Why Wolves Are The Unsung Heroes Of Healthy Ecosystems

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May 06, 2016, 12:29pm EDTMay 06, 2016, 12:29pm EDT

What should everyone know about wolves in the wild? originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.

Answer by Oliver Starr, wolf handler and wilds advocate, on Quora:

Wolves are critical to healthy ecosystems – we need wolves more than wolves need us!  Please watch this amazing video that helps put in perspective the role wolves play in restoring a damaging ecosystem back to health.

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Unlike human trophy hunters, wolves take targets of opportunity – the young, the sick, the injured, the invisibly genetically inferior – in so doing they maintain the health of their prey species. Human hunters kill the fittest animals because they can – wolves improve the strength of their prey, humans consistently diminish it.

Wolves are considered both an apex predator and a keystone species. This means they are at the top of the food chain with no natural other animals that prey upon them for food.

Their reputation as dangerous animals or creatures that kill for enjoyment is simply inaccurate. As predators, wolves consume the flesh of other creatures. Unlike humans, their biology dictates a diet that consists almost entirely of meat. Wolves are the largest of all wild canids and they typically require large prey or a very high density of smaller prey to maintain their presence in an area.

Wolves have been known to eat moose, elk, deer, caribou, bison, musk ox, and virtually every other ungulate species that shares their range. Wolves will also eat smaller animals such as beavers, rabbits, squirrels, mice and, unfortunately, sometimes domestic livestock and pets.

Some people claim that wolves “decimate” they populations of the species they prey upon; however the facts do not bear this out. In the United States we’ve been documenting wolf recovery in the Northern Rockies for 25 years. We’ve also been documenting ungulate populations, particularly elk, for even longer.

While it is true that there are a few management units across the whole of the wolf recovery area that do show some reductions in elk numbers, by and large the presence of wolves has resulted in increases in elk populations nearly everywhere they’ve returned.

Wolves form very close social bonds. Wolf “packs” are actually families that typically consist of one or more breeding pairs, siblings of the breeders, and the offspring from one or more previous litters.

Lone wolves –perhaps the worst of all the mischaracterizations and vilifications heaped upon wolves is the idea that “lone wolves” are particularly killers or out to cause harm.

Nothing could be further from the truth! Lone wolves are technically known as dispersers and they’re not looking for trouble, they’re looking for love!

Not all wolves have the makeup to leave their natal group and set off on their own. It’s a tremendously risky undertaking that very often results in the dispersing wolf dying in his or her effort to find a mate and start a family of their own.

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