Saving Wolves Saved Yellowstone

baltimore sun

I am always trying to impress upon people how complicated and intricately intertwined the Earth's ecology really is. When you affect one element, it affects many others, though it may not always be readily apparent.
The Earth is a nicely contained system. There are not any others. I am not going on a tree hugging monologue, but articles like these should be paid attention too, because no matter how people try to deny it, we do affect the planet in ways we don't understand, both good and bad.

As someone who works in the environmental field, I always tell people: there is the stuff we know about and see, now imagine the stuff we don't, which is probably ten times more.

When the bison were eliminated from the great plains in the US, two other species went with them. A buffalo orchid that was only spread when the seeds were picked up by the coats of passing buffalo, and the other was a salamander, that lived only in buffalo wallows.

So here is yet another extensive effect from the article:

The chain of effects went roughly like this: No wolves meant that many more elk crowded onto inviting river and stream banks. A growing population of fat elk, in no danger of being turned into prey, gnawed down willow and aspen seedlings before they could mature. As the willows declined, so did beavers, which used the trees for food and building material. When beavers build dams and make ponds, they create wetland habitats for countless bugs, amphibians, fish, birds and plants, as well as slowing the flow of water and distributing it over broad areas. The consequences of their decline rippled across the land

Wonderful !

I always give this exact same argument when the topic is about extinction and how a single species could effect a whole eco system.

Thanks for posting