Experts say that plans of eliminating the negative effects that the elk population is having on aspen trees by reintroducing wolves are failing in the Yellowstone National Park. The gray wolves have again be allowed to repopulated the landscape, as experts expected this would ensure the elk population is kept under control. However, this doesn't appear to be happening.
Experts say that, despite being hunted down mercilessly, elks are not renouncing their destructive habits, and add that the animals continue to destroy the sensitive trees.
The aspen cannot regenerate in time, and are therefore in grave danger. The number of wolves is already high, and so ecosystem specialists are at a loss about what to do next.
“This study not only confirms that elk are responsible for the decline of aspen in Yellowstone beginning in the 1890s, but also that none of the aspen groves studied after wolf restoration appear to be regenerating, even in areas risky to elk,” explains expert Matthew Kauffman.
He is a research scientist at the US Geological Survey (USGS), and also a member of the team that conducted the recent investigation,
OurAmazingPlanet reports.
“A landscape-level aspen recovery is likely only to occur if wolves, in combination with other predators and climate factors, further reduce the elk population,” Kauffman reveals further.
Previous studies had demonstrated that the wolves are effective in keeping elk numbers down, but the new data show the exact opposite of that.
Since the wolves were reintroduced in the habitat, elk populations have declined by 40 percent, but that level is apparently not enough to guarantee the survival and recovery of aspen trees.
Full details of the discovery are published in Kauffman and his team in the latest issue of the esteemed scientific journal Ecology,
“This work is consistent with much of what researchers have learned from studying wolves and elk in Yellowstone,” the expert says.
“Elk certainly respond behaviorally to the predation risk posed by wolves, but those small alterations to feeding and moving across the landscape don't seem to add up to long-term benefits for aspen growing in areas risky to elk,” he concludes.
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