The award-winning documentary “Lost Wolves of Yellowstone,” in IMAX, is now showing on San Diego’s largest IMAX screen, in the giant dome of the Fleet Science Center in San Diego’s Balboa Park.
As we learn at https://www.imax.com/lost-wolves-of-yellowstone-learning-resources, this film tells the heart-warming story of “the daring restoration project led by Mollie H. Beattie and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services to reintroduce grey wolves to Yellowstone National Park after a more than 50-year absence. This long-lost footage captures the early days as the wolves acclimate in enclosures before venturing out to establish a new lineage, the Crystal Creek pack affectionately known as ‘Mollie’s Pack.’ This documentary illustrates the untamed spirit of nature.”
(Jan Wagner)
“Wolves are omnivores (that) sit at the top of the food chain as an apex predator. With their near extinction in Yellowstone National Park in the 1920s, the area’s whole ecosystem was sent into collapse, causing a trophic cascade. Without wolves, the elk population exploded, leading to an overgrazing of key producers like aspen, willow, and cottonwood trees.”
“Without these trees, birds lost their habitats and beavers lost essential building materials. Without beavers and trees, the soil and streams also began to erode … you literally can picture the chaos, can’t you? And that was just one branch of what was a once balanced, thriving ecosystem.”
“With the reintroduction of wolves in the mid-1990s, another trophic cascade occurred, but this time order was restored to areas like Lamar Valley, increasing biodiversity and stability in Yellowstone National Park once again.”
(Jan Wagner)
Ciera MacIsaac, Wolf Care coordinator and AZA SAFE Mexican Wolf liason, tells us that “at the California Wolf Center our big mission is education — teaching people about wolves, why they are so important to the ecosystem and, not only that, what you guys can do for wolf conservation.”
“California Wolf Center has been in Julian since 1977, educating the public about wolves. We currently have 17 wolves on site. We are open to the public, so you guys can come out, see some wolves, learn lots of different random information about wolves — which is really fun. … We also have live feed cameras that people can view from the comfort of your own couch.”
(Jan Wagner)
“They are really incredible animals. They are critically endangered. There are less than 700 total. That’s in the wild and in captivity. They were actually extinct out in the wild, so if you guys come to our California Wolf Center you get to see a critically endangered species, which is really amazing.”
Visit https://www.californiawolfcenter.org for more information.
“At the California Wolf Center, we are part of the Mexican Gray Wolf recovery program. They are a subspecies of California Gray Wolf. … With that program, these animals are kept as wild as possible, so we’re not a facility that has socialized wolves. Our wolves were not hand-raised by people. They don’t like us. … They’re very afraid of people so … this is probably the least dangerous animal I’ve ever worked with. With wolves, they have this innate fear. That’s probably the biggest myth that people have about wolves is that they’re going to chase you down, they’re going to hunt you and hunt your cattle, and they’re pretty scary animals. That’s why they were completely eradicated.”
(Jan Wagner)
Ciera told me that “seeing them in the beginning, at least for me, it was watching Yellowstone documentaries. Seeing how important this animal was to the ecosystem, I wanted to work with wolves since I was a kid. … I dedicated my career and my education to conservation and working towards wolf recovery.”
Ciera explained that since wolves “are an apex predator, nobody is hunting them for food. They are helping control the prey population. Specifically with Yellowstone, the elk populations were out of control, because they didn’t have a predator. The wolves came on in, hunting those sick, those weak elk so that they weren’t overgrazing. … On the East Coast there are a lot of deer problems — there are a lot of sick deer, so having that apex predator definitely helps those populations become healthier, become stronger, not overgrazing.”
To see the official trailer for “Lost Wolves of Yellowstone, go to https://youtu.be/Vt7YLSs3Wd0?si=iUT5_pv1hNFw51cL For more information, and for ticket information and showtimes, visit: https://www.fleetscience.org/films/lost-wolves-yellowstone.
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