stone. [23] in 1914, in an effort to protect elk populations, the US Congress appropriated funds to be used for the purposes of В«destroying wolves, prairie dogs, and other animals injurious to agriculture and animal husbandryВ» on public lands. Park Service hunters carried out these orders, and by 1926 they had killed one hundred and thirty six wolves, and wolves were virtually eliminated from Yellowstone. Further exterminations continued until the National Park Service ended the practice in 1935. With the passing of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the wolf was one of the first mammal species listed. After the wolves were extirpated from Yellowstone, the coyote then became the park's top canine predator. However, the coyote is not able to bring down large animals, and the result of this lack of a top predator on these populations was a marked increase in lame and sick megafauna.the 1990s, the Federal government had reversed its views on wolves. In a controversial decision by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (which oversees threatened and endangered species), Mackenzie Valley wolves, imported from Canada, were reintroduced into the park. Reintroduction efforts have been successful with populations remaining relatively stable. A survey conducted in 2005 reported that there were thirteen wolf packs, totaling one hundred and eighteen individuals in Yellowstone and three hundred and twenty six in the entire ecosystem. These park figures were lower than those reported in 2004 but may be attributable to wolf migration to other nearby areas as suggested by the substantial increase in the Montana population during that interval. Almost all the wolves documented were descended from the 66 wolves reintroduced in 1995-1996. The recovery of populations throughout the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho has been so successful that on February twenty seven, 2008 the United States Fish and Wildlife Service removed the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf population from the endangered species list.estimated six hundred grizzly bears live in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with more than half of the population living within Yellowstone. The grizzly is currently listed as a threatened species, however the United States Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that they intend to take it off the endangered species list for the Yellowstone region but will likely keep it listed in areas where it has not yet recovered fully . Opponents of delisting the grizzly are concerned that states might once again allow hunting and that better conservation measures need to be implemented to ensure a sustainable population.figures for elk are in excess of thirty thousand-the largest population of any large mammal species in Yellowstone. The northern herd has decreased enormously since the mid-1990s; this has been attributed to wolf predation and causal effects such as elk using more forested regions to evade predation, consequently making it harder ...
