The return of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park 30 years ago was one of the most exciting and important conservation developments of our lifetimes. Defenders of Wildlife played a leading role in the reintroduction, demonstrating wildlife recovery is possible and that, together, we can prevent extinction.
Wild wolves were reintroduced from Canada in January 1995 after a misguided government extermination campaign wiped out every last one by the 1920s – leaving Yellowstone National Park bereft of wolves for 70 years.
The wolves’ return is one of the most celebrated ecological experiments in history and an extraordinary conservation victory. The emotion people expressed when first spotting wolves again in the park was palpable, some likened it to the giddy feeling of falling in love. It spawned a tourism industry, bringing wolf-watchers from all over the world and contributing $35 million a year to the region’s economy. This success, however, did not come without struggle.
When Yellowstone became America’s first national park in 1872, people did not yet understand the role each species played in the park’s ecosystem health and wolves were viewed as a threat. Sanctioned by the government, park rangers set out to kill every wolf they saw, and in 1926 they shot the last two; pups caught in steel jaw traps as they fed on a bison in Lamar Valley.
Two decades later, ecologist Aldo Leopold recommended the reintroduction of wolves, recognizing their immense ecological value and his generation’s equally colossal mistake. “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community,” he wrote in A Sand County Almanac in 1949. “It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
As apex carnivores, wolves sit at the top of the food chain, affecting everything from elk to soil. Ecologically balanced grazing populations allow willow and aspen to grow and stabilize riverbanks, bringing dam-building beavers that create habitat for cold water fish like cutthroat trout. Wolves on the landscape also mean fewer coyotes to prey on pronghorn fawns, chipmunks, marmots and voles. In turn, raptors thrive. Even beetles partake in the bonanza provided by wolves, as what they don’t finish nourishes the soil.
In the late 1960s, Defenders of Wildlife began calling for wolf reintroduction in the park. By the late 1980s, Defenders stepped up efforts on the wolf’s behalf, conducting public education campaigns to garner support for reintroduction and establishing a program to compensate ranchers for verified livestock losses to wolves. Defenders ultimately sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to force reintroduction and fought for federal funding.
When the federal government began seeking public comments on a possible reintroduction, they poured in from people across the entire country who overwhelmingly supported the wolf’s return.
And then it happened.
On January 12, 1995, two park service patrol cars followed by a horse trailer containing eight wolves — captured from three different Alberta packs and flown to Montana — passed by a throng of cheering well-wishers and through Yellowstone’s famous entrance arch.
But at the last second, Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation lawyers — who had earlier delayed capture efforts in Canada — obtained a stay from a federal appeals court to stop the release. The wild wolves, now on the ground after completing the final leg of their journey to Lamar Valley by mule-drawn sleigh and then hand-carried up a steep slope, remained confined in their transport crates. Pushing 30 hours since capture, lawyers turned to a Denver court to free them.
When a judge finally lifted the restraint, the cages were opened and the wolves were released into holding pens about an acre in size to help them bond them to the area. During this initial stage armed rangers stood guard around the perimeter to ensure the wolves’ safety from death threats. After ten weeks the wolves were set free into the park.
In total, 66 wolves were released in Yellowstone and central Idaho in 1995 and 1996. Today, with a dozen packs in Yellowstone, wolves are well established in the park.
Current Wolf Conflicts
Outside the park’s border, however, the struggle to gain greater public acceptance of wolves continues. Endangered Species Act protections were stripped from many gray wolves between 2011 and 2020 by Congress and the first Trump administration. This action resulted in wolf management being turned over to the states, a loosening of protections for the wolves and, ultimately, to the killing of more than 3,500 wolves. Defenders and our partners intervened, and, in February 2022, a judge restored ESA protections for gray wolves in much of the lower 48 states.
Outside of Yellowstone, after years of outreach and careful planning, wolf reintroductions began in Colorado in December 2023. Since those paws hit the ground, there have been disputes and missteps, but Defenders remains steadfast in its work to ensure a successful reintroduction just as we did in Yellowstone.
Defenders is also working throughout gray wolves’ historic range, helping to help reduce conflicts and ensure healthy populations of Mexican Gray Wolves in Arizona and New Mexico and Red Wolves in North Carolina. Our programs promote coexistence tools among ranchers, including range riders, guard dogs and fladry installation to make wolves less inclined to risk an attack.
Despite these efforts, prejudice against wolves remains strong in many areas, and some states are more focused on wolf control than wolf recovery. Defenders continues to fight for wolf recovery, educating the public and policy makers alike to demonstrate what’s possible when we work together to prioritize habitat and wildlife conservation.
This blog was updated from a 2020 Defenders Magazine article to reflect current times.
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