continued from page killing some ….

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killing some of the calves of the deer.

“But here’s where it gets really interesting. The wolves changed the behavior of the rivers. They began to meander less. There was less erosion. The channels narrowed. More pools formed. More riffle sections. All of which were great for wildlife habitats.

“The rivers changed in response to the wolves. And the reason was that the regenerating forests stabilized the banks so that they collapsed less often. So, the rivers became more fixed in their course. Similarly, by driving the deer out of some places, and the vegetation recovering on the valley side, there was less soil erosion because the vegetation stabilized that as well.

“The wolves, small in number, transformed not just the ecosystem of the Yellowstone National Park – this huge area of land… but also, its physical geography.”

This story is a moving treatment which makes you realize that we should appreciate nature more, but also that we should give more credence to what the scientists are telling us about global warming. There are a lot of things we conveniently ignore now that may be costly to those we leave behind.