Predators and Ecosystems
Grey Wolf howling (credit: Wikicommons)
This occasional series of posts is designed to illustrate principals of ecology and how they function within an ecosystem. Coastal mangroves protect coastlines and serving as "nurseries" for young fish is one while river deltas and sediments flowing produces new land is another. Now the role for a top, apex predator plays in a functioning, stable ecosystem is a third.
Wolves had been extinct from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem for nearly a century before they were re-introduced in 1995. Grey wolves, trapped in Canada, were released in the remote Lemar River Valley of the Park and their impacts were monitored through numerous studies. The effect of restoring this top predator on elk, deer, coyote, bears, birds, aspen trees and river willows, and all other wildlife populations and plant communities was astounding. The wolves were the missing key to the sustainability of the Yellowstone ecosystem.
The rate at which ecological stability was restored to the ecosystem was a huge surprise even to the biologists. It was regained in less than 20 years and continues to spread outward to other areas of Yellowstone as the wolves migrate into their former ranges.
The experience with wolves in Yellowstone serve as an model of what is possible for other lands and marine areas if a top predator were to be re-introduced.
WHB