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Brendan McGowan is a junior Honors College student who is studying wildlife ecology at the University of Maine.
When you imagine the wilderness, what comes to mind? Endless expanses of forest, the sound of the wind, the howling of wolves?
The wilderness captures our imagination as a place where the rules of modern society melt away, we feel small, and our problems feel tiny compared to the expanse of the forest. But what is the wilderness without its wildlife? And of the wild creatures of America, none capture our imaginations more than wolves and mountain lions.
Prior to European colonization of the Americas, gray wolves and mountain lions could be found across the entire North American continent. However, once settlement began, both species were wiped out in the eastern U.S. because humans saw them as a threat to their safety and livelihoods.
Despite our deeply strained relationship with these animals, they are necessary for a functioning ecosystem. Ultimately, to improve the health and function of the ecosystems in the eastern United States, I believe we should bring them back.
The absence of apex predators has had lasting negative effects on the ecosystems of the eastern U.S. Deer populations have exploded in the absence of their top predators. As a result, the overabundant deer have begun to damage the environment through overbrowsing. Bloated deer populations make deer-vehicle collisions frequent, causing billions of dollars in damages and the loss of hundreds of lives annually.
Several invasive species have also taken advantage of the lack of predators to proliferate. Species like feral hogs cause billions of dollars in economic damage yearly. Coyotes have also expanded their range in the absence of their top rivals, and both the federal government and state governments spend millions of dollars in control measures that wolves and mountain lions would do for free. We have basically removed the top of the food chain, and the ecosystems of the eastern U.S. are chaotic as a result.
Despite the numerous ecological benefits reintroduction would bring, predator reintroduction is often extremely controversial. Many people are wary due to centuries of cultural prejudice like folk tales that cast predators as villains. The Bible and many folk stories depict wolves as harbingers of destruction or deceit, and they are treated as such by many human communities.
In reality, they are simply playing their critical role in the ecosystem, and do not deserve to be eradicated due to the misgivings of our imaginations. Wolves and mountain lions are also hated by many humans for preying on livestock and desirable game species such as deer and elk.
Or they are seen as a danger to human safety, but in reality wolves and mountain lions are a very minor threat to people and tend to avoid humans if possible. There were only 12 recorded wolf attacks on humans in North America and Europe between 2002 and 2020, and there have only been 29 fatal mountain lion attacks in North America since 1868. Comparatively, more than 120 people die in car accidents per day in the U.S.
It is unfair to argue that these animals are pests simply because they are performing their roles in the ecosystem as they have been doing for millennia. Their ecological benefits vastly outweigh their negative effects on humans.
Despite the many negative perceptions people have of wolves and mountain lions, the health of our ecosystems have suffered because of their absence. People have begun to realize this, and to push for reintroduction. Having these species back in our woods could save money spent on managing prey species like deer and hogs. A reintroduced mountain lion may even save your life one day by preventing a deer from ending up in front of your car.
Besides balancing ecosystems and reducing car accidents, bringing these animals back would inject a renewed sense of imagination into our wild spaces, which have largely been tamed by decades of human abuse. Seeing a mountain lion scrambling over rocks in the distance or hearing a wolf’s howl in the air may make us realize that while we have tremendous capacity for destruction, we also have the capacity to heal past wounds, and to restore the wild spirit that captures our thoughts and minds.