Call Of The Wild

Reintroducing the wolf to Yellowstone doesn’t just replace a missing link in the park’s food chain, it could also rekindle the wild spark we humans are missing

- Aaron Millar

It’s dawn and freezing in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley, the best place in the world to see wolves in the wild. Snow blankets the hills all around, steam rises from the frozen tundra and, in the distance, I hear the high-pitched cackle of coyotes closing in on a kill. “When you look a wolf in the eyes,” Doug Smith, the park’s lead conservationist, tells me, “it starts a fire in you.” Then I see them: a pack running on the horizon; black shadows silhouetted against the white plains of winter. Suddenly, a howl reverberates through the valley and the hairs on the back of my neck bristle.

This is why I’m here. Yellowstone National Park is a land of wonders: the spectacular travertine sculptures of Mammoth Hot Springs, the largest geyser basin on Earth, and the clockwork eruptions of Old Faithful herself. But its greatest wonder, perhaps, is what’s happening to the land as a whole, and that story begins and ends with the wolf.