There are many endangered animals in our world, but one animal that I personally love is the wolf. Wolves are a very important but remain a very controversial topic all over the continent of North America. Massacre of wolves has been going on ever since colonists came to this continent and possibly before. The massacres only got worse as hundreds and even thousands of wolves were being killed every year. But every year more people join the fight to protect wolves, I myself included.
I have been doing every thing I can to research and protect them since the third grade and the things I have found were atrocious. People taking part in hunting seasons and a new state allowing hunting seasons every year; shooting wolves from helicopters and flying away with their bodies dangling on the back of the plane; farmers shooting wolves on sight whether they killed livestock or not, and also killing them because the wolves killed their unprotected livestock. People also claim that wolves have attacked them while hunting or protecting their livestock. Most people grow up with a fear wolves through stories most of you are very familiar with. But the truth is, wolves aren’t going to blow down our houses when they blow on them, they aren’t going to eat our grandmas, and they are not going to eat the shepherd boy who cries wolf.
Wolves, as crazy as it seems, are deathly afraid of humans and would run away from them as soon as they smelled or heard them. And since wolves have an incredible sense of smell and hearing, they will usually avoid you before you even see them. Wolves can hear sounds up to ten miles away, and their sense of smell is one hundred times better than a human’s.
Wolves have had different effects on human behavior over the years. Many people have been hurt because they tried to protect wolves, and their friends and family have been harmed as well because of their beliefs. I personally have been teased by kids at school who say to me directly, “Hey, I think shooting wolves is the best sport in the world!” or “Hey you know Sarah Palin? She’s my idol, and I hope that I can shoot wolves from helicopters just like her.” Even though I know they don’t mean it, I can’t stand the lack of sensitivity people have. It also shows me how little people care for other people, things; how unwilling people are to learn new things; and the lack of knowledge people have.
Many people don’t seem to care about the fact that wolves are coming closer to extinction. They don’t realize how important wolves are to the well being of this earth. Just like any predator on this earth, they help keep the ecosystem in balance and if you take them away, it affects the land and the other animals that people actually do care about. In 1926, all the wolves in Yellowstone National Park were shot and killed. Now this might sound like a good thing, but it wasn’t. With no wolves to control the population of ungulates (split toed hoofed animals such as elk, deer, moose, caribou and bison), the ungulates kept eating the trees, grass and vegetation.
You see, wolves make sure that the ungulates don’t stay in one place and eat all the vegetation there. If the ungulates don’t stay in one place, not all of the vegetation that they were eating disappears and wolves make sure that this happens. But since there were no wolves, the ungulates stayed in one place, ate all the vegetation, and then moved on to eat more without giving the plants a fighting chance to grow. Because there were no more trees and vegetation, other animals started to leave the park. Beavers left because there was no wood to make dams. Butterflies and insects left because there was no more pollen and food for them, so plants didn’t get pollinated.
The vegetation failed and the once majestic Yellowstone Park looked like an almost barren wasteland. The trees had little leaves on them. The grass that was once the greenest in the world became brown and dry. People came into the park to shoot the ungulates, but the population kept getting bigger. So from 1995 to 1996, the biologists in Yellowstone reintroduced wolves into the park and the eco-system was restored. Now imagine this happening on a larger scale. That’s what we are headed for right now if we don’t protect wolves and other major predators.
It’s very hard to believe that animals like wolves are kind creatures instead of vicious savages, but it’s true, and people have to start realizing this. If we don’t start realizing this, and if we don’t start protecting wolves, then we might lose these magnificent creatures and in turn, we might lose a very important ecosystem.
