Photo by Jeff Vanuga
According to state and federal scientists, the population of a major elk herd that migrates between Yellowstone National Park and Montana is down by 10 percent from last year’s count (in 2011 the herd saw a 24% drop). There are now, roughly, 4,174 elk in the herd. Experts attribute the drop in population to the cumulative effects of predator attacks, a difficult winter, and hunters.
The herd’s population peaked in 1992, when an estimated 20,000 elk roamed the park. That was just a few years before park officials reintroduced wolves to the area. Since the wolves’ return—they had been absent for decades—elk population levels have returned to historic averages.
However, Yellowstone biologist Doug Smith says that the wolves cannot be blamed entirely for the decline of the elk herd. The wolves’ populations have been decreasing as well, from 94 in 2007 down to 38 last year. Smith blames the elements: “This was one of the hardest winters we’ve had in decades,” he told the Associated Press (via TheRepublic.com). “We’ve got a leaner, meaner elk herd.”
Montana Wildlife officials will instate a new permit system as a way to dissuade hunters from killing members of the Northern Yellowstone herd. There will be unlimited numbers of the $9 permits, but experts expect the new requirement to be a deterrent.
I loved my visit to Yellowstone. I think all the animals I saw were magnificient.
My favorite Yellowstone campground was Mammoth because an elk herd came through every morning and evening and even hung around one afternoon. Got some great photos! Loved it.
We spent a month in Yellowstone a few years ago..my girls, (8 years old at the time), still talk about those days. We are returning this Summer. We love the Elk, Wolves, Bears, and Bison…I sure hope the wolf packs and elk herds don’t continue to decline in size. They are my girls favorites and we need them around.
I live in NW Montana and spend approx 60 days a year in the field so I can tell you what is happening !Of coarse wolf numbers are decreasing because they have eaten themselves out of house and home !Between wolves,grizzlies,blackbears,mountain lions and coyotes deer,elk and moose stand little chance of surviving especially calves and fawns.What officials are not telling you is that fawn and calf survival rates are at almost zero.So herds numbers will continue to drop and so will wolf numbers in response to less available food.I have seen wolves kill 10 deer in one day in just a half sqaure mile it amazing how effective they are.I hope your family has a great time in Yellowstone but I can promise you that you will not see the amount of animals you have seen in the past they simply are not there.
I am sure the park service will flag this comment and remove it but We have to try and get the truth out there any way we can.please averyone go to saveelk.com to see the other side of the story but be forewarned it is very graphic and upseting.
I live in Absarokee, MT which is about 40 miles north of Yellowstone Park. This past Friday a herd of Elk arrived about 10 miles outside of town. The herd numbers between 300-500 animals.
They are currently located between Fishtail, MT and the Stillwater Mining Company property. I’ve been told they are passing through to their calving grounds a few more miles north of this location.
While there are Wolves and mountain lions in the area, so far they have not driven this herd out of the valley where they are feeding.
The calving ground is located on Mine property where hunting is NOT allowed so, hopefully they will be undisturbed and produce many calves.
Gee, I sure hope the wolves pay strict attention to the “no hunting” on the land to which the elk are going to calve. Then perhaps a few calves might survive! Sincerely hope bear and cougar can read the No hunting signs too,
Surely all of the intelligent people reading this comment section realize that humans are not EVER allowed to hunt elk ANYWHERE in the spring! The hunting season for human hunters takes place in the FALL! No people
hunt big game animals in the U.S. in the spring, during calving (that means giving birth, to those obvious big city ignoramuses). Wow, what a brilliant idea! Let’s make all of Yellowstone/Grand Teton National Parks “no hunting” zones, so the poor elk won’t be shot by some hunter, right at the moment of giving birth!
Jack your my kind of man. I have hunted near gardiner for nearly 10 years until last. The wolf population has devistated the herd, and now the season there has been turned to draw only and no late tags. I am sitting in gardiner now after hiking thru several parts of yellowstone with the only elk being seen was a dozen at mamouth. What all the tree huggers in the world dont understand is that hunters are the number one conservationists. I think we all would gladly stop hunting for a year or two if it would help. We want them here as much as PETA and spend more protecting their habitat than anyone.
The wolves are a part of ecosystem and. only kill the sick or weak keeping the herd healthy and also keeping plant life going and other forms of life like birds etc. greedy ranchers and cruel hunters are the cause of this. mankind will die out too due to all this.those people need to be shot and then hung at sunrise . no need to hunt when you cahn now buy all you need. many of us are boycotting hunters and ranchers and beef and all that come from states hunting wolves
Hey Tsali,
That sounds like a wonderful idea stop eating everything that a Ranchers produces for you.. you will starve to death and then there will be one less idiot/ tree hugger in this world..Wolves are killing the population of wild game and then we they get done killing the wild game they will start on the income that ranchers have, so you either start taking care of the wolves population now or the farmer/ ranchers that feed this country will.. We just returned from a visit from Yellowstone and to be flat honest I was really dissappointed in the amount of animals that I saw, we had to go to a freaking campsite to see Elk, when there use to be 20,000 roaming around. The largest population of elk that we saw was in Mammoth and that was still a small herd look at the stats and see the difference from when they introduced that wovles to now- (let me clue you in there is huge difference). So take your ignorant ideas/ opinion and try to shove them down someone elses thoart.. Let us all know how boycotting the people that put food in your grocery store goes.. Hope your happy being a vegan!
Wolves help. keep herds healthy by taking the weak and sick and prevent overlaying thus allowing other species to continue. did you also know our dogs are wolves?
So what do you classify a calf that is being pulled out of the cow while it is being born.. Sick or weak? How about a cow that is killed while giving birth.. Sick or weak? Wolves just do not take down the sick or the weak they gang up and take down a healthy animal, and sometimes they just do this for fun and not even eat the animal. This is just not happening to Elk, look at the stats for buffalo, antelope, and deer. I am not denying that there was a huge amount of animals in the park but I think that they could have done something different to bring the numbers down. The one huge problem I see with the wolves is that one female wolf can produce 5-11 pups a year,( I have read in another article on this site that in 2000 three female wolves produced 11 pups and the all survived) well do the math in that if they all survive there is a going to be a huge population of predators and a small population of wild game. I don’t think that the wolves are going to pay attention as to where the boundaries of the park is and stay in it, Once they run out of food in the park they are going to venture out and start killing other game/ cattle and that entails loss of revenue to the States that hand out hunting permits and also loss of income for the cattle producers. I am not saying that wolves are terrible thing but they need to be controlled just like the other wild game populations, and yes I do know that dogs are descended from wolves.
We just visited Yellowstone in early October 2012. The park has very nice scenery from geysers to waterfalls. Many short trees in previously burned areas but some burned areas have not recovered at all. Vast open areas are all almost animal free. We saw a few Bison and Elk after four days in the park. We covered the entire park in the four days. We did not see any deer, wolves or bears. I see more animals near my home in the south Denver area than I did at Yellowstone. As we left through Cody, I talked to some people that had been to the park 6 times in 2012 and they confirmed that they also had seen very few animals all year. Park management is a disaster. Poor management has almost reduced the animal population to 10% of what it once was without any human hunting in the park.
Yellowstone claims the fire killed very few animals. This may have been initially true concerning direct deaths from fire but it has devastated the population since. Wolves have played a big part too. I have seen this in other areas too. The Forest Service repopulates an area with bighorn sheep and predators kill all of them in less than a year. This may be the natural cycle of life but it is very poor management if you want to build up and protect an animal population in a certain area like Yellowstone. We were disappointed and do not plan to go back to Yellowstone.
Brent
Like Brent, my family also spent a few days in Yellowstone in October 2012. We saw only one small group of elk. There were eight in all, one bull, 6 adult females, and only one calve. It struck me as strange that there was only one calve among six cows. Near my home in Colorado, the doe that I see usually have fawns two times out of three. We did see a reasonably large herd of buffalo, but that was it for wildlife. The only moose we saw was about a mile outside Jackson Wy. We saw none in the park or in Teton park. The one group of elk that we saw were hiding in the trees. We passed about 40 or 50 open meadows with lush grasses. Many had streams running through them. And there was not an ungulate to be found in any of them. I find it a strange idea that elk could be overgrazing these areas when there were no elk in them at all.
I hear people say that the wolves also feed other wildlife with their elk kills. This strikes me as strange logic. All elk die eventually. And as such they all feed the predators eventually. By killing elk at greater than their replacement level, the wolves may feed the other predators at a higher rate for a while, but in the long run, less elk will mean less elk corpses for the entire predator system. The four thousand elk of north yellowstone that are there today cannot feed the same number of predators that the nineteen thousand elk could that lived there before wolf reintroduction. On top of that, the stress caused by the wolves is causing the elk to have less calves. So, again, there will be less elk meals for the predators in the future. With wolves, as long as there is food they will continue to have their large litters. Then they will decimate their food source and starve. And so will all the other predators that depend on the same food source.
Like Brent, I regard Yellowstone as being mismanaged. Here we are suppose to have a pristeen park; an ecologists dream; but I see more wildlife on my evening bike rides up the canyon near my Colorado home than I saw in Yellowstone. I will also not be going back.
I think the key phrase here is “returned to historic averages”.
So… turns out most hunters don’t stand much of a chance without a massivly inflated population of prey animals.