How Wolves Change Rivers
eslvideo.com Quiz by: eibars
1. A trophic cascade... 2. The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone
...affects wolves. Park is an example of a trophic cascade.
...finishes on top of the food chain. True
...is an ecological process which starts at the False
top of the food chain and tumbles all the way
down to the bottom.
3. Yellowstone National Park is in... 4. Wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone in
...Canada. the...
...the US. early 1900s.
...South America. mid 1900s.
late 1900s.
5. Wolves kill.... species of animals. 6. Before wolves arrived - they had been
various absent for 70 years - the number of deer ...
a little had decreased.
much had remained relatively consistent.
had increased year after year.
7. There were so many deer that they greatly 8. When wolves arrived, even though they
reduced the amount of vegetation in the park were few in number, they ...
by.... changed the behavior of the deer.
eating it ate the deer.
fertilizing it started to protect the other animals
damaging it
9. With the arrival of wolves, the deer... 10. Why did the number of birds increase
started to stay away from certain parts of the greatly?
park - the places where they could be trapped The wolves killed the animals that eat birds.
most easily. Since the deer were gone, the birds felt
started going to other places in the park - the protected.
valleys and the gorges. Since the deer weren't eating the vegetation,
didn't go to the places that started to the plants and trees grew, which provided
regenerate. habitat for the birds.
11. The number of other species decreased. 12. The number of bears increased.
True True
False False
13. How did the rivers change? 14. Why do they say that wolves changed the
The rivers became cleaner - which is great for rivers?
wildlife. Because they killed the beavers, so the rivers
The rivers meandered less - which means flowed more rapidly.
they curved and bent less often. Because they scared away the deer, so the
The shape of the rivers changed more often - forests grew and prevented erosion.
which benefitted the wildlife.
Transcript
One of the most exciting scientific findings of the past half century has been the
discovery of widespread trophic cascades. A trophic cascade is an ecological process
which starts at the top of the food chain and tumbles all the way down to the bottom.
And the classic example is what happened in the Yellowstone National Park in the
United States when wolves were reintroduced in 1995.
Now, we all know that wolves kill various species of animals, but perhaps we're slightly
less aware that they give life to many others. Before the wolves turned up - they'd been
absent for 70 years - the numbers of deer (because there had been nothing to hunt
them) had built up and built up in the Yellowstone Park and despite efforts by humans
to control them they'd managed to reduce much the vegitation there to almost nothing.
They had just grazed it away.
But as soon as the wolves arrived, even though they were few in number they started
to have the most remarkable effects. First, of course, they killed some of the deer but
that wasn't the major thing. Much more significantly, they radically changed the
behavior of the deer. The deer started avoiding certain parts of the park - the places
where they could be trapped most easily - particularly the valleys and the gorges and
immediately those places started to regenerate.
In some areas, the height of the trees quintupled in just six years. Bare valley sides
quickly became forests of aspen and willow and cottonwood. And as soon as that
happened, the birds started moving in. The number of songbirds and migratory birds
started to increase greatly. The number of beavers started to increase because beavers
like to eat the trees. And beavers, like wolves, are ecosystem engineers. They create
niches for other species. And the dams they built in the rivers provided habitats for
otters and muscrats and ducks and fish and reptiles and amphibians. The wolves killed
coyotes and as a result of that, the number rabbits and mice began to rise which meant
more hawks more weasels more foxes more badgers Ravens and bald eagles came
down to feed on the carrion that the wolves had left. Bears fed on it, too. And their
population began to rise as well partly also because there were more berries growing
on the regenerating shrubs. And the bears reinforced the impact of the wolves by killing
some of the calves of the deer.
But here's where it gets really interesting. The wolves changed the behavior of the
rivers. They began to meander less. There was less erosion. The channels narrowed.
More pools formed. More riffle sections. All of which were great for wildlife habitats.
The rivers changed in response to the wolves. And the reason was that the
regenerating forests stabilized the banks so that they collapsed less often. So the rivers
became more fixed in their course. Similarly, by driving the deer out of some places,
and the vegetation recovering on the valley side, there was less soil erosion because
the vegitation stabilized that as well.
So the wolves, small in number, transformed not just the ecosystem of the Yellowstone
National Park -This huge area of land... but also, its physical geography.
