60 Minutes Rewind It's safe to say that wolves have an image problem. Since ancient times, they've been portrayed in fables and legends and the Bible as fearsome, voracious predators. The story of the big bad wolf may be the most memorable and frightening of all the fairy tales told by the Brothers Grimm. That Grimm reputation actually produced a very real result in America in the early 20th century. Wolves were wiped off the landscape, trapped, poisoned, and hunted until there was not a single one left in the American West.
When the National Park Service decided to bring wolves back to Yellowstone Park in the 1990s, it followed a bitter debate between wildlife groups who wanted them restored and ranchers who most definitely didn't. Two decades later, the wolves of Yellowstone still stir strong emotions. But they've also had an impact that almost no one saw coming. In the dead of winter, Yellowstone Park is a beautiful but forbidding place.
Howling wind, sub-zero temperatures, six feet of snow. Just finding enough food to survive is a profound struggle for every animal. Waterfowl, bison, elk, foxes.
They all have to work for every morsel. Yellowstone was the world's first national park, founded in 1872, and it remains one of the most visited. Millions of people come here every summer, but they used to pretty much leave it to the wildlife in the winter.
until the wolves came back. Oh, they're behind the tree. Now, reports of a wolf sighting can produce a traffic jam along the 150-mile stretch of road the Park Service keeps open in the winter. Oh, we got a wolf bus moving. Visitors with spotting scopes gather in absolutely frigid weather for a momentary, long-distance view.
Bill, these folks came from Germany to see wolves. How about that? Doug Smith runs the Yellowstone Wolf Research Program for the Park Service.
And no one predicted this would happen. Actually, you know, we... The appeal of coming in to see the wolves? Yes, and it truly has been amazing.
and hundreds of thousands of people a year. we estimate, come here just to see wolves. Wolf tourism pumps $35 million a year into the local economy, much of it spent in the winter, which is prime wolf-watching time.
We've seen wolves all three days that we've been out. Glenn Mai is a retired FBI agent. from Arlington, Virginia. Kathy Lombard is a retired cop from New Hampshire.
They both paid an outfitter thousands of dollars to take them wolf watching. So what is it about wolves that bring you all the way out here? here from New Hampshire to sit out here and just hope for the chance to see them.
They've been able to bring wolves back into Yellowstone and they've thrived. So that's just an awesome thing to see. It was January 12, 1995, when the first gray wolves captured in Canada were carried into Yellowstone Park. It drew both national attention and fierce opposition.
So much that armed guards were posted to protect those wolves. So the first wolves released into Yellowstone Park were released right back here in this thicket? Yes. So a total of 41 over three years.
How many are in the park now? We've got 96 in 10 packs, and it's been roughly 100 wolves the last 10 years. Very stable. Those 10 packs of about 10 wolves each are without a doubt the most closely observed and studied wolves on Earth.
Our goal is to keep touch with each pack. That's our goal. They do that by trying to attach radio collars to at least two wolves in each of the park's packs.
So you fly out in the airplane, find wolves in the open. That airplane radios a waiting helicopter on the ground. That helicopter flies out with a gunner in the back seat. That gunner is almost always Smith himself.
And you fly up alongside that wolf and you shoot a tranquilizing dart into it. Five minutes it goes down. We process the wolves. We take blood.
We measure them. We look at their health and we attach a radio collar and then we follow them for their life hopefully. That life, by the way, typically lasts about five years.
Yellowstone wolves are fierce and territorial. The leading cause of death is attacks from other wolves. And their look is uncontrollable. That look says, I ain't going to conform to your rules, and I'll die before I do, and that's powerful.
That is a location of a wolf. Data from the radio callers has helped Smith's team to learn volumes about wolf behavior. Let me see where the boulder is by itself.
It also helps all those wolf watchers find them. Park Service employee Rick McIntyre is out every day listening for signals. So that is from a black male wolf, 1107. And then spreading the word.
Would you like to see a gray wolf? I would love to. Okay, there you go. So it's a little bit right of center. Oh, yeah.
Oh, look, here comes the whole pack. Wow. So see if you can count them all. There would be two grays and six blacks.
Four, five, six black ones and the white one that went by. And there should be a second gray. How about that? We had spotted the Junction Butte pack along a ridgeline about two miles away. Like most packs, it's led by an alpha male and an alpha female, the only two wolves in a pack who mate with each other.
The gray alpha female is still leading to the right. Oh, yeah. And you see how the ones behind her are playing.
Uh-huh. She's determined to lead them to the west. They're running along the top.
Right along the ridge. Yeah. That's magnificent.
We can see these wolves from the ground, and it's been a sensation. So we've learned a lot about pack dynamics and personalities and how social they are. What do you mean?
Describe that for me. They want to be together. They're a pack animal.
So the power of the wolf is the pack. Nowhere is that power more evident than when a wolf pack is on the hunt for elk, its favorite prey. They work together because they have to.
Your average wolf weighs 100 pounds or so, but your average prey animal is much bigger. A bull elk is 750 pounds. A cowlick is 500. So how's a roughly 100 to 120 pound animal going to take that down? They do it, Doug Smith says, both by coordinating their attack and by zeroing in on vulnerable prey. They're going to take the weak.
So they're making their living off of calf elk, old elk, injured elk. The story will continue after this. Without wolves, there was an overpopulation of elk in Yellowstone.
As wolves have cut the size of those herds, there's been an unexpected side effect. Plants that elk feed on have made a comeback, which has in turn produced benefits for other species. All the little trees have come back since wolf recovery. This gully filled with shrubs has all come back since wolf recovery. And the wolves are a factor in all of that.
Very simply put, wolves eat elk, elk eat this. When the elk get reduced, they eat less. So beavers and songbirds can respond to the growth in that vegetation.
Doug Smith is quick to say that it's not as simple as he just made it sound. But that hasn't stopped some environmentalists from declaring wolves the saviors of Yellowstone's ecology. There's some people who will try to convince you that wolves could probably Solve Mideast peace and world hunger.
Randy Newberg is a Montana hunter who hosts a TV show and podcast for hunters. He remembers how emotional the debate over reintroduction was between wolf haters and wolf lovers. Wolves are wolves.
They aren't the big bad wolf and they don't have a rainbow shooting out their ass like everyone would think they do. There's something romantic about a wolf, right? unless you've seen it chewing on a live cow. Eric Costa's family has been raising cattle and sheep on this Montana ranch for 100 years. He says he was worried from the moment the first wolves were brought back to Yellowstone, which is about 100 miles to the south.
You know, they weren't going to stay in the park. They're a wild animal. They'd go where they want to go.
I'm sure you knew it was only a matter of time before they were going to get here. Oh, yes. the There was no doubt. And there was a set of tracks.
Eric Costa knew that wolves would follow migrating elk out of Yellowstone and onto his ranch, and that they'd attack his livestock if given the chance. He started hiring range riders to watch over his cattle, and he bought guard dogs to help keep wolves away from his sheep. Live sheep pay for things, live cattle pay for things, dead ones don't. His defensive measures have kept wolves away from his livestock, But neighboring ranchers have lost more than a hundred.
both cattle and sheep to wolves. The thing that's never monitored when I talk to these people is the lost nights of sleep, the nervousness. I saw a wolf track on my place today, or I actually saw a wolf. Wolves are around.
You can't measure or compensate for that. Are wolf attacks on livestock a serious problem? No.
It's rare that it happens. But if it's happening to you, it's a serious problem. It was that fear of wolf attacks that drove ranchers and settlers to eradicate them in the early 20th century.
After the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, wolves were among the first to be listed, and a campaign began to restore them to Yellowstone Park. After that happened in the 90s, wolves quickly spread out of Yellowstone and into neighboring states. So many that there are now nearly 2,000 in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. After a long and bitter legal battle, those states finally won the authority to manage and sometimes kill wolves outside the national park.
Has this management of the wolves helped to lessen some of those passions, to calm some of those emotions? I think so. So to have wolves...
You have to kill the wolves. In some situations, yes. The first situation is cut and dried.
Any wolves that attack livestock are immediately killed themselves. I think that's helped a lot, at least with the ranching community. People feel better if they're not powerless to deal with something.
And then wolves are hunted. There's a hunting season on wolves. All three states have them. So having wolves be hunted.
has probably increased people's willingness to share the landscape with them. Looks like there's at least two of them. Randy Newberg is living proof of that. He filmed a wolf hunt a few years ago for his TV show.
It took him 11 days and 100 miles of trudging and tracking through the snow. You went out looking for a wolf and saw how smart they are, how cunning they are, how athletic they are. Yeah. If you want to increase your respect for wolves, go and chase them out on their landscape.
Hunters and ranchers and avid wolf watchers rarely see eye to eye, but they now agree on at least one thing. We've got a gray. Wolves are back in Yellowstone for good. Oh my God, yes. People love this.
You know, we live in an artificial world. It's stores and cars and roads and buildings. Wolves are real.
And people crave it. They love it. We almost have this thirst for something real now.