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On the animal beat, CBS' Tracy Smith chose the wolf packs of Yellowstone National Park. It is now twelve years since 41 wolves were reintroduced into Wyoming after they had been wiped out by cattle ranchers, who hunted the predators to protect their herds. Smith recalled that conservationists had expected the 41 to breed to 100. Instead the wolves in a three state region, inside and outside the park, now number 1,300, not counting another 260 who have been killed by ranchers already for killing 1,000-or-so sheep and cattle. The ranchers want to resume hunting wolves at will. Meanwhile wolf-watching accounts for a local annual tourist economy of $35m--not to mention affording spectacular nature videotape for a newscast closer.
Footage of the gulf sturgeon is more spectacular still. A couple of weeks ago a sturgeon lunged onto a boat on the Suwannee River in northern Florida, breaking a girl's leg and tearing its artery. It is a species that has not evolved for 150m years and ABC's Jeffrey Kofman (subscription required) demonstrated that it is hard to the touch, like armor, "because its bones are on the outside." Kofman showed us a four-foot-long 150lb specimen leaping bodily out of the water. "That is one big fish!"
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