Air Date: Week of May 8, 2015

A pack of gray wolves howling in their habitat (Photo: F.Svehla, Flickr CC BY 2.0)

For years, wolves were missing from Yellowstone National Park, leaving an eerie silence in the air. But now that the wolf population is recovering, the Park’s acoustic landscape is reviving. Reporter-in-Residence Jennifer Jerrett’s audio postcard brings us a harmonious chorus of howling wolves.

Transcript

CURWOOD: It’s Living on Earth. I’m Steve Curwood. A while back Jennifer Jerrett, reporter-in-residence at Yellowstone National Park, sent us this evocative audio postcard.

MCINTYRE: I’m Rick McIntyre. I work for the park service in Yellowstone National Park, and my title is Biological Technician.

[WOLVES HOWLING]

MCINTYRE: One of things that I often think about when we hear wolves howling is...I’m sure you know the story...that it was the last of the original Yellowstone wolves that were killed in 1926 about a half a mile from where we’re standing. And so for any visitor that had come to Yellowstone from 1926 to 1995 when wolves were brought back and re-introduced and re-established...I’m sure they had a great experience visiting the world’s first national park and would have seen a lot of great stuff, but there’s one thing they missed out on. There would have been an unnatural silence here. But luckily we realized what a big mistake that was and figured out how to rectify it. So we’re experiencing that right now. That silence is over.

[WOLVES HOWLING]

CURWOOD: That's biologist Rick McIntyre...and friends. Reporter Jennifer Jerrett brought us that audio postcard from Yellowstone National Park.

[WOLVES HOWLING]

 

Links

How Wolves Change Rivers