Amazed by benefits wolves provide

I am amazed that wolves returning to Yellowstone seem to be restoring the balance of nature in our first national park. The wolf is helping to make Yellowstone National Park whole again.

Scientists also are amazed. Yellowstone is working its way back to a changing but healthy ecosystem, thanks to the returning of the wolves.

I am also amazed and humbled at the respect I am coming to feel for wolves as I learn more about their intelligence and their social behavior in their packs and their training of their young. Amazing creatures, amazing predators, too often maligned out of fear and myth. I am told that not one human being has ever been killed by a wolf in America.

Back to Yellowstone. Plants and animals and birds that have become rare in the Park are returning. Young aspens, cottonwoods and willows grow again, and the animals that use them as habitat are also coming back.

Why? Because the elk are on the move again. Without wolves, the elk lingered along the streams in Yellowstone, eating the young shoots of aspens, cottonwoods and willows before they could grow. Now the elk must stay on the move to make it harder for wolves to find them. Also, hunters seem to find it harder to find the elk.

Additional facts of interest are:

1. Wildlife experts say increased numbers of deer and elk have been discovered recently.

2. Verified complaints of wolf predations on livestock have gone down even though the wolves have increased.

3. Wolves are part of the reason that Yellowstone attracted more than 3 million visitors in 2011 and Glacier attracted nearly 2 million.

Imagine the Montana economic tourism losses if we lost the lure of our wildlife predators by imprudent hunting. Let’s promote conservation, not decimation. And perhaps someday we humans can learn to live with wolves and to respect them.

For a revised wolf hunt, please send comments by June 25 online to www.fwp.mt.gov/hunting/publiccomments. I ask for no trapping, only one wolf killed per hunter per season and the same fees charged in 2011 for all hunters in and out of state.

Lois Drobish lives in Kalispell.