How Wolves Can Alter Rivers

[Guest]

Trophic cascade at it's finest.  It is amazing the effects that a top level predator can have on an ecosystem. This video illustrates how introduction of top level predator helped populations of many species, and actually stopped erosion and river meander!
 
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q#t=0

 

[ness]

Yeah, but when that Yellowstone Caldera pops, it's gonna be a moot point

Seriously -- that was really interesting.

[Buzz]

Very interesting!!

[Daryk Campbell Sr]

I like it.

[Terrierman]

I saw that on another website. Pretty amazing what man can do to screw things up without even really trying. We have this really big blind spot when it comes to that law of unintended consequences.

[ness]

We need some wolves in the park by my house. Deer everywhere.

[jdmidwest]

They can alter the Olympics too.

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/02/20/video-shows-wolf-walking-through-sochi-athletes-village

[Greasy B]

I fished Lamar valley In the northern part of the park before and just as the wolves were introduced. It was wide open, shallow with the banks beat down from the heavy grazing. I wonder if it has changed and the fishing improved. At the time we always did better up or downstream from the meadow.

[tanvat]

Thank for sharing; interesting stuff. There is a parallel in Yellowstone that is, unfortunately, sort of the opposite of re-introducing a native predator. When I first started fishing Yellowstone Lake and the river below the lake around 1995, the fishing in both was still really good - big native cutts and LOTS of them. When some idiot introdued non-native lake trout and the lakers became established, the cutthroat population crashed. Wilderness tributaries that once hosted tens of thousands of spawning fish in June and which provided literally tons of grizzly food were reduced to just a few hundred or fewer spawners. As a result, it appears that bears in southern Yellowstone have compensated for the loss of the cutthroats with elk calves. The upper Yellowstone (Thorofare) where a lot of the spawners went is also a key calving area for the Jackson Hole elk and some recent studies indicated the grizzlies are hitting them pretty hard; the likely reason being to compensate for the loss of trout. If only we could resist the urge to tinker around with what took eons to evolve.

Greasy, re the Lamar, it is still pretty open - doesn't seem to me that it has changed much in the last 20 years. Bison are abundant there and wolves seem to key more on elk rather than bison. The buffs keep the Lamar pretty open. That said, I only get up to the Lamar about one day every other year so I don't spend enough time up there to be a real reliable source. I think I'll be going through the Lamar this summer so I'll make a point to do some much needed fishing reasearch to get to the bottom of it.

[LarrySTL]

That was fascinating. Thank you !