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Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

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Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#121

Post by dev_l1x_be »

sghiassy wrote: post #67
mkw5053 wrote: post #23

It's amazing the impact that the reintroduction has had. On a recent winter trip there I also learned that the reintroduction literally moved rivers [1]: - Elk quit loitering along streams, so willow and cottonwood shot up, anchoring soil and narrowing channels. - The new woody growth gave beavers lumber; their colonies jumped from one in 1996 to a dozen within fifteen years, raising water tables and rebuilding wetla…

I’ve always found the idea of “restoring” ecosystems a bit philosophically tricky. When we say that reintroducing wolves led to ecological improvements, what’s our reference point? Are we comparing it to Yellowstone 100 years ago? 500? Pre-human settlement? Ecological baselines are inherently arbitrary—there’s no objectively “correct” state of nature to return to. The systems we call degraded are often just different…

Using restoring less of IT term (like restoring from a backup) and more of a way of improving compared to current state is the key here.

Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#122

Post by johnnienaked »

sghiassy wrote: post #67
mkw5053 wrote: post #23

It's amazing the impact that the reintroduction has had. On a recent winter trip there I also learned that the reintroduction literally moved rivers [1]: - Elk quit loitering along streams, so willow and cottonwood shot up, anchoring soil and narrowing channels. - The new woody growth gave beavers lumber; their colonies jumped from one in 1996 to a dozen within fifteen years, raising water tables and rebuilding wetla…

I’ve always found the idea of “restoring” ecosystems a bit philosophically tricky. When we say that reintroducing wolves led to ecological improvements, what’s our reference point? Are we comparing it to Yellowstone 100 years ago? 500? Pre-human settlement? Ecological baselines are inherently arbitrary—there’s no objectively “correct” state of nature to return to. The systems we call degraded are often just different…

There is a "correct" state of nature: one without modern humans.

Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#123

Post by Retric »

incomingpain wrote: post #2

They only moved few dozen wolves, over 1000km from their homes, which is not going to have any significant consequences. Even today there's only about 100 wolves in the park? 2,200,000 acres, with 100 wolves. Then they've made the claim that those 100 wolves in 2.2million acres has resulted in plants and fish returning? As opposed to their efforts doing nothing at all?

The simple answer for how is the elk population in that 2,200,000 acres dropped from ~18,000 to ~2,000 or 1 elk per 2 square miles.

16,000 elk do quiet a lot, especially as they aren’t spending nearly as much time along river banks. Which changes what plants are in and around steams and thus what’s happening in and around those streams.

Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#124

Post by TimorousBestie »

joshtbradley wrote: post #109

Also collapsed the elk population from 18,000 to 2,000 and they’re worried the bison will eat the trees… I understand nature is incredibly complex and intelligent, and I’m curious what the end effect will be. But from an anthropocentric perspective, this is silly. When will the first human death occur?

If you’re going to exterminate every species that kills humans, there’s gonna be a lot of very angry dog owners on your doorstep.

Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#125

Post by ChuckMcM »

aspenmayer wrote: post #63
ChuckMcM wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both links are paywalled so I can't comment on what they say (positive or negative). That said, I did attend an interesting lecture about systems that looks a bit at the Yellowstone as a cautionary tale about extrapolating how a system works from observational data. Basically it came down to there are secondary and tertiary effects from systems variables that express visibly differently depending on both the magnitud…

> Both links are paywalled so I can't comment on what they say (positive or negative). Fixed! https://eu.coloradoan.com/story/news/2024/02/09/colorado-sta... | https://archive.is/k0NqZ https://academic.oup.com/book/26688/chapter-abstract/1954809... | https://annas-archive[.]org/md5/3d5be21998575e23a28fdaa53ff5... (You will have to replace "[.]" with "." in the above link in case that wasn't obvious.)

Awesome thanks. Added to my libraary. Interesting that the Coloradan study was asking a slightly different question regarding wolves in Colorado vs the magnitude of the wolf impact in Yellowstone. I felt the experimental setup was also good but might quibble that Elk have more impact than just eating, they can squash saplings just by walking on them. The point that Colorado maintains its Elk population by hunting was relevant as well, any impact of wolf predation would be less than it would be on a previously un-predated population. All in all though, I quite agree that the stories of Yellowstone’s wolves likely overstate the specific impact of wolves and understate the system dynamics that had other mechanisms also affecting them.

I also recognize that ‘popular’ writing is more about persuasion than facts :-) and it was important to persuade people that wolves weren’t “bad/evil” just predators that had lived there before. Telling that story as a rebalancing is certainly more palatable than saying “Yeah, if we had allowed hunting Elk (and perhaps Bison) in Yellowstone it would have similarly improved.” Generally keeping the human role as apex predator out of the headlines :-). Thanks again, great links.

Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#126

Post by [deleted] »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #112
sdenton4 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of thinking of this as a benefit of wolves (specifically), you can view it as an advantage of having something in their ecological niche. In this case, the niche is 'apex predator.' It's a niche which is repeated across pretty much every ecosystem. They keep populations of their prey species down, preventing overpopulation and the many indirect problems that come with it. Perhaps without an apex predator the…

> species that evolve with a predator tend to reproduce more quickly As an example of this, a healthy female rabbit will produce anywhere from 20 to 50 additional rabbits in a single year. There have been many documented explosions of rabbit populations due to lack of natural predators which have caused significant ecological crisis. They've evolved to reproduce so quickly because they are the "food" in the food chai…

[deleted]

Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#128

Post by sitkack »

sghiassy wrote: post #67
mkw5053 wrote: post #23

It's amazing the impact that the reintroduction has had. On a recent winter trip there I also learned that the reintroduction literally moved rivers [1]: - Elk quit loitering along streams, so willow and cottonwood shot up, anchoring soil and narrowing channels. - The new woody growth gave beavers lumber; their colonies jumped from one in 1996 to a dozen within fifteen years, raising water tables and rebuilding wetla…

I’ve always found the idea of “restoring” ecosystems a bit philosophically tricky. When we say that reintroducing wolves led to ecological improvements, what’s our reference point? Are we comparing it to Yellowstone 100 years ago? 500? Pre-human settlement? Ecological baselines are inherently arbitrary—there’s no objectively “correct” state of nature to return to. The systems we call degraded are often just different…

If "restoring" is tricky, does that mean going in the non-restoring direction is less so?

Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#129

Post by celticninja »

sghiassy wrote: post #67
mkw5053 wrote: post #23

It's amazing the impact that the reintroduction has had. On a recent winter trip there I also learned that the reintroduction literally moved rivers [1]: - Elk quit loitering along streams, so willow and cottonwood shot up, anchoring soil and narrowing channels. - The new woody growth gave beavers lumber; their colonies jumped from one in 1996 to a dozen within fifteen years, raising water tables and rebuilding wetla…

I’ve always found the idea of “restoring” ecosystems a bit philosophically tricky. When we say that reintroducing wolves led to ecological improvements, what’s our reference point? Are we comparing it to Yellowstone 100 years ago? 500? Pre-human settlement? Ecological baselines are inherently arbitrary—there’s no objectively “correct” state of nature to return to. The systems we call degraded are often just different…

Agree but more species is definitely better than less species. We are not aiming to get dinosaurs back, but pre industrial era levels of wildlife is not a bad thing.

Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#130

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

tomrod wrote: post #119
rr808 wrote: post #57

I talked to a local who was friends with ranchers who now lose stock to wolves. They hate it. Its an interesting use case of local control, is the greater good more important than the people who live there?

Oof. Bad place for a ranch. Natural ecology needs those apex predators. They should consider relocating if they are deep in the ranching world. If we've learned anything since the industrial revolution, we have learned that sustainability is highly desirable, even more so than marginal ranchland.

I guess the subsequent question is whether there are good places for ranches. If the benefits of predators reintroduction/protection become widely known, it will likely be practiced elsewhere in the future.
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