Wild animals in Yellowstone are not the shrinking violets of
the natural world. They don’t shy away from long lines of cars and hordes of
photographing tourists. The bison wander right down the middle of the road and
the best spot to see wolves isn’t in the remote corners of the park, its right
along the road in the Lamar Valley. In terms of the number of animals seen per
day, few places in the world (outside of Africa) can match America’s first national
park.
It didn’t take long to spot our first animal, just a few
minutes after entering the West Entrance. Passing a meadow along the side of
the road, a lone bison
stood stock still in the far end near the forest. My daughter Karina and I
grabbed our cameras and pulled over to take a couple of photos, elated that we
had already spotted the enormous creature. A couple of miles later, we were
treated to a small herd of elk foraging along a river.
In just a few short days of exploring this incredible place,
it quickly became evident who was just arriving and who had been there a while.
People just arriving would stop in the middle of the road, creating traffic
jams to take a picture of an elk or bison that could easily be captured a mile
up the road at a pull-out. As we waited for people to pull out the phones to
upload pictures to Facebook, I spent my time drafting idealistic rules for the
park requiring people to get out of their cars to earn the right to take a
picture.
The Elusive Wolf
 |
| (credit: Natural Habitat Adventures) |
My top priority was to look for wolves, though we were going
at the worst time of the year for spotting the elusive canines. Early one
morning we met up with Nathan
Varley of local tour outfitter The
Wild Side to look for wolves and other animals. We headed into the park
before dawn to get a head start on the other wildlife watchers, heading to the
famed Lamar Valley. Nathan was born to be a Yellowstone guide, having grown up
in the park as a kid of park rangers. He started as a field biologist with the
Gray Wolf Recovery Project in 1995, now recognized as one of the world’s most
successful wildlife reintroduction programs.
The recovery of gray wolves in Yellowstone is a fascinating
story. Once one of the widest ranging animals in the world, they now number
fewer than 5,000 in the continental US and roughly 200,000 around the world
(down from an estimated more than 2 million at one point). However, the few
thousand now living in the continental US was the result of a monumental effort
to bring back the wolf after decades of extermination.
In the early 90’s, more than 2 decades since a wolf had been
spotted in the park, the US Fish & Wildlife Service announced a plan to
bring gray wolves from Canada to release in Yellowstone. The opposition was
swift and deep from ranchers afraid for the livestock and their allies in the
government. Despite several lawsuits and bills intended to derail the program,
the first wolves were released into the park in 1995. Now, the park has more
than 300 resident wolves and hundreds more have moved out of the park,
repopulating parts of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Washington, and more recently my
home state of Oregon.
The ecological impact of wolf recovery has been stunning
according to Nathan. Few biologists predicted the widespread ripple effects of
having these animals back in the ecosystem. Elk had been eating all of the trees
growing along streams, increasing erosion and water temperature. Now that they
are wary of the wolves, the trees growing along the streams in the park now
grow, stabilizing the soil and providing shade that fish need.
With this incredible recovery, Fish and Wildlife is looking
to take gray wolves off the Endangered Species List, despite the fact that
their numbers have yet to recover across much of their former range despite
their success in Yellowstone. While ranchers still strongly oppose wolf conservation,
the numbers don’t lie. Wolf
tourism to Yellowstone has been valued at more than $35 million per year,
compared to under $100,000 in livestock predation by wolves (which has been
reimbursed to ranchers). Click
here to find out more and comment about this proposal.
While we didn’t see any wolves during our visit, Nathan
showed us many other species including pronghorn, mule deer, bighorn sheep, and
of course lots of bison. The recovery of bison in Yellowstone has been nearly as
successful. A population of millions in the US had dwindled to roughly 50
animals in the park in the early 1900’s, there are now more than 3,000 of the
giant ungulates roaming the park. These enormous creatures, weighing up to
nearly one tone, can be quite dangerous due to their defensiveness and speed
(sprinting up to 30 mph). The top injury in the park is tourists getting
stampeded after being fooled by their seemingly docile behavior.
Grand Teton National
Park
Heading south from the park, we spent a couple of nights at
the Grand Teton National Park, which makes up in extraordinary beauty what it
lacks in charismatic wildlife. There’s no better way to start a day than to
watch the sun lighting up the soaring Teton peaks over Jackson Lake. Karina and
I found the view from a kayak on Jenny lake is even better, though looking up
at the steep mountains can be a hazard to your neck.
To wrap up our wildlife
tour, we stopped in on a bird research project managed by the Teton
Science School’s Conservation Research Program. We piled into our car, my
daughter and my sister’s family cramming into our Subaru for another early
morning. Just south of the town of Jackson, we wound down a rural road, stopping
at a private housing development.
There, we met up with Jennifer McCabe (left), an ornithologist who
has been studying the area’s songbirds with the School since 2007. She took us
on a tour of a beautiful property that the school manages, where songbirds are
caught in nets to band and study before being released. The team catches as
many as 60 species during a summer which includes thousand of individuals at 5
local sites.
On the third net we visited, Jennifer found a bird in one of their nets. She carefully untangled the bird and gently carried it to the
research area, where assistants were waiting to collect information including
the birds weight and putting a small metal band on its leg. She showed the kids
the different parts of the bird’s anatomy up close before letting it fly off
back to the forest.
The research on these birds is part of a larger program that
is looking at migration patterns of songbirds across North America, among other
things looking to determine if climate change is impacting behavior. As towns
like Jackson expand and ranches become housing developments in the West,
knowing how this development will impact migratory songbirds is critical
information.
Research and restoration are two of the most important ways
to help bring back wildlife from the brink. Despite the crowds and traffic of
Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, it’s heartening to see the results of years
of hard work in the abundant wildlife of the region.
