How Yellowstone wolves got their own Ancestry.com page
Wildlife ecologist Jim Halfpenny was standing by the stone arch at the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park on January 12, 1995, when horse trailers eased through carrying the first wild gray wolves to enter the park in about 60 years. Delivered from Canada, these wolves were the beginning of a historic attempt to complete and restore the park’s ecosystem by reintroducing a species wiped out decades before (SN: 3/17/19). He remembers that the schoolchildren who had gathered were disappointed to see only trailers, with not even a glimpse of fur. However, Halfpenny and the other elated adults “were up there howling our heads off,” he says. Not everyone in the region was pro-wolf, though. Seven of the 41 genetic founders of Yellowstone’s Canis lupus population introduced that year and the next ended up being shot illegally. Deep cultural memory entangles wolves and wilderness in all their terror and majesty. In Europe’s bouts...