Located largely in the western US state of Wyoming, but extending into Idaho and Montana, Yellowstone National Park, established in 1872, was the world’s first National Park. It attracts 4 million visitors each year (see Figure 1). Its development eventually led to a ban on hunting most of the park’s animals, but this protection did not extend to wolves and other predators.
Increasing political pressure from cattle and livestock owners led to the creation of the Animal Damage Control programme, which in 1907 alone killed 1,800 wolves and 23,000 coyotes across the western USA by shooting, trapping and poisoning, and disrupted their movement through den-hunting and wire-fencing. By 1926, wolves in the park had become ecologically extinct.
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