firesong77 Administrator Wolf Activist member is offline
Joined: Jan 2007 Gender: Female Posts: 84 Location: In the Wolf Den
Wonderful Wolves « Thread Started on Jan 25, 2007, 4:42am »
Wolves are wonderful, amazing and beautiful creatures. Unfortunately, they are famous for a reputation they don't deserve. Everyone looks towards the Grey Wolf (Canis Lupis) with fear. They see them as a dangerous animal that hunts and kills livestock. Wolves do take sheep, but only because they are carnivorous and need the food to survive. The farmers, who must suffer the consequences if they don't lock up their sheep properly, see wolves as a pest and eliminate them to the point of extinction. This is wrong. Wolves are intelligent and wonderful animals.
A national park was having great difficulty - there were no birds to be seen, and large numbers of elk in the park. The park managers decided to release some wolves into the park to protect them and help the dwindling population.
Bit by bit, all the birds came back to the park.
Why? Because the large numbers of elk were eating away at the saplings, and the birds had nowhere to roost and build nests. There was nothing to keep the elk population in check, so the birds left. Once the wolves had been placed in the park, they hunted the elk, so the amount of trees being eaten were less. Finally, the birds had somewhere to roost and build nests, so they all came back to the park.
Everything in nature is connected. If you take one thing out, everything else will go wrong. Like, believe it or not, the world can't live without spiders. If there were no spiders, there would be too many flies.
Look at this. It's about the reintroduction of wolves in National Parks:
Information from en.wikipedia.org/Wiki/Gray_wolf Though many hunters, prior to and even after reintroduction, claimed that wolves would wipe out entire populations of elk, deer and other ungulates, most ecosystems where wolves have been reintroduced have actually become much healthier than they were before. Since Wolves have arrived, the food chain within the Yellowstone ecosystem has been re-ordered to deliver a banquet that favors a more varied array of species. Prior to wolves, high numbers of elk were linked to declines in aspen and willow communities, which negatively affected beaver and moose. Pre-wolf, coyote numbers swelled, affecting small rodent populations, foxes, and the production of pronghorn antelope. Pre-wolf scavengers had slimmer pickings. Today with wolves taking elk, reducing their numbers, and leaving more carcasses on the landscape, grizzlies and wolverines have easier access to more meat, meaning a better chance for larger litters of cubs and pups. Coyote numbers have been significantly reduced, meaning more mice and pocket gophers for foxes and avian predators like hawks and eagles. Wolves play an undeniably important role in the environment and through education organizations some people may be slowly getting the message that they are vital. In addition, reports have been published placing the value of revenue from wolf-watching as upward of $25 million.
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