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I can see the logic. The problem is the logic that 100 wolves eating 2000 elk per year in an area that winters around 5000 elk being a huge factor gets minimized, when every other possible factor gets over stated.

Yes, lakers, whitebark pine nuts and drought are factors. Wolves eating 5 elk a day in the park, 365 days a year, adds up pretty fast.

ElkNut1

I take it Lake trout are not native to the Yellowstone ecosystem?

That PHD who wrote the article should use spell check as well.

Figured they would blame global warming or some other reason. I will watch the rest tonight.

He should be embarrassed. That article was very poorly written, and that poor writing for a calls into question everything he said.

For example: "Whitebark Pine Blister Rust" - No such thing, it's white pine blister rust.

Whirling disease most likely spread by birds, rarely humans. I blame the pelicans.

Lake Trout, probably a bucket biologist, or the historic hatchery at Yellowstone Lake, and I'll agree they need wiped out. Let's go fishing.

I am sure the lake trout are hurting the balance of things but without the predator problems it would simply be the wrong fish for Yellowstone.

Where can I get a big fat grant to study the devastation done by the dandelion:)

I am sure the lake trout are hurting the balance of things but without the predator problems it would simply be the wrong fish for Yellowstone.

Where can I get a big fat grant to study the devastation done by the dandelion:)

My reps agreed and when I suggested that the entire house and senate should hold session at the park to see the devastation first hand, they agreed! They took me up on the idea of starting the tour at the geysers and getting off the boardwalks to get a really good firsthand look!!!

Go figure. I'm sure he did this out of pure scientific curiosity. The fish did it!

LMAO

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ralph Maughan Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides

Well, if Obama could get himself elected POTUS twice based on this skill set, why would it be a stretch for this prof to come up with a badly written paper using the same training?

I know the wolf gets blamed for everything evil in the wilds. The wolf is part of a complex equation. No denying they have an impact in some areas.

Look at the Bitteroot Study. Folks were assuming the catastrophic elk numbers in 270 were due to the wolf. Study showed mountain lions were killing a disproportionate amount of elk. Montana now had the data to justify increased lion take.

Catch a lake trout, save an elk! Well the few elk that are left in Gardner aren't so sure.

If they make it sound good and can make money off of the theory it doesnt necessarily mean it is true.

I believe it is on the Smithsonian Channel. I have Dish Network and I think it is channel 367...

Ok, fine. Let's kill some grizz then.

Here is a novel concept - in the internet age, it is relatively easy to find the original source. At least then you might be criticizing something legitimate.

(Since I doubt that shame will make you look up the link, I have included it here. If you really want to learn something, you can drill down to the 49 studies that the author referenced.)

From the above-mentioned study:

"Our findings are also relevant to the wolf management plans of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, which generally allow the flexibility to increase wolf harvests in areas of declining elk productivity and abundance. Some of the steepest elk recruitment declines in these states have occurred in the GYE, coincident with wolf reintroduction. However, complex patterns of 40–140 km elk migrations that are unique to the GYE, compounded by high rates of bear predation inside YNP's boundaries, suggest that elk calf recruitment may not be as sensitive to wolf removal on some outlying winter ranges as to the number of grizzly bears and the availability of alternative grizzly bear foods on elk summer ranges in and around YNP."

I originally supported the intro as proposed. 100 wolves in each of the three states. That would be around 6000 elk a year to feed them. Then after it launched the number jumped dramatically, tons of misinformation was spewed, bad rulings were made, management was delayed and sound wildlife management suffered.

Since we can hunt them some now, many are taking a position that the end justified the means. I'm not as quick to forgive and won't ever forget.

I get why anyone would be skeptical.

thanks for posting that. folks shouldn't be so quick to mock or dismiss.

the NYE elk herd calves in areas with very high grizzly bear numbers (unhuntable because it's national park)d. it's certainly not illogical to see that a loss of a major food source could have this impact.

it matters a lot. if grizzly bears are the primary reason the elk herds are remaining at the levels they are, it would make little sense to focus a lot of resources on wolf populations if that isn't the primary culprit.

like z pointed out above, the obvious answer isn't always the right one.

And there never will be hunting on 2 million acres (YNP) in the core of the wolf area. Some aren't happy with WY's management plan but I think it made perfect sense considering they can't do anything in YNP and there's really no danger of over hunting wolves. If they dropped to the Federal population limit, they would automatically be relisted. Wyoming's plan had limits higher than that as a fail safe.

I'm certainly not saying that wolves don't have anything to do with the equation, but to suggest that bears and a major loss of protein source isn't significant is folly.

Who said that grizzlies didn't eat elk? If you are going to argue a point, somebody has to have made that point (besides yourself).

I'm not fond of lake trout but in my home state the state DNR along with the fed dept of fish and wildlife have gone to great lengths to protect them.

Personally I don't care to eat them they taste like crap.

We don't have cut throats but the other trout species we have, rainbows, browns and brookies I love to eat.

So I suppose I can completely understand why grizzlies prefer the cut throats.

no way are the bears killing the elk - no way I believe that

the decline happened exactly the same time wolves started to repopulate Yellowstone

I know that is hard for some turd brains to admit or understand but, I believe it to be fact.

Yep, I'm not going to be a smart guy anymore. I'll just say that science is a field that chases it's tail in a lot of cases. In it's flaws of hypothesis's, you can somewhat prove about any idea as being relevant. This article being an example. I can see these guys right now debating their findings and putting their reasons as to why. It is simple. MORE wolves equal less elk. no need to study the effect that lake trout are having on the elk herd as it is such a small influence if there is any influence at all.

God Bless

Also, wolves may do a lot of killing too and then griz steal the kill. So you would have to count that as a wolf effect, not a griz kill (or lake trout effect). I think there is a lot of possibly, potentially, maybe, quotes in that study. But the authors make a pretty compelling case for sure. Like you said WV, if you really want, you can make your results say whatever you want if you try hard enough. There are similar "studies" that try to defray blame for moose declines in Minnesota. They do moose mortality studies and find significant wolf predation, but try there darndest to place blame elsewhere.

I am not sure my turd brain can comprehend that statement. Are you saying that 1 wolf eats 1 elk. 2 eat 4, 3 eat 9, 4 eat 16, n eat n**2? One of my math classes had us spending 2 weeks studying predator/prey relationships and writing differential equations to model them (with only the 2 variables). Granted, I wasn't a scientist yet, but nowhere in there was this scientifically proven exponential rate mentioned. Seems to be very linear to me.

"So, I'm going to propose a hypothesis that I think is pretty much fact to anyone that doesn't have a turd for a brain. Less Wolves equal more elk!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Yes. No one has argued anything to disagree with that. Certainly the authors of the paper never said that wolves don't eat elk. As they mentioned in the quote I put above, in Yellowstone, you will get less benefit from the same amount of wolves killed than elsewhere. This is because the grizzlies were found to be killing a higher percentage of elk calves than in the past. Why? Well, one of the reasons found is there are 90% less cutthroat trout in the rivers than in the past. Why? Much higher numbers of lake trout out-compete the native trout.

"It is simple. MORE wolves equal less elk. no need to study the effect that lake trout are having on the elk herd as it is such a small influence if there is any influence at all."

Rarely in nature are population dynamics simple. Only in internet forums. Read the papers - grizzlies doubling the number of elk calves eaten in the spring hardly counts as a small or non-existent influence.

I chuckle a bit every time I hear the phrase POLITICAL "SCIENCE"! ;-)

Seems to me all you have to do is look at this author's "degrees" and assume he has a bias!

Is it "a" reason? Maybe. Is it "the" reason. No. Fewer elk have fewer calves. Each one the bears take becomes that much more important when the numbers are low to start with. The herd numbers were put in the tank by the wolves. Not Lake Trout.

There may be some Lake Trout effect and as an invasive species they are unwelcome in that area when they damage the natural species. Do what you can to get rid of them. But the herds aren't coming back without some serious predator management.... the apex dominant one, and the one that needs it most in that system is the wolf. Hunts and kills 24/7/365. If a bear takes their elk.... they go kill another one...

Bottom line this is stretch.... I'm told butterflies cause hurricanes too.... they have studies that "prove" it.....

Ralph Maghaun was merely paraphrasing the original studies. To my knowledge, he had nothing to do with any of the research.

Edit: He most certainly has a bias, just like many on this site do also.

I fired up my turd brain and read the research paper. They actually did show that grizzly bears had a significant affect on the demographics of the Yellowstone elk herds. Maybe it's not so small of an influence after all?

I think it's pretty safe to say the decline of the Northern Yellowstone elk herd was due to a myriad of factors, some of which were in play prior to wolves being reintroduced. The wolf is certainly part of the equation, but it is also not THE equation.

Sometimes I wonder if some of the armchair scientists who sit at their keyboard and mock some of these studies even objectively read them in the first place.

Read Craig Jourdonnais' study on elk population dynamics in the Bitterroot. It's pretty interesting stuff.

In the mid to late 90's the biologist in Livingston was documenting two things: 1) a rapidly aging cow population in the Northern Yellowstone elk herd, and 2) very low calf recruitment. 1 could very well have been the cause of 2, but regardless, the handwriting was on the wall.

The late Gardiner cow hunt was immensely popular, which very likely prolonged it many more years than it should have been. Hunter harvest is one of the most significant factors affecting population dynamics, along with winter kill.

To be clear, I am not stating high hunter harvest was THE cause, it was simply one of several factors that when all were combined, drastically altered the population of elk in the NY herd.

Couple this with a healthy wolf and grizzly bear population in the park and it's no surprise that things leveled out where they are. I think you also hit a number of other less obvious factors that could add up to create significant affects.

JLS, I didn't read this study. However, I'm aware of other studies showing the effects that all species of bears have on fawn recruitment in all ungulates. They are the leading factor in mortality for the first 3 to 4 weeks. I'm also aware that habitat was the the leading cause of the start of the elk recruitment problem. This alone is the most determining factor in any ungulate or prey population decline.

So, here is my simple reasoning. This study really is researching the means instead of the cause. You can call me an arm chair scientist if that makes you feel better. You can insinuate I'm less qualified to say what I have, versus you stating that you think it is valid. But, then again, I don't have a turd brain either. :^)

God Bless

Great article in support of decreasing wolve and bear numbers, at least until the lake trout is eliminated from the system.

Lake trout in Yellowstone Lake have been an issue for quite some time. No mention was made of other fish species (besides lakers) taking the place of cutts. So, I am wondering how far these "studies" went, and if they only stopped when they found something that was acceptable for them to place blame on? Typically rainbows, browns, etc will take over stream locations formerly and currently inhabited by cutts. I would admit I don't really know anything about the abundance of these fish in Yellowstone Cutt waters, or their breeding activities, but just wondering if it was even a consideration in these "studies".

I didn't see the show but the initial study (and abstracts of linked studies) show that the bear diet since 1998 has shown a decrease in the trout diet:

"Since the late 1980s, the number of cutthroat trout in Yellowstone Lake has declined substantially. On some key tributaries, the number of spawning trout has declined by more than 90 per cent since 1990 (figure 3a) [13]. Over this same period, the number of bear scats and tracks, partially consumed trout remains and grizzly bear visits per week have decreased along active spawning streams [13,19]. By 1997–2000, the estimated proportion of cutthroat trout in grizzly bear diets had dropped by as much as 90 per cent [32]. By 2007–2009, trout consumption had declined another 72 per cent, such that trout appeared only rarely in the diet (figure 3b; [10]). The loss of cutthroat trout has led many biologists to speculate that grizzly bears would seek alternative foods, and potentially suffer demographic consequences [13,19,33]."

And an increase in he ungulate diet:

"In the late 1980s, the first large-scale study of the use of ungulates by grizzly bears estimated that an individual grizzly killed 1.4–5.8 ungulates per year, 13 per cent of which were elk calves [26]. By contrast, more recent studies have estimated that an individual grizzly on Yellowstone's northern range kills 19 calves per year [24]—and within the Yellowstone Lake watershed, seven calves during the month of June (figure 3d; [10]). In parallel with these increases, in the late 1980s ungulate tissue was estimated to comprise 5 per cent of the grizzly diet at peak calving time (figure 4; [14,18,26])—but more recently, above 50 per cent [10]"

And a quote from the '[10]' reference above:

"However, the proportion of meat in the assimilated diet of male grizzly bears decreased over both time frames. The estimated biomass of cutthroat trout consumed by grizzly bears and black bears declined 70% and 95%, respectively, in the decade between 1997–2000 and 2007–2009. Grizzly bears killed an elk calf every 4.3?±?2.7 days and black bears every 8.0?±?4.0 days during June. Elk accounted for 84% of all ungulates consumed by both bear species. Whitebark pine nuts continue to be a primary food source for both grizzly bears and black bears when abundant, but are replaced by false-truffles (Rhizopogon spp.) in the diets of female grizzly bears and black bears when nut crops are minimal. Thus, both grizzly bears and black bears continue to adjust to changing resources, with larger grizzly bears continuing to occupy a more carnivorous niche than the smaller, more herbivorous black bear".

It doesn't sound like they stopped looking once they found a 'button' they could push that would upset bowsite.

Looking at the numbers, the authors report that the estimated total number of additional elk calves killed by bears due to the switch from largely spawning cutthroat diets to elk calves during the coinciding spring spawning/calving season is 231 calves. For pete's sake, there used to be thousands of elk calves coming out of YNP every year! Grizzlies in the Yellowstone Lake watershed could eat elk calves until the cows come home and not dent that population.

The research notes that "recent changes in the productivity and abundance of elk in the GYE are widely viewed as a consequence of recovering numbers of large carnivores". I think BigDan got it right. A few dozen bears chowing down on a few hundred calves in a limited area isn't going to shift populations by the thousands (if at all) that has been observed. Nice try boys and girls, but it's back to your drawing board (and grant$)

Winter kill from wolves, when elk of all age classes are most environmentally stressed and vulnerable to predation, has got to be a more significant factor. But it's nice to blame the evil Lake Trout, and I support efforts to attempt to reduce/eradicate it, not the least reason being I have heard, as one consumer reports above, that they taste like crap.