As the Yellowstone trip came to an end I had to take time to really think about my experience. Of course it was fun because I got to go somewhere I had never been but it was more than that.

We learned about the main mammals of Yellowstone and the geological features within the park prior to going, this helped us understand the balance and relationship between these key characters to the park. Our guides likely made this experience much better for us as they are wildlife biologists so they were able to speak to us on a different level about the wolves interactions within the park and management issues that are arising. Some of the changes they made are already affecting the parks wolf packs and it has only just started so it will be interesting to see how the wolves start to respond to this new pressure.

Having Taylor as our guide really helped me to see the bigger picture that I wasn’t aware of prior to the trip. The wolf hunting regulations are bizarre and their lives are treated as minimal outside of the park. They are still seen as vermin to be eradicated which is very unfortunate for surrounding ecosystems. Yellowstone is a hot spot for research, and hopefully what they find here can help implement different management practices throughout the N.A continent.

Her perspective on being a guide as well as a researcher showed her conflicting emotions when it came to the wolves and them becoming habituated as is is causing their deaths outside of the park. However that being said because I don’t get to see wolves I was in awe to see them up close twice on this trip; once crossing the river and on our final day in park where they were ridiculously close to the road feeding on a carcass.

Now after we have left I want to look into some of the other not as glorified research that has been done within the park to show the impact that others have on the ecosystem. A point I discussed with Dr. Williams is that “keystone species” is a horrid term because all animals impact the environment, it is more relative as to how quickly we see change to the environment and other interactions that determines those whose impact may be more noticeable to the average person more quickly. Just think about the impact of the beavers within the park and how they would change the habitat available- how many did their work benefit? Yellowstone is glorifying the money makers to the park and are allocating more funds to those projects instead of others that could be just as beneficial.