Grizzlies, Elephants, Giant Pandas, Wolves | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

when Lewis and Clark first encountered grizzly bears there may have been a hundred thousand of them in the American West from what is now Canada all the way down to Mexico Grizzlies are among the most fearsome Predators on the planet so for the next 150 years they were systematically exterminated by settlers ranchers and farmers who saw them as a threat to their lives and livelihoods by the 1960s there were just a few hundred left in the lower 48 states in 1975 grizzly bears were among the first animals to be protected under The Endangered Species Act and what's happened since especially in the state of Montana is a story both of conservation and conflict ever been face to face with a Grizzly neither had we right yeah in the swan mountains of Northwestern Montana we are carrying bear spray and following State bear specialist Eric Wenham and his colleague Milan vinx deep into the woods hey wenham's checking one of several traps called snares oh there's a bear that he is baited with Beaver meat grizzly bear you hear that the closer we get the more agitated she's going to become so we'll kind of be quiet get a good weight assessment on her and then we'll just drift right back out okay I'm with you all right you're okay uh all right you're all right after the wire snare around its wrist stops the first charge at Wenham the grizzly makes another effort to get at our cameraman Don Lee oh you're all right all right we'll drift out you have an estimate of how big that bear is how much do you think I think it's right around 300 pounds that's mid-size for Grizzly they can weigh as much as a thousand pounds and stand nine feet tall on their hind legs we're gonna mix a little bit of metatomodine in there Wenham and Vince mix a cocktail of Veterinary sedatives and load them into a dart gun you have the dart I have the bear spray they're ready to go we are set vinx carries a shotgun loaded with lethal ammunition just in case okay [Applause] Wenham insists that neither the tranquilizer nor the snare do any lasting harm and that he needs both as part of a project to attach radio collars to Grizzlies and track their populations recovery to me having a grizzly bear population means that the ecosystem is intact Hillary Cooley is the wildlife biologist in charge of grizzly bear recovery for the U.S fish and wildlife service grizzly bears were listed in 1975 as a threatened species in the lower 48 states I thought their survival was in Jeopardy yeah their Ranch had been reduced by about 98 percent two places Grizzlies hadn't been wiped out were Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks where a few hundred were protected from eradication so starting 45 years ago the recovery effort focused on millions of Acres around those two parks they've probably more than tripled their numbers and their range now is more than double what it was at the time of listing since listed as an endangered species back in 1975 the grizzly bear population in this region has made a remarkable comeback a true success story but at the same time another population has also been growing around here the human population with houses and subdivisions built right next to the Wilderness and that's often where the trouble starts Montana's human population has grown by 250 000 since Grizzlies were protected in 1975. most of those people live on Valley floors or in Foothills not far from Bear Country when you can look at the Telemetry from their callers you realize that at night this Valley belongs to Bears a bear has walked I've seen the Telemetry through the spot where you and I are sitting right now and we are within 100 feet of my house and we're Bryce Andrews is a Rancher author and field director for a non-profit called people and carnivores which tries to minimize human bear conflict he's seen all the videos of Grizzlies going through trash cans raiding chicken coops and backyard bird feeders even the fridge they are true omnivores and really hungry from the moment they emerge from hibernation each spring anything with caloric value a bear will turn it into what they need to survive so they will eat any and everything any and everything they'll come for bird seed they'll come for the residue on a barbecue it's their appetites that get them into trouble with humans absolutely the greatest Trouble Comes when Grizzlies go after livestock or crops that ranchers and Farmers count on for their livelihoods Bears can be really hard to live with they kill livestock there are producers who have 20 30 cows a year killed by grizzly bears and so far it's a lot it's a big impact the Bears probably knocked down between 20 and 25 percent of my corn that I couldn't Harvest every year Greg shock farms in Montana's Mission Valley he says Grizzlies live in the woods about a mile from his home we had 18 several years in a row in our cornfield and nobody believed that I had that many until they put cameras up and and actually had footage of them 18 in your cornfield in 100 Acre cornfield yeah with so many Grizzlies around now nearly 2 000 the federal government would like to remove some populations from the endangered species list so far Court challenges from environmental groups and Native Americans have prevented that you think it is possible to coexist I think we have to if we don't coexist what's who's leaving the Bears aren't leaving and we aren't leaving so so Bryce Andrews organization does things like install high voltage electric fences around Fields like this 30-acre melon farm Grizzlies are smart enough to test the fences and sometimes even get around them we've got a an electrified gate here which is often right now Andrews has an electric fence around his backyard chicken coop but not all of his neighbors do generally when there are unprotected chickens and grizzly habitat it's only a matter of time before something goes wrong the grizzly bear will win they'll win and see they have these phenomenal noses they smell everything including neighborhood trash cans if a Grizzly develops a taste for garbage gets accustomed to being near people and then teaches those bad habits to their cubs it can prove fatal bears that get into such trouble are often trapped by state bear managers at first they're relocated to remote regions and released but if they keep coming back federal official Hillary Cooley may need to authorize killing them ultimately that's my decision what's that like it's the worst part of the job ha it's but it's necessary why necessary if we think it's a threat to human safety for example a food-conditioned bear bears can kill people and it's something we don't mess with if there's a threat to human safety we remove it right off the bat and remove you euthanize euthanize just last year she had to authorize the killing of nearly 50 Grizzlies hey the grizzly bear we saw Eric Wenham tranquilize in the swan mountains may never have seen a human being before let alone gotten into trouble do you know is it a male or a female I don't yet how long will this grizzly be out about an hour about an hour 20 minutes smell oh it's a male why why were you hoping for a female we want a radio collar females females Drive the system they they really do one two three will you call her him we call her some males um we're not going to color this guy though look at those claws the forest becomes a field hospital as they attach monitors and even an oxygen bottle to the grizzly so he's at 88 oxygen I like it when it's 90 95 so I want to get him up we measured every part of the bear five and a quarter okay blood is drawn Tufts of hair pulled for DNA analysis I'm going to call him a five-year-old bear okay so you can see these ears and sizers and if you run your fingernail over the top you can still feel some cusping so tell me I can do this stick my hand in the grizzly bears I'm telling you you can do that oh yeah about that less than an hour after being darted a bit ahead of schedule he's moving a little bit here the grizzly starts to stir so he's starting to wake up everybody we're ready to go where'd you guys head on out everybody go we didn't need to be told again as we hustled out Wenham removed the Hood from the Bear's head and hurried out himself your first question will be does that happen often when he was sniffing up when he's lifting his head it's time to go time to go we had about as safe an encounter with the grizzly bear as is possible to have but with more people going deep into Bear Country to hike or bike or camp or hunt there are several decidedly unsafe encounters every year I didn't really get a warning and all of a sudden there's a grizzly bear running at me and in about probably less than a second it was on me Andrew's brosti was hunting for deer an elk with a friend in the wilderness north of his Montana home on November 11 2018 when he stumbled upon a Grizzly who'd been dozing in the snow it bit my arm here kind of thrashed it around and then bit my leg here started pulling on me and kind of tossing me around and then it just dropped my foot and ran off do you have any idea why he didn't just finish you off or drag you off nope brostie's hunting partner Dan reached him within a minute or two luckily they had a cell phone signal to call 9-1-1 State bear specialist Eric Wenham was one of the First Responders on the scene and he snapped a photo of a very large paw print in the snow they had to Chopper you out two Choppers how long were you in the hospital I was in the hospital for six days in that six days I had three different surgeries my arm was broken my thumb was broken and my hand was dislocated my foot was basically held to my my ankle with soft tissue this is the grizzly that attacked Anders brosti in a photo taken four years earlier when State bear managers trapped and released him DNA samples proved the match so the bear that attacked you is still out there yep does that bother you you okay with that I'm okay with it I was intruding so to me the Bear's response was not any more inappropriate than what somebody else's response would be if I trespassed into their home brosti who is the co-founder of a company that makes mountain bikes is back on his after many months of tough rehab and he says he and his friend Dan planned to go hunting again this November 11th the anniversary of the attack I think it's part of what makes Montana Wild if we didn't have grizzly bears like it'd be a little less wild they're a part of our ecosystem they play a role in everything that's going on around here I think that's kind of cool I prefer not to see one that close again though for two decades a group of wild African elephants has been watched over studied and protected by their own Guardian Angel and extraordinary American scientist named Andrea takalo as you're about to see Andrea's own story is pretty amazing but not nearly as compelling as the insights into elephant Behavior her research has revealed especially when it comes to the secret language of elephants elephants communicate in a complicated sophisticated language that scientists are trying to decipher and compile into the world's first elephant dictionary when we heard that this is all happening in one of the most magical places on Earth a remote clearing in central Africa where Forest elephants the rarest most mysterious and most threatened member of the species congregate well we simply had to go foreign river flows through the Congo Basin along the border between Cameroon and the Central African Republic in the second largest rainforest on Earth this remote corner of the world is the place Andrea tokalo a field biologist from Taunton Massachusetts has called home for nearly two decades Andrew is in a compound that she and a group of pygmies built from scratch the pygmies help her run the place commuting to her job is a hike the last couple of Miles took us through some interesting terrain okay now we're going to enter the forest and the advice I'd like to give everyone at this point is to stick together stick together yeah because we happen to run into elephants we should all stay together and move in the same direction so we don't confuse them we don't want to confuse the elephant a confused elephant could be dangerous fortunately running into one on the trail is rare so who made this Trail Andrea this was made by hundreds of years of elephant traffic in this Forest elephants made the trail yeah I mean if you look at their feet it's obvious they you know they do a lot of road work the elephants have stomped out the equivalent of a vast interstate highway system it took us past giant Teak trees through a thick primordial Forest Andrea has hiked this Trail twice a day for nearly 20 years where does it go we could hear something before we could see anything suddenly the trail ended and right before us was an opening called the zunga clearing more than 50 Forest elephants the setting was extraordinary straight out of Jurassic Park tranquil aside from an occasional Roar Henry do you remember the very first time you saw this place yeah it was in the late 80s and I actually slept here slept here yeah and I slept on the ground in a tent and all night there was this Symphony of elephants and when I woke in the morning it was like I had landed in Paradise the clearing is a watering hole a spa and a sanctuary a place where elephants take their time the measured graceful pace of the largest land animal on Earth they come to the clearing for the minerals which they can't seem to get enough of a place where elephants play these elephants are playing sort of amateur wrestling for pachyderms nobody gets hurt kids fall and get up the way kids do this elephant is giving himself a massage a tree massage here's one trying to hide unsuccessfully all this and so much more observed by Andrea and others day after day it's been now 19 years that I've been observing this particular population of elephants very long time yeah it is a long time but it takes a long time to know elephants when Andrea first came here she knew almost nothing about Forest elephants today she's the world's leading expert on them from an observation deck on the edge of the clearing she collects scientific data for Cornell University and the wildlife conservation Society she watches elephants almost every day for hours counting their numbers monitoring their health and observing their social behavior what are the basic differences between the boys and the girls females and their young stay together for longer periods of time as you can see these groups are made up of adult females and they're young and Bulls tend to leave their groups early and be solitary but they occasionally meet up with their families and speak to each other but the boys go off on their own and just sort of drop by now and then yeah they like Adventure they don't like the group life are there other ways in which elephants are like us the females tend to be like to be courted by older experienced males uh-huh they don't like the young ones no The Young Ones want to want to get to the point too quickly now what are they making noise about right now that's the Penelope family and it's their way of saying hello Andrea knows it's a Penelope family because she named them and nearly a thousand other elephants she also recognizes them by their voices voices researchers are trying to translate into what could someday become an elephant dictionary I find this elephant dictionary compiling exceedingly fascinating I mean how large a dictionary will it be we don't know we have to really know a lot more about the behavior of these animals to sort of sort out these different vocalizations and what they mean Andrea's expertise brought her to the attention of Cornell University Peter regg a behavioral biologist from Cornell says the dictionary is still in its early stages we're in kindergarten we're just learning the very first few words and Andrea is going to help us put those words together and you say we're in kindergarten now yes are we in the process of compiling a child's dictionary even an infant citationary it's it's a very very complex process because we can't ask the elephant what did you just say but they can match elephant sounds with behavior they can see and classify those sounds into distinct categories can you tell me what some of them are well there's these low frequency rumbles sounds like a big cat purring and those are the those are the vocalizations that help keep groups in contact with each other through protest calls in newborns you have a particularly High cry and when you hear it you know it's a very very young calf [Applause] and some of these big bulls um when they go into must which is this sexual State they make a special Rumble which is very low and very pulsating [Music] most days Andrea Works into the evenings compiling data and exchanging information with researchers back in the U.S via the Internet which he also uses to stay in touch with home this is NPR worldwide from Washington the archive of elephant behavior and sound she's created is amazing and surprising foreign noises are actually elephants greeting one another glad to see you come a little closer these are sounds of annoyance the big bulls are telling the youngsters to hit the road back in 2000 Andreas filmed the death of a baby and the traumatized cries of the other elephants these elephants kept poking the body over and over frantically trying to coax the baby back to life then the elephants flown to procession that filed past the button they'd feel it or they'd smell it and then they'd vocalize it was like a funeral procession that went on three or four days must have been an amazing sight they seemed to recognize death and it upsets them it sort of brought home how emotional these animals are but it turns out that these vocalizations are just a small fraction of the sounds elephants make until a few years ago scientists had no idea that most of what elephants are saying can't be heard by the human ear the base of their vocalization is infrasonic in other words the the frequency on which their call is built is below what we can hear the elephants use those low sounds to find one another in the dense forests where they spend most of their time elephants are using very low frequencies which travel far how far at least two or three kilometers no kidding more than a mile yes elephants standing here can communicate with sound with an elephant more than a mile away yes six thousand miles away in Upstate New York at a lab at Cornell University researchers are listening to everything from the sound of hummingbirds to the sound of whales the elephant listening project grew out of an accidental discovery made by its founder Katie Payne one of the world's leading experts on elephant communication I love animals right so I went to the zoo the elephant cage elephant cage and I began to realize that I was feeling a throbbing in my ears and in the air that I couldn't really explain and I said you know do you suppose elephants are making sounds below the pitches that I can hear and we recorded for a month and lo and behold we found that elephants had a great Milling sound that people didn't know about she gave us examples of sounds that we can hear [Music] sound which I interpret generally as everything is in order everything's okay with the world everything's okay but then how do you discover the meaning of these sounds you just watch and watch and watch and record and record and record and keep the two together which brings us back to Andrea once or twice a year she visits Cornell with her latest recordings and you're giving them the material with which they work yes this is a thing we filmed on the 1st of May the first birth we witnessed in 19 years oh they're two females after oohing and eyeing over the new baby as anyone would the scientists get down to the business of figuring out what the elephant sounds mean calls are the same individuals figuring out which elephant is talking where it's located and what it's saying has been a big challenge researchers initially strung nine acoustic recording devices around the clearing as the sound reached each recorder at a different time they could pinpoint the location of the speaking elephant picking up sounds too low to hear was another challenge but recording the sounds normally and playing them back faster was a revelation for example the clearing at night sounds like this played back three times faster this is what the clearing sounds like you can hear the elephants rumbling calls but to figure out what the calls mean the Cornell team spends more time looking than listening using these computer-generated spectrograms they can see the low frequency sounds and then we can actually visually look at the calls and what does this visualization tell us it tells us that there is incredible complexity many of their calls are actually similar in some ways to human speech Peter does all this Research into elephant sounds have any practical purpose we're using sound recordings to monitor Forest elephants because they're so difficult to see and this becomes more and more critical because their population is threatened so knowing where the animals are gives us a way to to begin attacking what has to be preserved or where do we need to put more protection protection because poaching has become almost epidemic it's estimated that annually 10 percent of zonga's elephants are killed for their Ivory Henry Works closely with jungle's armed guards but so far their efforts have not stopped the slaughter do you see it as your personal responsibility to protect the elephants here I've made it my personal responsibility for me if I've been given this great privilege to study this particular population of elephants I think my priority is to protect them otherwise I have no right to study excuse me we have a vocalization that's a protest approach somebody who's probably being refused something by its mother baby elephants protest in a rather loud fashion don't they yeah they're just like little bratty children Andrea believes if she weren't here the clearing would become a killing field it's clear that in a very pragmatic sense you are saving the elephant but in another sense they've saved me I have something very important in my life to do and I think a lot of people don't get to do that Andrew plans to stay here at least another 15 years and as nightfalls over her clearing and fishermen flow gently down the Sangha you can hear the crickets what you can't hear are the elephants but that doesn't mean they aren't talking Chinese call them Xiang Mao meaning bear that looks like a cat the adjective they use is Hmong which translates cute like a baby until recently the giant panda was on its way to Extinction but then it was saved by its one evolutionary Advantage it's adorable in 2016 the pandas conservation status was upgraded from endangered to just vulnerable because the giant panda is China's national symbol the Chinese have worked four decades to perfect breeding the Bears in captivity they've achieved one of the biggest successes in conservation but there is more work to do the next step is introducing captive pandas into the wild that research slowed after a few freed bears were found dead and as you're about to see no Chinese scientists can afford to lose even one baby cute cat bear giant pandas have been chewing bamboo for about three million years but they were so elusive in the high mountains of China pandas weren't discovered by Western naturalists until 1869. today their fans know where to find them each morning humans compete for position at the Chengdu research base of giant panda breeding in central China a ticket is about eight bucks some days there are one hundred thousand visitors so yes that's eight hundred thousand dollars a day but the experience is priceless if these bears were in the wild they'd be rare and solitary they would be in Alpine forests as high as thirteen thousand feet and we saw about 30 feet up how they went unnoticed for so long search base each bear is known by name liked online and wrapped in the flag a selfie with China's national symbol is a tap of patriotism when I'm out on the street and if anybody asks me about what I do I tell them I work with giant pandas they immediately thank me and then they follow it up with that is our national treasure enriching the treasure is the work of Mark valitudo a Wildlife veterinarian from the Smithsonian institution in Washington on loan to the Chengdu research base and so what we see here is that actually a normal healthy Panda long and a normal healthy Panda heart the Smithsonian has helped propagate pandas since China sent Richard Nixon home with a pair in 1972. back then China barely had to despair by the 1980s there were only about 1200 left in China's bamboo forests which humans were cutting down is bamboo the only thing they eat 99 of their diet in the wild is bamboo a forest is delivered every day to the qingdu base the common name Panda means Bamboo Eater but because this member of the grass family is so low in nutrition each Bear spends up to 16 hours a day shredding 40 pounds of leaves and stems and that is hardly enough to keep him alive so the rest of the day the Bears burn as few calories as possible even mating is incredibly rare only once a year can a female be prepared for breeding and that is within a very small three-day window a female panda is capable of breeding three days a year exactly very small time very small time for a very small bear and how old are these Cubs Dr Wu kanju told us when these Cubs are newborn they average about four ounces the size of a stick of butter and how many Cubs do you bring into the world in a year this year is five five babies of the five Cubs that are born here this year how many do you expect to survive about half the time pandas have twins but the mother can't care for both in the wild the smaller the weaker twin will be left off to die because the mother doesn't have enough energy to produce the amount of milk that's required for two babies but in captivity twins are fed in the nursery and with a touch mom is called to duty to nurse the twins one at a time so both survive the Cub's eyes won't open for about six weeks so mother helps him to her breast and like every nursing mom a change of position helps especially when her back is killing her the Cubs are dependent up to three years she'll raise only five or maybe eight in her lifetime how big do they become so the females can be up to maybe around 200 pounds and the males up to 300 pounds why are they black and white you know that's a very interesting question it's a mechanism to protect themselves like many many other animals out there that are black and white or various different colors it's camouflage you know pandas love the snow so the white Parts really help them hide in the snow whereas the black would be presumptive of Shadows the panda is a curious bear in the last century many biologists didn't think it belonged in the bear family pandas don't hibernate and though they're virtual vegetarians they have the digestive tract of a carnivore and a nutrition was a mystery when Dr Hal wrong came here nearly 30 years ago she's director of research and told us that the base started as a shelter for injured pandas that had been rescued there were very few pandas she said all of them were seriously ill close to impossible to breed we were also broke I was the only scientist you had a dozen pandas yes how many do you have now now it's at 200. 200 healthy pandas have grown from the research into nutrition and understanding those fleeting female hormones it's gone so well that a new area of research has opened Panda geriatrics the Bears live about 20 years in the wild but up to 35 in the company of man in 1937 a leading American naturalist described the giant panda as an extremely stupid Beast dull and primitive but Mark valitudo showed us pandas understand commands the whistle signals something good is about to happen generally involving apple slices then on cue the bear volunteered its arm through the bars to a metal tray and gripped a handle it's having a blood test all of the pen is the adult pandas here are trained specifically to offer their arm for a blood sample it really helps us as better animals from having to be anesthetized and allows the animal to be an active participant in their health and that's it I've seen people throw a bigger fuss than he did they're incredibly complex creatures just like many other bear species or carnivorous species like dogs and cats like dogs pandas come at the sound of their name foreign they know their day will start with apples and continue at the endless Bamboo Buffet [Music] but success in captivity does not necessarily mean salad days for the species to thrive genetically they must come home to the wild this is really an exciting time because they're doing so well in captivity and we can really consider them safe that's not so for the wild populations Melissa songer is a Smithsonian conservation biologist working at the foot of Mount ching chong near the center of China this is the Chengdu field Research Center and most people know it as Panda Valley and it's was established for the purpose of preparing captive pandas for release into the wild one of the amazing things that we saw is how well trained they are but it strikes me that that's a blessing and a curse they don't have the opportunity to learn how to find food or defend against predators even mating is very complex in the wild so yes they're highly trained but they aren't really trained to be in the wild then do you train them to be wild and and if so how do you do that they're not going to be fed they're going to have to move around and find food and taking it step by step so acclimatizing them to a very different situation is an important phase before full release like sending the kids off to college yeah exactly there are fewer than 2 000 wild pandas living in only three mountainous provinces of China they're segregated into small groups cut off from one another by roads farms and villages about half of those populations are less than 10 pandas and so that kind of puts them at risk for losing genetic diversity it puts them at risk for other events natural disasters diseases that might come through so it's a it's a dangerous number to reduce the danger two research bases are testing competing ideas one from a research station called woo long minimizes contact with people to the point of dressing the trainers in Panda suits that are scented with panda urine so the Bears don't even get a whiff of humanity the other approach encourages the human relationship in case a panda needs to be rescued while the Bears Walk on the Wild Side they're monitored with radio collars in case they get into trouble so far 14 pandas have been released three have died but those few failures have slowed the research because if a panda is killed it's not just some bear it's a bear with a name and a million likes on its web page anytime you release a captive animal to the wild you're taking a risk and you prepare as best you can but there are things you can't really prepare for one of the pandas who died was attacked by dogs another appears to have fallen from a tree the captive-born pandas take longer to establish territory but for the most part they fit in China says it will soon spend more than a billion dollars on a 10 000 square mile Panda National Reserve to connect those pockets of wild bears it suggests that species can be saved it absolutely does but more than that what's even better than the survivability of this species is that they are an umbrella species meaning that the care that we provide for the pandas and the tracks of land that we preserve will also save all whole multitude of other species that also need our care that a lot of people don't even know about which raises a fair question if a multitude of species is saved if climate benefits from 5 million Acres of Forest Reserve are we saving the panda or is the panda saving us it's safe to say that wolves have an image problem since ancient times they've been portrayed in fables and legends and the Bible as fearsome voracious Predators the story of the big bad wolf may be the most memorable and frightening of all the fairy tales told by The Brothers Grimm that Grim reputation actually produced a very real result in America in the early 20th century wolves were wiped off the landscape trapped poisoned and hunted until there was not a single one left in the American West when the National Park Service decided to bring wolves back to Yellowstone Park in the 1990s it followed a bitter debate between Wildlife groups who wanted them restored and ranchers who most definitely didn't two decades later the Wolves of Yellowstone still stir strong emotions but they've also had an impact that almost no one saw coming in the dead of winter Yellowstone Park is a beautiful but forbidding Place howling wind Sub-Zero temperatures six feet of snow just finding enough food to survive is a profound struggle for every animal waterfowl bison elk foxes they all have to work for every morsel Yellowstone was the world's first national park founded in 1872 and it remains one of the most visited millions of people come here every summer but they used to pretty much leave it to the wildlife in the winter until the Wolves came back oh they're behind the tree now reports of a wolf sighting can produce a traffic jam along the 150 mile stretch of road the park service keeps open in the winter visitors with spotting Scopes Gather in absolutely frigid weather for a momentary long distance view bill these folks came from Germany to see wolves Doug Smith runs the Yellowstone wolf research program for the park service and no one predicted this would happen actually you know indeed the appeal of coming in to see the Wolves yes and it truly has been amazing and hundreds of thousands of people a year we estimate come here just to see wolves pumps 35 million million economy much of it spent in the winter which is prime wolf watching time we've seen what was all three days that we've been out Glenn Mai is a retired FBI agent from Arlington Virginia Kathy Lombard is a retired cop from New Hampshire they both paid an Outfitter thousands of dollars to take them wolf watching so what is it about wolves that bring you all the way out here from New Hampshire to sit out here and just hope for the chance to see them they've been able to bring wolves back into Yellowstone and they've thrived so that's just an awesome thing to see it was January 12 1995 when the first gray wolves captured in Canada were carried into Yellowstone Park it drew both national attention and fierce opposition so much that armed guards were posted to protect those wolves so the first wolves released into Yellowstone Park were released right back here in this Thicket yes so a total of 41 over three years how many are in the park now we've got 96 and 10 packs and it's been roughly a hundred wolves the last 10 years very stable those 10 packs of about 10 wolves each are without a doubt the most closely observed and studied wolves on Earth our goal is to keep touch with each pack that's our goal they do that by trying to attach radio collars to at least two wolves in each of the Park's packs so you fly on the airplane find wolves in the open that airplane radios a waiting helicopter on the ground that helicopter flies out with a gunner in the back seat that Gunner is almost always Smith himself and you fly up alongside that wolf and you shoot a tranquilizing dart into it five minutes it goes down we process the walls we take blood we measure them we look at their health and we attach a radio collar and then we follow them for their life hopefully that life by the way typically lasts about five years Yellowstone wolves are Fierce and territorial the leading cause of death is a tax from other wolves and their look is uncontrollable that looks says I ain't going to conform to your rules and I'll die before I do and that's powerful that is a location of a wolf data from the radio collars has helped Smith's team to learn volumes about wolf Behavior if you see where the boulder is by itself yeah it also helps all those wolf Watchers find them Park Service employee Rick McIntyre is out every day listening for signals so that is from a black male wolf 1107 and then spreading the word would you like to see a gray wolf okay there you go so it's a little bit right of Center oh yeah oh look here comes the whole pack wow so see if you can count them all they would be two graves and six blacks four five six black ones and the white one that went by and there should be a second Gray how about that we had spotted The Junction Butte pack along a Ridgeline about two miles away like most packs it's led by an alpha male and an alpha female the only two wolves in a pack who mate with each other the gray alpha female is still leading to the right oh yeah and you see how the ones behind her are playing she's determined to lead them to the West they're running along the top right along the ridge yeah that's magnificent we can see these wolves from the ground and it's been a sensation so we've learned a lot about pack Dynamics and personalities and and how social they are what do you mean describe that for me they want to be together they're a pack animal so the power of the wolf is the pack nowhere is that power more evident than when a wolf pack is on the hunt for Elk its favorite prey they work together because they have to your average wolf weighs 100 pounds or so but your average prey animal is much bigger but below 750 pounds a calyx 500. so House of roughly 100 120 pound animal gonna take that down they do it Doug Smith says both by coordinating their attack and by zeroing in on vulnerable prey they're gonna take the week so they're making their living off of calf elk old elk injured elk without wolves there was an overpopulation of elk in Yellowstone as wolves have cut the size of those herds there's been an unexpected side effect plants that elk feed on have made a comeback which has in turn produced benefits for other species all the little trees have come back since wolf recovery this Gully filled with shrubs has all come back since wolf recovery and the wolves are a factor in all of that very simply put wolves eat Elk elk eat this when the elk get reduced they eat less so beavers and songbirds can respond to the growth in that vegetation and it's Doug Smith is quick to say that it's not as simple as he just made it sound but that hasn't stopped some environmentalists from declaring wolves the saviors of Yellowstone's ecology there's some people who will try to convince you that wolves could probably solve midi's peace and world hunger Randy Newberg is a Montana Hunter who hosts a TV show and podcast four Hunters he remembers how emotional the debate over reintroduction was between wolf haters and wolf lovers wolves are wolves they aren't the big bad wolf and they don't have a rainbow shooting out their ass like everyone would think they do there's something romantic about a wolf right unless you've seen it chewing on a live cow Eric Costa's family has been raising cattle and sheep on this Montana Ranch for 100 years he says he was worried from the moment the first rules were brought back to Yellowstone which is about 100 miles to the South you know they weren't going to stay in the park they're a wild animal their goal where they want to go I'm sure you knew it was only a matter of time before they were going to get here oh yes there was no doubt and there was a set of tracks Eric Costa knew that wolves would follow migrating elk out of Yellowstone and onto his Ranch and that they'd attack his livestock if given the chance he started hiring range Riders to watch over his cattle and he bought guard dogs to help keep wolves away from his sheep live sheep pay for things live cattle pay for things dead ones don't his defensive measures have kept wolves away from his livestock but neighboring Ranchers have lost both cattle and sheep to wolves the thing that's never monitored when I talk to these people is the Lost nights of sleep the nervousness uh I saw wolf track at my place today or I actually saw a wolf wolves are around you can't measure or compensate for that our wolf attacks on livestock a serious problem no it's rare that it happens but if it's happening to you it's a serious problem it was that fear of wolf attacks that drove ranchers and settlers to eradicate them in the early 20th century after The Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973 wolves were among the first to be listed and a campaign began to restore them to Yellowstone Park after that happened in the 90s wolves quickly spread out of Yellowstone and into neighboring states so many that there are now nearly 2 000 in Montana Wyoming and Idaho after a long and bitter legal battle those States finally won the authority to manage and sometimes kill wolves outside the national park has this management of the Wolves helped to lessen some of those passions to calm some of those emotions I think so so to have wolves you have to kill the wolves in some situations yes first situation is cut and dried any wolves that attack livestock are immediately killed themselves I think that's helped a lot at least with the ranching Community people feel better if they're not powerless to deal with something and then wolves are hunted there's a hunting season on wolves all three states have them so having wolves be hunted has probably increased people's willingness to share the landscape with them looks like there's at least two of them Randy Newberg is living proof of that he filmed a wolf hunt a few years ago for his TV show it took him 11 days and a hundred miles of trudging and tracking through the snow you went out looking for a wolf and saw how smart they are how cunning they are how athletic they are yeah if you want to increase your respect for wolves go and chase them out under their landscape hunters and ranchers and Avid wolf Watchers rarely see eye to eye but they now agree on at least one thing we've got a gray wolves are back in Yellowstone for good yes people love this you know we live in an artificial world it's stores and cars and Roads and buildings wolves are real and people crave it they love it we almost have this thirst for something real now

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 5,406,339

Keywords: 60 minutes, cbs news, wild animals, giant panda, caught on camera, bears, grizzlies, wolves, elephants

Id: n8wi8PIVXQA

Length: 54min 21sec (3261 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 28 2023