“The First Rule of Conservation is: Collaboration is the best way to go.”
Here’s a matter that matters: Yellowstone: the return of the wolf – YouTube. It’s a short, well-filmed video about the Wolf wildlife controversy taking place in Yellowstone National Park. I’d love to just sit and talk to some of these people and ask them questions outside of this subject too. I love people who care so passionately about one thing. I admire that.
Growing up, my family would rent motor-homes and travel from California all the way to our family ranch in Eastern Montana. We would camp out and play farmhouse at the ranch for a few days and then hit the open road to visit places like Mount Rushmore, The Grand Tetons, Pompey’s Pillar, and one of America’s National Parks: Yellowstone; home to the consistently bursting hot spring “Old Faithful” and home to wildlife they just don’t have in good old California. There are the fury, rich brown, horned, but gentle-giant buffalos. There are the elegant deer with their handsome counterpart, head strong and antlered, the male Moose….he who lays sporadically across the land just under the tips of the tall yellow-flowered grasses of the great open spaces where the sky is bigger than anywhere else in the world. Also, within this community are of course bears, mountian lions, sheep, bob cats, birds, fish, amphibians, insects, etc but one that is under great controversy is the lone wolf. Currently I am taking a basic Biology class in order to complete my (5 class) minor of Environment and Society a.k.a. “Sustainability,” and this short YouTube film/link was part of our homework. As soon as I saw it was about Yellowstone, I knew my heart was going to be at home in this class. I love when that happens.
I am sharing this video and information because this is where I see beauty. I am not only fascinated by how we as human predators are trying to re-create a balance in the food chain with another predator that we killed off for centuries, but I see beauty in the act of preserving such a primal, emotionless, survival instinct. I now feel the urge to want to understand what the stance the natives (American Indians) take on such a matter. While I find the idea of a horse being taken down by a pack of wolves extremely heart-wrenching, I also realize those are my human emotions. Humans invest time into horses, they are not just pets, they are companions. A wolf doesn’t know this or care. And while the preservation has been more successful than the Yellowstone Wolf Project could have predicted, the wolf’s “robust population restoration” now has to be looked at and micro managed in order for our horse companions and the Elk (the wolf’s primary prey species) not be taken from us, as well as, throwing off the biodiversity of the surrounding ecosystems and their functions.
There is a man at the end of this video who poetically states the beauty that can be found in such a compelling and real issue:
“Wolves are very much a symbol of wilderness.
They are a symbol of something that is very much a part of our wildlife-heritage in the past.
Very much a symbol of what we have lost BUT more importantly a symbol of what, now, we have gained.
A large part of the success of the Yellowstone wolves has been the bringing together of people. That’s really a testament to the value that human societies play; and that coming together and working in different organizations to achieve a common goal. ” -Dan Stahler (Yellowstone Wolf Project Biologist)
Rule #1.
to BE inspired 