Wolves are bringing tourists and money to Montana.
A University of Montana study shows wolf tourism brings $35 million a year to communities around Yellowstone National Park.
Eric Bindseil is a biologist and guide with the Yellowstone Association. A researcher for nearly 20 years, he's just learning how to share his knowledge of wolves with eager students from New York to California. "See bison, yeah. The bison aren't concerned about the wolves," says Bindsell
People on this trip will spend about a $1,000 each in and around the park before the week is over. But to these students, it's not about the money at all.
"Seeing the buffalo up close as we were able to do and observing the wolves being very active, not just lying down and sleeping, but actually seeing them up interacting with the pups, interacting, of course running after the elk. It was very dramatic these three days, very dramatic," says Jeri Edwards of California, "Yesterday was snowy. Today was brilliantly sunny, zero degrees. That was invigorating. It was everything I expected."
Carolyn Sime is the Fish, Wildlife, and Parks' Wolf Coordinator. "It's a highly charged symbolic animal," says Sime, "Folks think of wolves as symbolic of wild places, a wide variety of things, so it's the symbolism that makes wolves a little bit different."
In Yellowstone's Lamar Valley rangers sometimes have to close parking areas that are jammed with cars.
Wildlife photographers willingly pay $200 to spend days shivering in arctic weather just to get that perfect shot.
While the students watch and learn, Bindseil explains wolf characteristics to the onlookers. "Well, the big males actually in Yellowstone here, they go 120 (pounds) to 130 (pounds) and there's actually been documentation of some of the males going 140 (pounds)."
The students spend a lot of time asking questions and talking about wolf politics.
"Coming to these trips, talking to the wildlife biologists and hearing their perspectives, even their take on the political aspect helps me be more articulate and indeed I want to take that back to my community and have a voice," said Edwards.
Kurt Alt, the FWP Wildlife Manager further explains Edward's observation, "And that translates into a political will, those people are willing to do the right thing and the right thing isn't necessarily total protection, but its not total annihilation. It's trying to fit them in a thoughtful way that's consistent with our hunting and conservation culture in Montana."
University of Montana economist John Duffield estimates that 153,000 people saw wolves in Yellowstone in 2006.
That compares to only about 20,000 sightings each year just after re-introduction in 1995.
And that $35 million a-year wolf tourism brings in. Duffield says that grows to $70 million a year as the money gets passed around local communities.
-John Sherer reporting from KBZK in Bozeman
