For millennia, grey wolves prowled North America, living in harmony with the natural world around them. But as the human population grew across the continent, farmers and ranchers, fearing these clever hunters would prey on their livestock, hunted and killed these majestic animals in their thousands. In 1926, a shot rang out over Yellowstone Park, and with it the last of the native grey wolves, who once roamed this spectacular wilderness, was dead.
The consequences of these actions spread much further than anyone had imagined, with elk, no longer fearing a natural predator, overrunning the landscape and leaving it barren, while emboldened coyotes fed on the smaller animals that would once have sustained other predators.
