A drop in the bucket – a massive pile of bison skulls about to be ground into fertilizer, photographed circa 1870. From Wikipedia.

From almost the very start, wolves were not welcome in Yellowstone. When the national park was established by the United States government in 1872 the bison population had crashed – a victim of westward expansion, the fur trade, and the desire to deprive native people of an animal important to their existence – leaving the area’s wolves little recourse but to begin preying upon local livestock. This did nothing to help their reputation. Already seen as nature’s villains because of carried-over European folklore, wolves were now viewed as vermin which had to be eliminated