Here is a short video on the environmental impact of re-introducing wolves into areas where they have been missing for decades. I find this highly interesting, yet not at all surprising. Thoughts?
I am for wolves being put back into the mix and I've tried to start discussion on this topic several times in here but nobody seems interested, maybe you'll have better luck. I live in NE Washington and this last winter I found wolf tracks in the snow a mile from our house. Don't know if they are here or were just passing through but it was exciting to see them.
That is encouraging to hear. What I find fascinating is that trophic cascades are likely similar with other apex predators.
US Adopts Recovery Plan for Mexican Grey Wolves... US Adopts Recovery Plan for Mexican Grey Wolves November 29, 2017 — After decades of legal challenges and political battles that have pitted states against the federal government, U.S. wildlife managers on Wednesday finally adopted a plan to guide the recovery of a wolf that once roamed parts of the American Southwest and northern Mexico.
Camp Steveo, Thanks for sharing that. I had read about it several years ago. Fascinating. Good to see the ecosystem returning to what it was supposed to be. I always found it interesting that Yellowstone Park was created in 1872 to preserve the land but the killing of wolves was allowed into the 1930's. The one thing about this that I feel is really too bad is when the wolves were reintroduced a sub-species different from the original Yellowstone wolf was released. There are reasons given as to why this was done but it would have been nice to reintroduce the original. Rich
Other people say the wolf-cascade thing is more of a feelgood urban legend, bad science that discourages people from noticing the more complicated issues involved. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/opinion/is-the-wolf-a-real-american-hero.html?_r=0 --- However, like all big ideas in science, this one stimulated follow-up studies, and their results have been coming in. One study published in 2010 in the journal Ecology found that aspen trees hadn’t regrown despite a 60 percent decline in elk numbers. Even in areas where wolves killed the most elk, the elk weren’t scared enough to stop eating aspens. Other studies have agreed. In my own research at the University of Wyoming, my colleagues and I closely tracked wolves and elk east of Yellowstone from 2007 to 2010, and found that elk rarely changed their feeding behavior in response to wolves. Why aren’t elk so afraid of the big, bad wolf? Compared with other well-studied prey animals — like those grasshoppers — adult elk can be hard for their predators to find and kill. This could be for a few reasons. On the immense Yellowstone landscape, wolf-elk encounters occur less frequently than we thought. Herd living helps elk detect and respond to incoming wolves. And elk are not only much bigger than wolves, but they also kick like hell. The strongest explanation for why the wolves have made less of a difference than we expected comes from a long-term, experimental study by a research group at Colorado State University. This study, which focused on willows, showed that the decades without wolves changed Yellowstone too much to undo. After humans exterminated wolves nearly a century ago, elk grew so abundant that they all but eliminated willow shrubs. Without willows to eat, beavers declined. Without beaver dams, fast-flowing streams cut deeper into the terrain. The water table dropped below the reach of willow roots. Now it’s too late for even high levels of wolf predation to restore the willows. --- (If the NYTimes paywall ends up blocking you, I recommend the uMatrix addon for Chrome or Firefox, which can get by the paywall there and at other sites by blocking the single script that controls the paywall.).
I think this single youtube video has done more harm than good when it comes to the environment, as people are pushing reintroduction of wolves in areas where it wouldn't have positive outcomes at all. I see people here in norway push the yellowstone wolf thingy too. But we have the exact opposite challenge to our environment than yellowstone faced. Our vulnerable species are threatened by too few grazing animals, not too many, and introducing wolves here will just make it worse. It doesn't stop the "environmentalists" in pushing wolves though. Industrialized agriculture with its mass extinction here we come, and it's all thanks to good intentions and lack of knowledge.
A lot of the research I have done in my undergraduate studies has led me to believe that the loss of top predators has an affect on ecosystems and even on the global biosphere. There is some literature on this if you search it.
No doubt. But that is not to say that the reintroduction of all predators everywhere has only positive benefits for ecosystems. Don't forget; man is a top predator too. And we have a positive impact on ecosystems where it's dependent on cultural landscape, like Norway and Switzerland.
