Wildlife in Yellowstone National Park is undergoing dramatic shifts with consequences that are beginning to return the landscape to conditions not seen in nearly a century. In the park’s northeast section, elk have decreased in number in their historic winter range in the Lamar Valley and are now more numerous outside the park.
Aspen recovery is widespread in much of the northern range, but where elk are still numerous, aspen stands are heavily browsed and stunted.
“Without wolves this would not have happened,” says Luke Painter, an instructor at Oregon State University and lead author of three recent papers that describe the results of his fieldwork monitoring vegetation growth patterns in the park. “Wolves caused a fundamental change, but certainly they are interacting with other factors such as bears, climate, fire and human activity.”
Painter teaches in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. He conducted his Ph.D. research with William Ripple in the OSU College of Forestry. (For more on carnivore ecology, see “High Alert,” Terra, spring 2007)
_____________________
See an OSU news release about Luke Painter’s research.
