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When Yellowstone National Park was created in 1872, gray wolf (''Canis lupus'') populations were already in decline in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. The creation of the national park did not provide protection for wolves or other predators, and government predator control programs in the first decades of the 1900s essentially helped eliminate the gray wolf from Yellowstone. The last wolves were killed in Yellowstone in 1926. After that time, sporadic reports of wolves still occurred, but scientists confirmed that sustainable wolf populations had been extirpated and were absent from Yellowstone during the mid-1900s. Starting in the 1940s, park managers, biologists, conservationists and environmentalists began what would ultimately turn into a campaign to reintroduce the gray wolf into Yellowstone National Park. When the Endangered Species Act of 1973 was passed, the road to legal reintroduction was clear. In 1995, gray wolves were first reintroduced into Yellowstone in the Lamar Valley. The history of wolves in Yellowstone chronicles the extirpation, absence and reintroduction of gray wolves to Yellowstone, and how the reintroduction was not without controversy or surprises for scientists, governments or park managers. ==Extirpation (1872–1926)== In 1872, Yellowstone National Park was created, there was yet no legal protection for wildlife in the park. In the early years of the park, administrators, hunters and tourists were essentially free to kill any game or predator they came across. The gray wolf was especially vulnerable to this wanton killing because it was generally considered an undesirable predator and was being willingly extirpated throughout its North American range. In January 1883, the Secretary of the Interior issued regulations prohibiting hunting of most park animals, but the regulations did not apply to Wolves, Coyotes, Bears, Mountain Lions and other small predators. Shortly after the U.S. Army took over administration of the park on August 20, 1886, Captain Moses Harris, the first military superintendent, banned public hunting of any wildlife and any predator control was to be left to the park's administration. Official records show however, that the U.S. Army did not begin killing any wolves until 1914. In 1885, Congress created the Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy with the express purpose of research for the protection of wildlife. The agency soon became the U.S. Biological Survey which was the forerunner of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In 1907, under political pressure from the western cattle and livestock industries, this agency began a concerted program which eventually was called: ''Animal Damage Control''. This predator control program alone killed 1800 wolves and 23,000 coyotes in 39 U.S. National Forests in 1907.〔 In 1916, when the National Park Service was created, its enabling legislation included words that authorized the Secretary of the Interior to "provide in his discretion for the destruction of such animals and of such plant life as may be detrimental to the use of said parks, monuments and reservations".〔 It is generally accepted that sustainable gray wolf packs had been extirpated from Yellowstone National Park by 1926,〔 although the National Park Service maintained its policies of predator control in the park until 1933.〔 However, a 1975–77 National Park Service sponsored study revealed that during the period 1927 to 1977, there were several hundred ''probable'' sightings of wolves in the park. Between 1977 and the re-introduction in 1995, there were additional reliable sightings of wolves in the park, most believed to be singles or pairs transiting the region. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of wolves in Yellowstone」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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