Wild Revival

Over the past 25 years, the gray wolf has recovered—and proved that people and predators can coexist.

- By Michael R. Shea

SHORTLY AFTER nightfall on January 12, 1995, the biologist Doug Smith strapped on snowshoes and hiked to Crystal Creek, in Yellowstone National Park. A day earlier, eight wild gray wolves had been flown from Canada to Great Falls, Montana, then trucked 250 miles to the park. A local school had dismissed early so that children could watch as the predators, kenneled in a trailer, passed under the iconic Roosevelt Arch—becoming the first known wolves to enter the park in the six decades since the species had been eradicated in the West.

The animals were a crucial part of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, an ambitious reintroduction plan nearly 20 years in the making. Smith helped to lead the project. Once he and a handful of park employees reached Crystal Creek, they moved into a position to free the wolves into acclimation pens. “I was a few feet from them,” Smith recalls of the moment the kennels were open. “No bars between us.” At first, though, only one wolf would come out—in stark contrast, in his view, to the man-eaters that reintroduction opponents had made wolves out to be.