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At Yellowstone, despite the re-introduction of wolves, the willows are not actually recovering as well as was hoped. One reason, Marris found, may be that wolves don’t actually scare elk away from their preferred feeding areas, as earlier research suggested they might. “When elk are really hungry, they’re going to take their chances with the wolves,” Marris says.

Another reason for poor willow recovery may be that the wolves came back to Yellowstone too late to affect the fate of another animal population: the beavers. “Elk populations were really high while the wolves were gone,” says Marris. “That was caused by the absence of wolves, but also presumably by human management decisions, climate, and other factors.”

Elks and beavers competed for the same food: willow. The elks won, beaver numbers dropped, and so did the extent of marshy habitat. “Without beaver dams creating willow-friendly environments,” Marris says, “the willows can’t recover.”

In reporting her article, Marris learned that beyond the pages of scientific journals, the gaps between researchers who do and don’t support the apex predator theory are really fairly narrow. Generally it’s accepted that there is a lot more involved in balancing an ecosystem. “But some still believe carnivores are somewhat special in their top-down effects on the ecosystem,” she says. Wolves generate a lot of emotion as well as attention because they’ve become a bell-weather for the fate of wilderness. “Everywhere wolves exist,” says Marris, “they tell stories about how people and wild things make peace, or don’t make peace, in the 21st century.”

What’s most at risk as we debate the role of wolves in the ecosystem seems to be our hope for a really straightforward story that explains what’s going on around us.

Excerpted from https://www.popsci.com/article/science/have-wolves-really-saved-yellowstone#page-2