Bounty centuries
Erase the competitor
Eurasia and North America paid for dead wolves into the 20th century.
The gray wolf did not enter English as a finished emblem. Hunts, films, listings and field stations rewrote the animal on a dated clock.
This chapter keeps ten timeline points, five eras and three milestones so a later translation can hold the same years.
Where it began
Pleistocene CanisHolarctic forests and tundra
Timeline
1890sLobo of Currumpaw
Seton hunt and later story -- a guilt template for US wolf writing.
1926Yellowstone extirpation
The last wolves in the park were killed -- the empty that 1995 filled.
1949Thinking Like a Mountain
Leopold essay that made the wolf an ethics object.
1958Isle Royale study starts
Mech, Jordan, Vucetich later -- moose and wolves as a closed book.
1973US ESA
Gray wolves listed; the legal engine of later reintroductions.
1995Yellowstone releases
Canadian wolves in the Northern Range -- a global media return.
1998Mexican wolf releases
Captive-bred C. l. baileyi into Arizona/New Mexico.
2011-20US delisting fights
Great Lakes and Northern Rockies status ping-ponged in courts.
2018Isle Royale rescue
Translocations to address inbreeding after the island population collapsed.
2020sEuropean pack maps
Germany and France treat returning packs as a livestock ministry file.
The eras
1949-73
Ethics then statute
Leopold to the ESA -- a paper trail for return.
1995-98
Reintroduction years
Yellowstone and Mexican wolf releases as twin experiments.
2011-20
Delist and relist
US courts treated wolves as a perpetual motion machine.
2020s
Europe and islands
Pack maps in the EU and genetic rescue on Isle Royale.
Milestones
Leopold essay
1949A killed wolf as an ethics origin story.
Yellowstone 1995
1995The return that every later cascade talk cites.
Isle Royale rescue
2018-A closed study admitted it needed new genes.
Reading gray wolf history beside the resilience score keeps a recovered stock from standing in for a threatened cousin.
Keep exploring
More in Wildlife
🐅
Tiger
Asia largest cat whose subspecies map, 1973 Project Tiger and remaining 4,000-odd wild animals define a century of recovery arithmetic.
Overall 62 🦁Lion
A social pantherine whose prides, Gir relic and 2015 Cecil killing still structure African conservation politics.
Overall 66 🐘African bush elephant
The atlas type is the bush elephant -- an ecosystem engineer whose ivory ban (1989) and split from forest elephants still structure African conservation.
Overall 61 🐼Giant panda
A bamboo specialist whose WWF logo, Wolong quake and 2016 IUCN downlist from EN to VU made a recovery into a brand.
Overall 41 🐻Polar bear
A marine bear whose seal-and-ice budget made Churchill, Knut and climate models into one public animal.
Overall 56 🦍Gorilla
The atlas type is the western gorilla -- a knuckle-walking ape whose Fossey-era mountain cousins and Koko lab fame split one public name.
Overall 45 🐋Blue whale
The largest animal whose 1966 IWC protection, 1982 moratorium and still-thin Antarctic recovery define a hunted giant.
Overall 65