Yellowstone,  the world's first national park opened in 1898. It was meant to be a wild Utopia. But like a lot of things we try for the first time it doesn't always work out. Huge numbers of animals were lost big mistakes were made. But big lessons were learned, too. Now the big predators are returning and in a daring experiment the wolf has been reintroduced to Yellowstone. Beautiful and resilient this unique corner of the American West shows. How with a little help.Yellowstone is the product of a violent past. Hurled up by the world's greatest volcanic explosions and endlessly carved away by water and ice this is a land of dramatic statement. Yellowstone sits across a 75km wide, active volcano in the heart of the American Rockies. It's natural, volcanic wonders like the "Old Faithful" geyser led to Yellowstone becoming the world's first National Park in 1872.

It's awe-inspiring landscape changed the way people think about nature and how they relate to wild places. In 1995, a remarkable decision was made to restore wolves to Yellowstone and as soon as the wolves arrived the elk instinctively knew exactly what to do because elk and wolves have evolved together for thousands of years. It's a violent partnership. The elk force every ounce of skill and energy from the wolves and the wolves test every elk. A weak wolf is as doomed as a weak elk. Whether you're the wolf or the elk it's a hard way to make a living. And the wolf risks its life too. Few people can watch this battle without some twinges of sympathy for the elk. And feeling compassion is what makes us human. But it's a mistake to judge the wolf by our values. Nature's power to inspire us depends upon its wildness and wildness requires death as much as it requires life. Wolves don't kill because they're cruelˇ­ they kill because they have to. Up until the moment of the kill it seems that the only animals here are the wolves and the elk. But as soon as the elk is down ravens come flying in coyotes come jogging in. How do they know how do they get there so fast? They have to get there fast. Their job is to get there first so as soon as the leftovers are free they have first shot at them.

An elk carcass is the perfect place to study coyote society. A coyote pack is a complex family and like most of our families the members don't always get along. Now that the wolves have returned a lot of scavengers are happy to take advantage of their leftovers and the coyotes have to compete with the rest. The wolves might wander off for a while but that doesn't mean they've finished with the carcass. The coyote that comes in for a share had better keep its eyes open. Every death affects other lives. Coyotes eat a lot of mice. So the chances are every time the wolves kill a coyote there are more mice left over for the foxes. It seems that the smaller fox isn't enough of a nuisance to the wolf and so it's free to pursue its own prey. Yellowstone is helping us to really understand how these ancient relationships between animals work. Although it is an amazing sanctuary for animals. Yellowstone wasn't created to protect wildlife. It was created to protect extraordinary scenery and geyser basins. But the place was special long before. white men decided to call it a National Park.

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Native Americans saw the area as sacred. And at least 20 different tribes used the land and they had special names for it Water Keeps On Coming Out. Many Smoke. Land Of The Burning Ground. Place Of Hot Water. Summit of the World. These were powerful names, for an important place. It inspired them but it gave them food and shelter too. The Sheshoni called Yellowstone "Buffalo Country" because it was the home of the animal they needed most. In the 19th century when the trade in hides destroyed the Bison a Native American way of life thousands of years old was suddenly ended and only a handful of wild bison were left. We came incredibly close to losing these last wild bison forever. They were down to about 2 dozen at one point but Yellowstone gave them a chance and by the 1920's they were out of danger. The early conservationists, who created Yellowstone are great American heroes but when it came to understanding what they'd started and what wilderness was all about they didn't really have a clue. A hundred years ago we had an almost pathological hatred of predators.

There was a religious intensity to the killing. Park Managers were men of their times and they saw some animals as 'good' and others as 'bad'. And so in the early twentieth century they exterminated wolves and mountain lions from the park. Today, it's hard for us to imagine this sort of slaughter. It shocks us that they could do such a thing and not give a thought to the consequences. It seemed like their answer to every problem was to kill something. And their attempts to control wildness reached a peak here in the 1960's. when managers, believing the elk were too abundant killed thousands a year until the public would no longer stand for the slaughter. And so in the late 1960's everything changed again. A new policy allowed nature to make more of the decisions. For the first time, we admitted that maybe nature had wisdom of its own. And once we admitted that it was easy to see that we needed wolves. You could almost hear the Yellowstone landscape breathe a sigh of relief. There are about ten packs of wolves in the park and their radio collars show what they're up to but there's nothing like being out there with them. Their eerie howling seems so much more than just random noise. Is it some kind of wolf music? Yellowstone is such a complex place.

Every time it changes it out-runs our understanding. So we're lucky these animals are such great teachers. An elk pawing through the snow looking for some dried grass is a symbol of greater things. They're always looking for the best possible food they can find and they've spent thousands of years developing migration patterns that take them to the best spots all year round. In the winter the snow drives them into the low country and now, as the snows melts they chase the spring back to the high country. This is what wildness is all about. The herds follow the food and the predators follow the herds. Wildness is defined by how these animals flow through the seasons and the real Yellowstone is defined by where their travels take them. The National Park is only a part of it. And if you draw the migration routes of all 8 Yellowstone elk herds on a map you'll get a good idea of the borders of what has become. Greater Yellowstone. And the animals need it all from the Tetons, to the Bear Tooth Mountains. This is an exciting time in Yellowstone as the elk move up to their spring ranges they meet the animal that first taught us this larger idea of Yellowstone. Fresh from 5 or 6 months of sleep the grizzly bears are emerging from their dens. Bear cubs are irresistible they're made up of equal parts, appetite and curiosity and with a healthy mother to feed and protect them they can spend their whole day playing around and getting into trouble Of course, the mother is all business.

Imagine how hungry you'd be in April if your last meal was in November. The grizzly bear has come to symbolize Yellowstone and Greater Yellowstone because it taught us that the boundaries that were drawn around Yellowstone Park made no biological sense. And that, by itself the National Park isn't big enough. The park is just a part of what the bear needs to survive and that makes the bear the perfect barometer of the health of Yellowstone Country. If the bears are thriving odds are that everything else is too. Maybe it's because the winter is so long in Yellowstone that spring seems so exhilarating. Dozens of species of migratory birds appear and the whole landscape comes back to life. Suddenly there's lots to eat and everything seems to be making up for a hard winter. And the wolves are making life easier for the grizzlies. The wolf may be top dog but the bear is still in charge and grizzlies regularly chase wolves away from their kills or clean up the leftovers. So the wolves leave a trail of satisfied scavengers behind them. In recent years, the recovery of the wolf has been the big wildlife story in Yellowstone but there's another comeback story that is just as exciting and that's the mountain lion. The lions came back to Yellowstone so quietly and secretly, that no-one knew they were here for a while.

They just eased back in from country nearby. And they did it without anyone's help. It's rare enough to get the chance to see wild wolves but it's amazing to be able to watch a truly wild mountain lion family at home on public lands, where anybody can go and see them. These kittens are about 6 months old and they're going to need all the training they can get. Like the wolves, they're kill elk for a living and the competition among carnivores is pretty unfriendly. Yellowstone is the harshest bison habitat in North America; it can snow any month of the year. It's almost as if winter never really lets go. For a bison cow, raising a calf is a matter of timing and luck. The calf needs to be born early enough that it can grow big and strong before the winter. But if it's born too early it can get caught in a spring storm. Once the calves are up and running they are fine but a calf that's born in a storm could be in trouble. Sooner or later the predators will show up. These two wolves look determined and they're not going to settle for just the afterbirth. If the calf can't get up off the ground and run away its mother can only protect it for so long. This calf never even managed to get its head up. Yellowstone's coyotes have taken a beating since the wolves returned. These coyotes are nervous because if this wolf finds their den he might try to kill their pups Of course the wolves have to worry about the same thing. They have to be nervous that another wolf pack will find their den and maybe kill their pups.

And over time the wolves and the coyotes will develop a sort of edgy truce and the coyotes will do whatever they have to do to survive. After all, they've been through this before. Coyotes were once killed by the thousands in Yellowstone and all we had to show for it was more coyotes. The wolves will discover the same thing; when coyotes are killed the survivors just increase their reproductive rates. Watching these animals it seems that the head and the heart respond in different ways to Yellowstone. A baby animal is so much more than a population statistic. It's hard not to be engaged by young animals but they also deserve respect when you know what they're up against. Unlike the wolf pups, or the elk calves bear cubs have to be taught a very varied menu. And survival will depend on their curiosity and their willingness to confront new situations. The menu of plants and animals changes all the time so the cubs have to absorb as much as they can of what their mother's learned in a lifetime. Bear cubs don't look like they pay attention to anything for very long but they're probably not missing much that their mother does. Bear cubs are curious and adventurous and often willing to get into trouble but this is a rugged landscape and sometimes they need a lot of coaxing. If these little cubs can survive the first few months river crossings won't be a problem. But after such a frightening adventure they seek some reassurance and a mother bear may sometimes nurse as much to ease the cubs' anxiety as to feed them.

Throughout the winter adults took care of themselves but now the young are in charge and all Yellowstone's attention is focused on them. Within a few weeks thousands of elk are going to give birth and we may see those calves as cute and cuddly but hundreds of predators are going to see them as dinner. The big gamble that a mother elk makes is that she beds her calf down in grass or high brush so that she can go and graze. It's a risk she has to take but it leaves her calf vulnerable. The coyote takes a lot of risks trying to get an elk calf. The mother won't let it run in and take what it wants. Adult elk will readily chase full-grown humans so think what a coyote is up against. The calf was lucky - this time but the danger's always there and about 1/3 of these calves won't make through their first month. Another quarter won't survive their first year. The grizzly bear may be looking for elk calves but she will happily take a coyote pup if she finds one. The coyote will probably pester the bear until she feels her pups are out of danger and though it's hard to tell if she's making any difference to the bear's behavior maybe she feels better for trying to move them on. Bears have a legendary sense of smell; they zigzag back and forth through the sage brush hoping to either scent a calf or just spot one. And it's such a random process that "survival of the fittest" doesn't seem to make sense it's more like ecological pot-luck. If you're an elk calf it doesn't matter how fit or intelligent your mother is if you just happen to be standing on the wrong side of the river when the bear comes by. And when the river is high with melt-water you really are on the wrong side. To make matters worse your life is not as important to your mother as her life.

The most important thing for her is the ability to successfully raise more calves. And rather than sacrifice herself she'll abandon you. The wilderness is such a startling mixture of mother love and mayhem; so we may sympathize with the elk calf but we want the grizzly bear cubs to make it too. Put yourself in this bear's place you've finally got the elk calf but your cubs are on the other side of the river and you know how they react to swimming. What's a mother to do? Of course, plenty of elk calves survive and once they're a few weeks old they can join the herds and out-run the bears. But one of the most exciting things about having all these predators back in Yellowstone is what they can teach us about how this landscape works. Elk depend on the vegetation but so do hundreds of other species. This is an amazingly complex wild community and everything is connected. By killing elk the predators may be having an influence on hundreds of species of birds reptiles, amphibians fish, even insects. Like the elk, these Caddis flies overproduce themselves so it's a certainty that many will survive. But a trout stream is a very violent place. Every splash is a death. Well, almost every splash is a death Ospreys have some of Yellowstone's most spectacular nest sites and for good reason. Every predator has predators of its own. But even the coyotes haven't worked out a way to get up here to eat the chicks. The ospreys constantly engage in home improvements to make sure their chicks have enough room and don't fall out of the nest.

But their survival depends on the trout. This male osprey will know the run of every fishing hole on the river and the best places to find food for his young. For most of us our passion for nature starts with beauty. But we soon discover that lurking underneath the beauty is an almost lurid melodrama that's mostly about death and sex. The park is the last stronghold of the Yellowstone cut-throat trout and these cut-throats are migrating up from deeper water. The female fans the gravel with her tail to hollow out a spawning bed. She almost completely ignores the males. who are fighting to be right beside her so that when she lays her eggs they can father the next generation. Their overpowering drive to reproduce overcomes their fear of being seen not such a great situation to be in if you're trying not to attract predators. Not only is the trout in the shallowest part of its habitat it's also making such a commotion that the predators would have to be blind to miss it. And for trout, death is a 3 dimensional proposition: if it's not coming down from above it's liable to swim up from underneath. It seems amazing that there's a mammal that can swim as well as a fish. This otter mother and her 2 pups may eat three or four big trout a day and they have no trouble catching them. For thousands of years, humans have hated predators because they've been seen as competition. Today that hate seems like a waste of time. Surely we can afford to share. Some people love fishing here too for the way it connects them to the wildness of the place but that doesn't mean they have to kill the catch. Every fish released might reproduce or feed a young otter or just live out its life where it belongs. And that's got to be a good thing. These animals kill to live.

They don't have any choice and the more you watch them the more the line between beauty and death blurs. It's all part of the same thing. The osprey is almost as gratifying a success story as the wolf. Because forty years ago before pollution was controlled and the human harvest of trout was reduced osprey numbers were low. But now with better protection and plenty of food they're flourishing. Three young is about as many as they can raise in a season. In August, when the bison gather for their rut Yellowstone's grasslands are transformed into a vignette of the great plains two hundred years ago. Yellowstone isn't just an island of wildness in a civilized world; it's almost a living memory of ages that would benefit from our respect. It's still warm but it seems like summer is slipping away and by September, around the time of the first frosts the bull elk start to bugle. He bugles to the other bulls telling them to back off and leave his harem alone. This season is charged with the anticipation of something that's coming something that's changing. And for many, the bugle of the bull elk may be the wildest sound of all. But it's hard not to hear other warnings there. As if we all need to be told that the easy living is over and winter is on its way. Here in Yellowstone winter maybe the biggest killer of all. And some years the hard weather kills more elk than the predators do. For the elk, winter is worse since the wolves and mountain lions returned. Now the elk bring their wolf escort with them back into the valleys and the chase never really ends.

There are very few places left where you can watch nature express itself where you have the chanceW to see a truly wild struggle between predator and prey. And this struggle means life is hard for all of them and they are not always successful but they are all trying to survive; now they have been given the chance. A lot of people ask if we can protect wildness in Yellowstone but that's not the question. The wolves and the mountain lions have shown us that even lost wildness can be restored whether we do it ourselves or let nature do it for us. We can save wild nature wherever we want to. The question is do we have the courage to do it? We know how. The great peril that Yellowstone faces is the failure of human courage. These wolves are magnificent and there are so many things to celebrate about Yellowstone but the greatest may be how Yellowstone tests us. Yellowstone is always asking difficult questions and they're not just questions about wolves and wild animals and whether we want to save them. They're questions about what kind of world we want to live in and can we afford a world that doesn't have this kind of wild beauty in it?

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