Heiko tells
Summer Times that despite being a large and wild park, it had lost its wolf population due to culling in the early 20
th century.
“Since then they have been missing and that has led to some drastic changes in the ecosystem.”
He says the nearby Yellowstone National Park was first to re-introduce wolves in the 1990s and they found that it dispersed the elk population – their prey – and had a major benefit to the ecosystem.
Introducing wolves to Grand Teton National Park also provided another interesting element to study.
“We were more interested in how the return of the wolf would affect another apex predator in the system, and that’s the puma. That was the focus of our study, trying to understand why we saw threefold decreases in the puma population when wolves naturally recolonised the Grand Teton National Park.”