It’s autumn 1951. In the forest of the Grand Teton National Park, an aged elk was lying on the ground. It was a peaceful afternoon, but looking at the beauty around her, she couldn’t help but let out a sigh. In the past sixteen years, she had witnessed an explosion in the elk population. The elk species seemed to be thriving and growing. However, she knew that the end was near. If things continued like this, in a decade or a century, there would be no elk left on this land. When she was just a calf, she worshiped twolegs like everyelk else. Twolegs are those creatures who walk on two legs and have long limbs. The stories she heard every night all made the twolegs looked like an omnipotent god who rescued the elks from danger and famine. Among all those legends, one was about a creature called “wolf.” She still remembered how frightened she was when mom first told her the story. “A wolf is a ferocious creature with short legs and gray coat. They are cruel, evil, and ruthless. They
Many people know that the gray wolves in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem were once extirpated in the 1920s. Without the reintroduction in 1995, we would never be able to see this beautiful and majestic animal here. Some think that the hunters and their unethical hunting practice during the 1910s should be fully responsible for the extirpation of wolves in the 1920s. However, the truth might not be so simple. ⎯⎯ It was 1870, and the Yellowstone region was almost the last unexplored region within the United States. On this vast land, a wolf pack was quietly traveling along the Cache Creek. Wolves are the real native to this land, thriving on this remote continent as apex predators for countless generations. On this quiet morning, the wolf pack was searching for prey in its territory as usual. Suddenly, the father’s nose sniffed something. It’s familiar yet still foreign – the smell of the twolegs. He recalled the horrifying story told by his grandfather again: as his grandfather’s
