Hunting Wife
Well-known member
To help explain your question about wolves and increasing elk numbers, you have to look at it from a different angle. Wolves didn’t cause elk populations to increase. Correlation is not causation...just because two things happened at the same time doesn’t mean one necessarily caused the other. (That is equally true for elk declines and wolves too BTW). There are many other variables at the same time that are also influencing elk populations. Habitat quality, weather, state elk management, land use patterns, conservation efforts are all working on that elk population at the same time the wolves are. If most of those variables are favorable, there’s no reason the population shouldn’t grow even with concurrent predation. Ungulates (and all prey species) did evolve with heavy predation pressure, after all.I must admit that I am not an advocate of wolf reintroduction. BWT being said, I am a little in the dark with my feelings after reading some post presented. I realize that posts giving favorable information concerning wolves, and supplied from organizations or departments who are pro wolf, can be influenced by bias and can be suspect. But that can also be stated for those who are against the wolf issue. For myself, I just can not understand the connection some claim that wolf populations have increased elk numbers.......just how is that explained ? Is that bias which is determining the figures, or are there proven reasons for this ? Several posters here have given favorable opinions of wolves in elk habitat, am I missing something here and being too closed minded in this matter ?
Its an oversimplified explanation, but if you are seeing wolves actually having significant impacts on an elk population, I would argue that likely means something else is out of whack, and you’ve got a bigger problem than wolves. But wolves tend to be the scapegoat because it’s easy and people like to have a bad guy.