While the wolf hunts currently taking place in Idaho and Montana have garnered most of the wolf-world's attention recently, other wolf stories have surfaced in the past few weeks.  Discussed below are a few of them:

(1)  Science Daily reports that according to a new study published in the journal Bioscience, the catastrophic decline around the world of "apex" predators (e.g., wolves, cougars, lions, sharks, etc.) has led to a huge increase in smaller "mesopredators" (e.g., coyotes, raccoons, skunks, baboons, etc.), which is causing major economic and ecological disruptions worldwide.  The article states:

[I]n North America all of the largest terrestrial predators have been in decline during the past 200 years while the ranges of 60 percent of mesopredators have expanded.

...

The elimination of wolves is often favored by ranchers, for instance, who fear attacks on their livestock.  However, that has led to a huge surge in the number of coyotes, a "mesopredator" once kept in check by the wolves.  The coyotes attack pronghorn antelope and domestic sheep, and attempts to control them have been hugely expensive, costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

"The economic impacts of mesopredators should be expected to exceed those of apex predators in any scenario in which mesopredators contribute to the same or to new conflict with humans," the researchers wrote in their report.  "Mesopredators occur at higher densities than apex predators and exhibit greater resiliency to control efforts."

What to do?  Simple: return native predators to suitable habitats to restore balance to those ecosystems.  The ecological importance of predators cannot be overstated, which more media sources seem to be reporting, as evidenced by a New York Times piece flagged by Andrew Wetlzer.  Raising awareness about the value of predators is a great development.

(2)  Elk hunters headed to Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming a couple of weeks ago to help reduce the area's elk population.  A spokesperson for the park said the elk population there is currently about 12,500 animals, and wildlife managers would like to reduce the population to about 11,000 elk.  So elk tags for the national park were issued to hunters to help thin the population.

Wait a second.  I thought wolves were decimating all the elk herds in the Northern Rockies.  There are too many elk around Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming?  And hunters are going to help thin the population?  I am seriously confused. 

(3)  Montana's general elk hunting season opened yesterday.  According to Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, this year's elk season in Montana could be nothing short of exceptional.  According to FWP's 2009 Elk Hunting Outlook:

Montana has more than 135,000 elk and thousands of hopeful hunters making plans for an elk hunt.  This could be an exceptional year for elk hunting if the precipitation the state has seen this summer continues in the form of snow.  Montana's general elk hunting season opens Oct. 25.

"Hunters are going to see very healthy populations of elk and liberal hunting opportunities.  If the weather works in hunters' favor, and they do some advance work to gain access where it's needed, plenty of elk are potentially available for harvest," said Quentin Kujala, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks wildlife management section chief.

Okay, now I'm really confused.  "135,000 elk."  "Exceptional year."  "Very healthy populations of elk."  "Plenty of elk are potentially available for harvest."  Why do some hunters continue to say wolves have decimated the elk herds in the Northern Rockies when it's just not true?

(4)  And on the "wolves are ridiculously cool" front, a recent Billings Gazette article discusses the wanderlust instincts of two wolves from the Mill Creek pack of Montana's Paradise Valley, which is just south of our office in Livingston.  The wolves, who were littermates, were born in the spring of 2007 and radio-collared later that year.  Both died this year following remarkable journeys.  The male, SW266M, was shot in Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains in October, and his sister, SW341F, was found dead in March in northwestern Colorado's Eagle County. 

341F's famous trek, which was recorded by a GPS device, took her from Montana to Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Idaho and Utah before she was killed in Colorado.  And her brother's voyage to the Bighorns, which was not recorded by GPS, "would require a walk of a couple hundred miles across some of the most rugged country in south-central Montana and northwestern Wyoming, several rivers, not to mention trekking through the Bighorn Basin, a high-desert stretch of country intermixed with farms and ranches."  And that's assuming it was "a fairly straight trek."

It's a shame these two adventurous wolves' lives were cut so short, but they give us another reason to love wolves.  And they make me wonder where other wolves from the Mill Creek pack are currently headed . . .

(Wolves photo by will.sebastian on Flickr)