Which US national park is famous for gray wolf reintroduction?

Yellowstone National Park is the U.S. national park famous for gray wolf reintroduction. In 1995, wildlife officials brought wolves captured in Alberta, Canada, into Yellowstone after the species had been absent as a sustainable population for roughly 70 years. The animals were placed in acclimation pens in the Lamar Valley before being released.

Wolves had been effectively eliminated from Yellowstone by 1926 through predator-control programs. Without this apex predator, elk numbers rose and heavy grazing damaged willows, aspens, cottonwoods, and other vegetation. Reintroduction was intended to restore a missing ecological process as well as a missing animal.

The Yellowstone project became one of the best-known wildlife restoration efforts in modern conservation. Wolf predation reduced and redistributed elk pressure, while the wolves also competed with and preyed on coyotes. These changes affected scavengers, beavers, vegetation, and streamside habitats, creating what ecologists often describe as a trophic cascade.

Yellowstone is sometimes confused with central Idaho, which received a separate but related wolf reintroduction during the same period. Both projects were authorized under the Endangered Species Act’s experimental-population provisions.