Oregon State University scientists are proposing management changes on western federal lands that they say would lead to more wolves and beavers and restore ecological processes.
In a paper published today in BioScience, “Rewilding the American West,” co-lead author William Ripple and 19 other authors suggest using portions of federal land in 11 states to establish a network based on potential habitat for the gray wolf: an apex. predator capable of causing powerful and widespread ecological effects.
In these states, the authors identified areas, each at least 5,000 square kilometers, of contiguous, federally managed land that contain prime wolf habitat. The states of the Western Rewilding Network proposal, which would cover nearly 500,000 square kilometers, are Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
“It’s an ambitious idea, but the American West is going through an unprecedented period of converging crises, including prolonged drought and water scarcity, extreme heat waves, massive wildfires and biodiversity loss,” said Ripple, professor in ecology from the OSU College of Forestry.
Gray wolves were hunted to near extinction in the West, but were reintroduced to parts of the northern Rocky Mountains and the Southwest beginning in the 1990s thanks to measures made possible by the endangered species.
“Even so, the current range of the gray wolf in these 11 states is only about 14 percent of its historical range,” said co-lead author Christopher Wolf, a postdoctoral scholar in the College of Forestry. “They probably once numbered in the tens of thousands, but today there may be only 3,500 wolves in the entire West.”
Beaver populations, once robust in the West, declined by about 90% after settler colonialism and are now nonexistent in many streams, meaning ecosystem services are not being provided, the authors say.
By clearing trees and shrubs and building dams, beavers enrich fish habitat, increase water and sediment retention, maintain water flows during drought, improve water quality, they increase carbon.
sequestration and, in general, improve the habitat of riparian plant and animal species.
“Beaver restoration is a cost-effective way to repair degraded riparian areas,” said co-author Robert Beschta, professor emeritus in the OSU College of Forestry. “Ripnal areas take up less than 2% of the land in the West, but provide habitat for up to 70% of wildlife species.”
Similarly, wolf restoration offers significant ecological benefits by helping to naturally control native ungulates such as moose, the authors say. They say wolves facilitate the growth of vegetation species like aspen, which supports diverse plant and animal communities and is declining in the West.
The document includes a catalog of 92 threatened and endangered plant and animal species that have at least 10% of their range within the Western Rewilding Network proposal; threats from human activity were analyzed for each species.
The authors determined that the most common threat was livestock grazing, which they say can lead to stream and wetland degradation, affect fire regimes and hinder the regeneration of woody species, especially willow.
Nationally, about 2 percent of meat production is the result of federal grazing permits, the paper notes.
“We are proposing the elimination of grazing on approximately 285,000 square kilometers of federal parcels within the rewilding network, representing 29% of the total 985,000 square kilometers of federal lands in the 11 western states that are grazed annually,” said Beschta. “This means we need an economically and socially fair federal compensation program for those who give up their grazing permits. Rewilding will be most effective when the participation concerns of all stakeholders, including indigenous peoples and their governments”.
In addition to Beschta, Wolf and Ripple, Oregon State authors include J. Boone Kauffman, Beverly Law and Michael Paul Nelson. Daniel Ashe, former director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service and now president of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, is also a co-author.
The paper also included authors from the University of Washington, the University of Colorado, Ohio State University, Virginia Tech, Michigan Technological University, the University of Victoria, the Turner Endangered Species Fund, National Parks and Conservation Association, RESOLVE, Florida. Institute of Conservation Sciences, Public Lands Media and Wild Heritage.
