Reintrodution Of Wolves - Essay Example

Deforestation in the eastern United States was considered one among the several reasons that resulted in wolves' extinction. The other reasons include the over-hunting of ungulate populations like deer and elk, which were the main prey of wolves and lastly the settlers raised livestock for living and due to the fear of depredation they planned to eradicate wolves by poisoning, by trapping and shooting them that resulted in sharp decline in wolves population. In 1914, Congress issued a notice to eradicate all predators from the villages including the wolves.

In 1926, Yellowstone National Park has witnessed the elimination of the last wolf from its premises. The last wolf of Yellowstone National Park was shot in the year 1926 and by 1940s slowly due to over-hunting, habitat loss and system eradication programs that are aimed at top predators like wolves resulted in the elimination of their population from most of the contiguous United States. In 1967 timber wolves subspecies were listed as an endangered species under the Endangered Specie Preservation Act of 1966.

This bolstered in the passage of Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) by which the Secretary of the Interior was forced to list all other species of wolves including the gray wolves and the red wolves as an endangered species. . In 1978, central Idaho, Northwestern Montana and the Yellowstone National Park were identified as the three regions that were suitable for wolves' recovery plan as these areas have habitat characteristics that were suitable to sustain their population. In 1987, the efforts of Northern Rocky Mountain Recovery team resulted in the approval of their plan, stipulated that for the next three consecutive years each of the three should be able to maintain a minimum of 10 breeding pairs so that FWS be able to delist the wolves as an endangered species.

The expected population was approximately 300 wolves.According to the plan recovery should be natural that wolves should be emigrated from the neighboring country Canada. The natural recovery plan was for Idaho and Montana, Yellowstone National Park was chosen for reintroduction by applying the experimental-population authority of 10(j) of the ESA. In the outcome of a failure of planned establishment of two wolf packs in central Idaho within five years, reintroduction should be considered for these areas.

In January 1995, 29 wolves were transported from Canada to the reintroduction areas in the Northern Rocky Mountains. Of the 29 wolves 15 were released into central Idaho and the remaining 14 were released into Yellowstone National Park. Again in January 1996 37 wolves were transported from Canada to the same reintroduction areas in the Northern Rocky Mountains. Of these 20 were released into central Idaho and the remaining 17 were released into Yellowstone National Park. Ten wolf pups were moved to Yellowstone National Park from Northwestern Montana.

The reason for this movement was due to the repeated depredation of livestock by wolves that force the authorities to kill the adults.FWS has successfully reintroduced a