Yellowstone National Park has been a longtime home to large predators, including the gray wolf. But the relationship between human and wolf has always been a tense and complicated one. Due to predator control programs, by the mid-1900s, wolves had almost been entirely eliminated from the region. The removal of even one strand of an ecosystem's complex web can have a ripple effect, though. Using the structure of "The House that Jack Built," science writer Mary Kay Carson shows the interconnectedness of the wildlife that lives in a place and how the presence (or absence) of a single species can impact an ecosystem so that the physical landscape itself is altered. Back matter includes information about the wolves' reintroduction to the park.
