Let’s Re-Introduce the Wolves for Earth Day
We’ve seen some interesting stuff over the past few weeks. The other night, for example, we saw a documentary on PBS about the re-introduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park. For thousands of years, wolves were the apex predator of the area. As man began to move in, we killed off the wolves to “protect livestock” and because wolves were scary. By the 1920’s, they were gone. But that had some unintended consequences.
About a dozen years ago, biologists introduced a small pack of wolves back into Yellowstone. What they’ve found since is remarkable.
The primary prey of the gray wolf is elk, and elk are plentiful in the park. Wolves have begun to manage the population of elk, going after sick, injured, and elderly animals. This means that fewer elk are grazing on the seedlings of small aspen trees, which used to be everywhere. With more new aspens taking root, Yellowstone has seen a return of the beaver, which had pulled up stakes and moved elsewhere. Beavers have built more dams, which has changed the water patterns. The creation of more ponds and wetlands has brought back birds and amphibians, which had followed the beaver.
Surprisingly, the re-introduction of an apex predator led to a greater diversity of wildlife.
We also came across an article from 2007 about a whale. We found it while looking for information about the recent World Court ruling banning whale hunting in Antarctic waters.
Natives in Alaska are allowed to hunt a very limited number of whales each year. They take enough to feed their villages, then they quit. Biologists work with the Alaskans to get an up-close look at animals that they normally wouldn’t be able to study.
In 2007, they took a 50-ton bowhead whale. Buried in the whale’s skull was a harpoon point. The weapon was made some time in the 1880’s, and was pretty much obsolete by the dawn of the 20th Century. The Alaskans traditionally hunted only adult animals to preserve the integrity of the pod, so this whale was probably a decent-sized young adult when it was shot with this harpoon.
Which means that this whale was somewhere around 130 years old.
We wondered what it had seen?
All of this made us think of the small changes that have occurred to our environment – some of them bad, and some of them good. More to the point, what can we do to “introduce the wolves” back into our ecosystem, and preserve our beautiful planet for the next 130-year old whale?
Our Executive Director, Mike Baum, recently spoke to the Richmond Times-Dispatch about the importance of “introducing the wolves” on this Earth Day. He said,
“Sixty minutes doesn’t seem like much at first, but imagine if just 1 percent of the eight million people living in the state gave 60 minutes and the difference that would make.”
That’s the whole premise behind our Give 60 campaign: Do something small. It takes 60 seconds to walk from the curb to a trashcan. You can plant quite a few trees in 60 minutes. Sixty dollars will buy a lot of recycling bins. If enough of our eight million Virginians did their part to Give 60, perhaps our Commonwealth can “reintroduce the wolves” for the next 130-year old whale. Do your part this Earth Day.