Friday, August 24, 2012

Unintended consequences …

… How The Smokey Bear Effect Led To Raging Wildfires : NPR.

I believe it was also the Forest Service that, back in the '20s, got the wolves out of Yellowstone in order to provide ore elk for gentlemen hunters. The Indians had always hunted the elk to just this side of extinction. Turns out the Indians were on to something. Sans wolves — and Indians — the elk population exploded and the resulting food shortage prompted the elks tp eat everything in sight. The result, I gather, was a complete change in the ecology of Yellowstone, so that the park you visit today is actually quite different from what it was before it was a park.

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