Air Date: Week of November 22, 2019

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

The last wolf in Yellowstone National Park was killed in 1926, and for decades afterwards, there was silence where once there were otherworldly howls. Now their songs are back, twenty-five years on from their reintroduction, and Jennifer Jarrett brings us this audio postcard from Yellowstone’s wolves.

Transcript

CURWOOD: As winter settles in we head to Yellowstone National Park with an audio postcard produced by Jennifer Jarret.

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 they 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.

[SILENCE]

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]

 

Links

How Wolves Change Rivers