in Yellowstone National Park. The program was contentious— releasing wolves back into the lower forty-eight wasn’t easy. Environmentalists wanted it, but most ranchers didn’t. To them, wolves were a nuisance.

I write a lot in this newsletter about the colonization of our forests and grasslands and how that resulted in a toxic eradication of many Indigenous peoples, which also led to the eradication of cultural fire (and resulted in fire suppression in general), but the toxic fear that Europeans brought with them to this continent also resulted in the eradication of many predators. One of those was the wolf. Europeans feared wolves, yet that fear was mutual. Wolves left humans alone. It was their cattle, sheep, and chickens that they wanted, and for this, they were slaughtered and brought to the edge of extinction. Like nearly everything else (including themselves), Europeans could not learn to live peacefully with the wolf.

I saw my first wolf at that conference. It was brought from Wolf Haven, a wolf sanctuary here in Washington State. It sat calmly on the stage, surveying the room. Its eyes were filled with intelligence.

But it wasn’t until I saw wolves in the wild that I understood how vital they are; how absolutely alive and present they are. While working in Alaska I saw several wolves in Denali National Park. I was in a vehicle, and we observed each other carefully. Their coats blended perfectly into the surrounding tundra; their eyes were bright and aware. I felt that they could see into my soul.

Wolf #9 was the mother of the first pups born in Yellowstone since the demise of the wild wolf.

Slaughtering the Beast

Wolves did not naturally gravitate towards human encampments and didn’t set out to kill the prey animals kept by ranchers and farmers. Yet, as Europeans expanded west, they killed hordes of buffalo, bison, elk, and deer, which are the natural prey of wolves. As populations of these ungulates were rapidly depleted, wolves had to look elsewhere for survival. For that, they were direly punished.

Wolves were slaughtered using:

• poison baiting

• den raids

• wolf pelt bounties

• trapping

“In 1906, the U.S. Forest Service acquiesced to the stockowners and enlisted the help of the Bureau of Biological Survey to clear cattle ranges of gray wolves. In other words, the Bureau became a wolf-extermination unit.” -PBS

How Do Wolves Contribute to Ecological Health?

I’ve mentioned the Leopold Report before— this report was integral to reintroducing fire into the National Parks System. One of the primary reasons several scientists and park officials were brought together was because Yellowstone was facing an overgrowth of ungulates (hoofed animals). Specifically, elk. The overgrowth of elk was wreaking havoc on the park’s ecosystems.

When there are too many ungulates, they tend to affect the land in several different ways:

• trampling plants and packing in soil, which leads to runoff and native species decline.

• without predators, wild ungulates no longer roam nomadically, and instead stay in one area until it is completely depleted, which means it takes much longer for inhabited ecosystems to recover.

• intensive grazing leads to reduction of native species and ecological harm. Increased invasive species often means increased fire volatility.

• increased and unchecked ungulate growth leads directly to decreased diversity and barren riparian (river and stream) landscapes, which in turn affects other key species, such as beavers.

In addition, wolves are superior to humans when it comes to choosing their prey:

“Wolves might be an effective, natural, and more ethical way of regulating the health of deer and moose populations – as opposed to using culls or recreational hunting to reduce the incidence of diseases or parasites of concern,” Sarah Hoy, one of the lead Michigan Tech researchers involved in the study, said in a statement. (via Saul Elbein at The Hill)

“…Wolves tended to disproportionately kill older moose as well as younger ones suffering from osteoarthritis — a progressive, genetically-linked bone disease marked by the breakdown of cartilage around joints.”

To access the rest of this piece, and support FIRES, please become a paying subscriber! This is a long and very informative article and I would love for you to be able to read it all.

Not only do wolves as a singular species contribute to ecological health, but their presence also supports other keystone species.

Wolves and Beavers are Inextricably Connected.

I often think of wolves and beavers as a pair, and not just because they’re two of my favorite animals. A specific thing that happens when predatory species like wolves are removed is that beavers also disappear. Beavers are a keystone species. Wolves are also a keystone species as a predator; but beavers are in the special category of “ecosystem engineer.” They truly do shape their ecosystems and lead to cleaner water, more diverse habitats for all, as well as wetland creation. Without beavers, ecosystems naturally decline.

One wouldn’t naturally make the connection between beavers and wolves, but when ungulates overgraze, some of the first plants they deplete are willows, aspens, and birch, which are all tender riparian plants that thrive along rivers and streams. Without those trees and their shoots (baby trees), beavers die. It’s that simple (and that complex).

Additionally, when riparian areas are depleted, water is less dispersed and there are fewer natural firebreaks in any given ecosystem, which means there’s less chance of a healthy fire mosaic and a higher incidence of unchecked wildfire growth.

Image by Jeroen Helmer

The Effects of Wolf Reintroduction in Yellowstone, and Recent Wolf Killings Throughout the United States

At my little conference, hearing about how hopeful and scared everyone was about the wolf reintroduction, I learned all of this. The story of wolf reintroduction should be one of success. The wolves thrived, and through the decades of research scientists have been able to study the myriad ways in which wolves help to balance out the ecosystem, even acting as a buffer to protect certain species from a fast-changing climate. Christine Peterson writes:

“…the Yellowstone area’s wolves—which now number between 300 and 350—could help elk herds weather the perils of a more volatile climate, according to the study, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology. For instance, elk herds that maintain consistent numbers, rather than yo-yoing up and down, can better withstand more frequent droughts—one impact of climate change that is already occurring in the region.

‘In a future that will be very unpredictable, we want a buffer’ against mass die-offs, says Doug Smith, Yellowstone’s senior wildlife biologist, and wolves’ ability to keep elk herds balanced can play that role. Through hunting and management practices, ‘humans help stabilize elk populations, but they don’t do the same thing as wolves.’”

And Cassidy Randall writes for Rolling Stone:

“Upon wolves’ reintroduction, in what’s called a trophic cascade, the elk populations began falling immediately. Within about 10 years, willows rebounded. In 20, aspen began flourishing. Riverbanks stabilized. Songbirds returned, as did beavers, eagles, foxes, and badgers. Wolf populations in Montana and Idaho began to grow and slowly disperse to other parts of the Rockies and beyond. Media and conservationists heralded it as the greatest rewilding event in history.”

And yet, in the past year, wolves have been killed at the highest rate since their reintroduction, and a new narrative against them appears to be thriving amongst certain groups.

Unfortunately, wolves, like many partisan issues, have become a political signifier. Recently, the republican-led states of Idaho and Montana have greenlit what is essentially a bounty for the dead bodies of wolves. In July of 2021, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte received a written warning for trapping and shooting a Yellowstone wolf when it strayed outside park borders. He had not completed the required course for ethically hunting wolves.

Gianforte has said that “…the effort to stop trapping in Monana is an attack on our heritage,” and was elected with the support of the Montana Trappers Association.

Recently, Gianforte “…signed new laws that would extend the wolf-hunting season by several weeks; allow night hunting on private land with artificial lights, thermal-imaging tech, and night-vision scopes; neck snaring and the use of bait to hunt and trap; and increase the kill limit to 20 wolves per hunter.” (via Rolling Stone).

A note that allowing neck snaring for such highly intelligent animals as wolves (who also have highly musculatured necks) is, in my opinion, unethical.

Idaho GOP representative Dorothy Moon said last year that there are “too many wolves” in Idaho, and that the state’s smaller elk herds were a sign of wolf overpopulation. There are an estimated 1,500 wolves living in Idaho now. For reference, Idaho is over 83,000 square miles, which means that there is one wolf for every 55 square miles. Given that wolves live in packs (and have complex family relations), this is…not an overabundance of wolves, by any stretch.

A poster offering wolf bounty. No, this is not from the 19th century.

Montana and Idaho both now allow monetary compensation for wolves that are killed. Idaho recently allocated $1 million dollars in order to kill 90% of the state’s wolves.

An Interruption of Vital Research

Since wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone, a decades-long study has been conducted by scientists. Much has been learned not only about wolves, but also about how they contribute to wider ecological health.

The Yellowstone Wolf Project is going on 25 years of research.

Yellowstone biologist Doug Smith, who leads the project, says wolf populations do recover fast, and this year's hunt doesn't mean the park's wolves are going extinct. But this many wolf deaths also disrupts the animals' deeper, social dynamics.

"This winter, what we experienced was catastrophic mortality," Smith says.

Catastrophic, he says, because wildlife research as long-running as the wolf project is rare but vital to understanding ecosystems. Yellowstone is a natural laboratory for studying wolves. He said there are lots of other studies that focus on wolf populations that are impacted by hunters. But here in Yellowstone, the population is unique in that it's both easy to observe and very nearly unimpacted by hunters and humans. Or at least, that had been the case.

"Our claim to fame with Wolf Research was we have the best data in the world in an unexploited-by-humans population," Smith says. "We don't have that now. And that's, I think, a shame and a tragedy." Via Nick Mott at NPR

Hunting Wolves in Not Our Cultural Heritage

Wolf-hunting is an act of the colonizer, same as large-scale fire suppression. In hunting vital predators, European settlers acted upon their fear of the unknown. Wolves, like many predators, are a highly intelligent, deeply social animal. Coexisting with predators is something they’ve evolved to do, and in that way, they seem more evolved than us humans, who clearly have more power than they do, but still act out of fear.

Renegotiating and reimagining life without toxic fire suppression also means thinking outside of cultural belief systems.

This is not a partisan issue, in my opinion. As a hotshot, I worked with people from all sorts of different backgrounds. One of the guys I worked with was an avid hunter, and I respect that. I lived in Alaska, where hunting is a way of life. I respect hunting and killing one’s own food. But hunting for sport makes no sense to me, especially if doing so is detrimental to our already fragile ecosystem.

Hunting with snares and thermal imaging and running wolves to exhaustion is an act of pure ego, and it stems from the same kind of toxic colonialism that got us here, in this huge environmental mess, in the first place.

How can we help?

There are many organizations doing good work with wolves. Get involved. Also, if you live in Montana and Idaho, make your voice heard. Help to educate others on the importance of wolf conservation.

Donate to Wolf Haven, Defenders of Wildlife (currently doing a triple match for Earth Day), NRDC, International Wolf Center, Yellowstone Wolf Project, Pacific Wolf Coalition, California Wolf Center, Wolf Sanctuary, and the American Wolf Foundation.

If you have insight about this subject and would like to be interviewed, don’t hesitate to reach out.