No state in this atlas wears its wolves on the map like Wyoming. Of 1,231 records, Yellowstone National Park alone holds 1,135, and Park and Teton counties together carry nearly the whole state total.
The reintroduction that reset an ecosystem
Wyoming’s wolves were gone by the 1930s, and their return was deliberate: 31 wolves brought from Canada were released in Yellowstone in 1995 and 1996, with more added the following year. Elk, the region’s great herbivore, became their staple prey, and packs multiplied and pushed outward through Grand Teton National Park and the big wilderness blocks of the Teton, Gros Ventre, and Washakie. The ripple effects on elk behavior and the park’s willow and aspen stands made Yellowstone’s wolves the most studied predators on the continent.
Open valleys, hidden animals
The record peaks from May through September, when pups leave the den, packs gather at rendezvous sites, and the high country opens to travel. Yellowstone’s broad northern valleys give wolves something rare, room to hunt elk in the open, which is why the park’s share of the map dwarfs everything around it. Even so, a wolf pack holds a territory of hundreds of square miles and answers to no schedule, and plenty of people who spend years in the Greater Yellowstone backcountry never see one.
Status in Wyoming
NatureServe ranks the gray wolf S1, Critically Imperiled, in Wyoming. The species is native to the state, USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous, and it is not specifically listed under Wyoming’s state-level conservation framework.
Full species profile
