Saturating forecasts

In the early 1800s, westward expansion in the United States brought many settlers and their livestock into contact with the native wolf population. These wolves began to prey on the domestic stock, which resulted in the settlers hunting and killing the wolves in order to protect their own animals. The gray wolf was still present on the land which became Yellowstone National Park when it was established in 1872, but over the next few decades they were hunted nearly to extinction in the region and throughout the lower 48 states.

In the 1960s, the public began to understand the idea of ecosystems and the interconnectedness of species, and in 1975, the decision to restore wolf populations to Yellowstone was taken, with 31 gray wolves finally being relocated to the park from Canada in 1995. This provided an almost perfect experiment of natural population growth inside the park.

We'll look at this population in the next few examples. However, we'll be...