Wolves help the ecosystem to thrive by helping to control the population
of large animals, such as elk.
By keeping the elk population in normal range, it allows other important
deficiencies to be corrected, such as the depletion of aspens, willows,
and cottonwoods that were disappearing due to overgrazing.
This created a trickle-down efffect: where the vegetation returned to
normal, animals such as beavers started to thrive again, and built
wetlands that attract frogs, swans and sandhill cranes.
Not only are they necessary to the ecoysytem, they are also a very large
family unit. The alpha male wolf and the beta female wolf will produce
offspring that the entire family helps to raise, even the adopted pack
members who are not blood relatives. Losing one member of the pack can be
very dificult for all.
