Science Friday - How Have Gray Wolves Fared 30 Years After Reintroduction?

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

Gray wolves are native to the Rocky Mountains, but decades of hunting nearly eradicated them from the western United States by the 1940s. In 1995, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, and it’s been a conservation success story, but not a straight path out of the woods.Host Flora Lichtman digs into the last 30 years of wolves in the West with Heath Druzin, creator of the podcast “Howl,” from Boise State Public Radio and The Idaho Capital Sun. Druzin reported the podcast and companion written series with Clark Corbin.Guest: Heath Druzin is host of the podcast “Howl,” from Boise State Public Radio and The Idaho Capital Sun.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Hey, I'm Flora Lichtenen, and you are listening to Science Friday. Today in the show, wolves are one of the great conservation comebacks. But are they out of the woods? Wolves have gone from, you know, the highest protections of the federal government to less protected than just about any animal out there in the three states that are most important to their survival. Great wolves are native to the Rocky Mountains, but decades of hunting nearly eradicated them from the western U.S. 1940s. In 1995, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and have done remarkably well. They were removed from the endangered species list in 2020. But not everyone is happy about their success. My next guest reported on where wolves stand now. Heath Druson is host of the podcast Howell from Boise State Public Radio and the Idaho Capitol Sun. Heath, welcome to Science Friday.

Great to be here. Heath, why did you take the story on? A big part of why I took this story on is that I've had a longstanding fascination with wildlife. I spend a lot of time in the outdoors in places where wolves live. I live in Idaho and I'm a bit of a national park junkie, so I travel around with the West a lot. And both, you know, recreating out there and being a reporter in that area, I heard a lot of really strong feelings about wolves, like over the top. feelings that just even animals like grizzly bears just don't really inspire the same feelings. Like what? Give me an example. There are people who love wolves so much that they even say they kind of want to be a wolf and like people who just assign these sort of mythical qualities

and they're wild animals, right? And then on the other side you've got, I mean, people who have tortured them. Wolves have been found with, you know, horrific injuries from torture. not just poaching, but like really wanting to inflict pain. And so I really want to know why. I wanted to know why. I still want to know. I think I learned a little bit about that. But I just want to know why these animals in particular inspire such over-the-top feelings

in people. You know, why wolves? Okay. Let's go back in time. How did we get into this situation where wolves were basically wiped out in the lower 40s? States. Right. And I guess that gets to a little bit of what I was talking about with the over-the-top feelings. There's a lot of wolf mythology out there in Europe where a lot of early American settlers came from. You know, you've got the fairy tales that everybody knows about. And you've got

a lot of negative feelings because wolves were seen as dangerous and obviously wolves do eat livestock from time to time. So when settlers came to a lot of America, and especially when they came west, they had animals. They had cattle and sheep, especially. And wolves don't always mix with livestock very well. So basically what happened was as Americans moved west, they systematically exterminated wolves to protect cattle and sheep. And they basically wiped wolves out in the west by, it depends who you talk to, but about the 1940s, there were virtually no wolves left in the west. Okay. So, What happened 30 years ago when wolves were reintroduced?

Like, how did that happen? Well, you kind of have to back up 20 years before that when the Endangered Species Act was signed into law by Richard Nixon, actually. And one of the first animals that was protected under the Endangered Species Act was wolves. And so that started this sort of 20-year program to figure out how to get them back. And a lot of Western states were not very excited about it. cattle country, it's sheep country. But the federal government essentially overruled rancher objections and said we're going to release them in Yellowstone and central Idaho and hopefully restore some balance to the ecosystem with an apex predator. Is this right? I read that this

proposal had more than 160,000 public comments. Oh man. I mean, yeah, we talked to people who were there. They talked about screaming matches with federal officials. at these town halls and small towns in Idaho and Montana and Wyoming. And, I mean, there were death threats. So, yeah, it was extremely controversial. People had very strong feelings, both pro and anti-wolf. And there wasn't a lot of common ground back then. So what happened since?

How have their populations fared? It is one of the great comeback stories in nature. depending on kind of what numbers you look at, there's roughly 3,000 wolves. That's a huge comeback, and it really exceeded anyone's wildest expectations. So you can imagine if you didn't want. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, the federal government was talking about, you know, hopefully having a population of a few hundred. And now we're at a few thousand.

So people who like wolves are excited. People who don't like wolves feel like they were sort of sold a bill of goods. Well, let's talk about that, how people are feeling now. You spoke with Rusty Kramer, who runs a farm and also leads the Idaho Trappers Association. They are a large apex predator, and they need a lot of room and a lot of ungulence, a lot of food to eat. And in my opinion, you just don't have that in Idaho anymore. The people that think that they can coexist are just and La La Land, in my opinion, because they can't exist with this much ag on the landscape.

Yeah, so Rusty Kramer, in addition to being a trapper, is an alfalfa farmer. And he says, you know, wolves push elk down into his alfalfa fields for safety, basically. And they trample the fields and hurt his business. And that really does illustrate a pretty wide view of wolves in places like Idaho. people think they hurt ranchers and they hurt farmers. Now, I do have to say he's talking about elk and, you know, fishing game officials in kind of anti-wolf states will tell you elk herds are really healthy and at their healthiest in a long time. So there's definitely some debate over some of those points.

Yeah. How has the comeback of wolves changed the ecosystem out West? That was one of the most fascinating parts of my reporting. Scientists think that wolves have really dramatically changed the landscape. So well beyond predator prey relationships, there's a term called the trophic cascade. So to put it simply, wolves eat elk and deer, and that makes elk and deer nervous. And that means that they're not staying in one place very long. And when they do stay in one place too long, they tend to overgraze, and then they chew young trees like aspens to the nub.

they never grow tall. And so there was a recent study, actually, after we released the podcast, and it showed that aspen trees are doing better than they have in like 80 years in Yellowstone. And they attribute that a lot to the reintroduction of wolves and other predator populations coming up. And that goes all the way down to river ecosystems where aspens and willows do better and they grow next to rivers. They provide shade. That helps trout. It helps beavers build dams. There's these crazy connections with animals that you would think really have nothing to do with wolves. You also spoke with members of indigenous communities.

What did you hear? Yeah, we spent some time on the Nespers Reservation in Idaho. And the Nespers tribe played this largely unsung role in wolf recovery. And basically, Idaho in 1995, boycotted the reintroduction process. process. They didn't like wolves and they refused to participate with the federal government. So the Nesperse tribe stepped up and basically said, well, we'll be the state agency. We'll help you out. And so for more than a decade, they did a lot of the on-the-ground monitoring of wolves and studying of wolves and seeing how they were doing as their population

grew. We talked to a lot of members of the tribe, including an elder who actually was born right as wolves were dying out. And he told us a lot about the belief system that the nespers have and how wolves occupy a really important space, that traditional hunters even study them to learn how to hunt, and that their loss was this really big hole, both in nature around them and culturally. Okay.

So what is the current protection status for wolves? It's complicated. So wolves are protected by the Endangered Species Act in most places in America. But they are not protected in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming. And those are kind of these strongholds for wolves in the West. Most Western wolves live in those three states. So there, those states are able to do what they want. It's kind of open season.

You can hunt wolves through almost any means possible. So wolves have gone from, you know, the highest protections of the federal government to less protected than just about any animal out there in the three states that are most important to their survival. And that does have a lot of people nervous. I mean, do you think they're at risk for being wiped out in those states? Among the many surprises that we ran into in our reporting for this project, I think one of the biggest ones was that, yeah, that a lot of scientists are concerned that wolves might be in trouble again. Not that they're on the brink of extinction, but that they're going in the wrong direction. I want to wrap up with another personal experience you had.

and I'm just going to intro it with some sound that you recorded. Man, it still gives me chills. I was hiking by myself in Yellowstone, and all of a sudden, about 200 feet in front of me, I saw something moving in the sagebrush, and it was a large, black female wolf with three pups. And she actually stopped and sat on her haunches and stared at me with her tongue out for like 30 seconds.

And then she wandered off and they all started howling. And so I was right there. I was like surrounded by howls. And I was by myself in the wilderness. And it was, I mean, the most thrilling wildlife experience I've ever had. Well, I think that's the perfect place to leave it. Thank you, Heath. Thank you so much.

Heath Drusin is host of the podcast, Howl, from Boise State Public Radio and the Idaho Capitol Sun. The series was co-reported with Clark Corbin. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to rate and review us. Wherever you listen, it really does help us get the word out and get the show in front of new listeners. Today's episode was produced by Kathleen Davis. I'm Flora Lichtman.

Thanks for listening.