Fish and Wildlife Service and biologists from Yellowstone National Park reintroduced gray wolves to the park after they were killed off from the region in the 1920s. ![]() And the ways scientists say that wolves impact populations? By starving out adults and killing kittens. A study published in November in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B provided the first evidence that when the two species overlap, wolves have a greater effect on mountain lion populations than hunting by humans and the availability of prey. ![]() But wildlife biologists weren't sure just how detrimental wolves could be to mountain lion populations. Previous studies suggested that in places where mountain lions and wolves compete, wolves usually come out on top by stealing the lions' kills or changing where the cats hunt. In the mid-1900s, scientists started trying to understand how North America's carnivores, like wolves and mountain lions, interact. Elbroch, the director of Panthera's Puma Program, didn’t see wolves attack the young cats with his own eyes, but he saw the aftermath: Bloodied bits of dismembered kittens strewn across the ground. Three other kittens in the study site also fell prey to the pack. Over the course of three months, the wolves killed off F47's kittens-one each month. At the base of the cliffs lived a mountain lion named F47 and her three kittens. ![]() Various wolf packs took up residence in the nearly 900-square-mile area over the years, and this pack settled atop a massive, rocky cliffside. The Lava Mountain Wolf Pack, the most populous of its kind in the American West, moved into carnivore biologist Mark Elbroch's study site in Wyoming's Teton Range in 2014.
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