Who Runs the Park?
This is any person or group with a vested interest in how wolves are managed in Yellowstone
Who are stakeholders?
This is a chain reaction in an ecosystem caused by changes to a single species.
What is a trophic cascade?
This U.S. law protects species at risk of extinction.
What is the Endangered Species Act?
This describes when a change to one species leads to changes in other species.
What is a cause-and-effect relationship in an ecosystem?
This is why food could not be left in cabins at Yellowstone.
What is the risk of animals entering cabins to eat it?
This group often opposes wolf reintroduction due to concerns about livestock losses.
Who are ranchers?
This species’ behavior changed first after wolves were reintroduced.
What are elk?
This is why gray wolves were originally listed under that law.
Why were wolves nearly extinct?
This describes what happens when removing or adding one species changes many others.
What is a ripple effect?
These two people were our Yellowstone field educators.
Who are Sam Archibald and Kyle Wonders?
These perspectives add cultural, historical, and ecological values to wolf management debates.
Who are Indigenous communities?
This happened to willows and aspens after elk changed their grazing behavior.
What is vegetation recovery?
This major event occurred in Yellowstone in 1995–1996.
What was the reintroduction of wolves?
This explains why wolves affected plants even though wolves do not eat plants.
What is changes in elk behavior and grazing?
This caused an emergency roadside bathroom stop involving Daniel.
What is drinking a gallon of egg nog?
This is why wolf management authority frequently shifts between federal and state governments.
What are legal rulings and disagreements over management control?
These are two species, besides elk, affected by the return of wolves.
What are beavers and coyotes? (or bears, scavengers, etc.)
This term describes removing a species from federal protection.
What is delisting?
This idea explains why we studied wolves, elk, plants, rivers, and people together instead of separately.
What is looking at the whole system instead of one part?
This was May’s chosen “currency” for retrieving Knox’s forgotten items.
What is a candy bar?
This explains why wolf management is more than a biological issue.
What is a policy problem involving law, economics, culture, and values?
This type of thinking helps explain why Yellowstone cannot be understood through simple cause-and-effect.
What is systems thinking?
This is why wolf delisting has been challenged in court multiple times.
What is human conflict? (Including recovery and habitat range)
This way of thinking focuses on relationships, patterns, and interactions rather than single causes.
What is systems thinking?
This signaled that things were about to get serious on the trip.
(HINT: May related)
What is May taking out the “cool May” tag?