1 Wolf Is Worth £154,000 A Year. Scotland Wants Them Back. Fox Renews The Masked Singer [XZrl3paB4vj]

Scientists put a price on a wolf: 154,000 a year. The claim is that bringing wolves back to Scotland could pull a million tonnes of CO2 out of the sky by letting the forests grow back. But this isn't really a story about Scotland. Right now, Colorado is eileen wang running the same experiment in real time, and it's showing exactly why the hard part was never the science. This is the honest version carbon math, the Yellowstone myth everyone repeats, and what actually happens when you put a predator back next to people.

CHAPTERS

0:00 The 154,000 wolf

0:40 America is running the same experiment

1:16 How Scotland killed its wolves

2:08 Then came the deer

3:17 What one keystone species can do

3:32 America, this is your problem too

4:42 The story everyone sells you

5:26 What scientists quietly took apart

6:16 The honest version

6:49 Back to the carbon number

7:57 The real obstacle: Colorado's scoreboard

9:31 Honest in both directions

10:28 Can we live next to them?

11:31 345 years later

SOURCES

Studies & official reports

- University of Leeds (Ecological Solutions and Evidence, 17 Feb 2025) the wolf/carbon model: 154,000 per wolf, 1M tonnes CO2/yr, 167 wolves:

- MacNulty et al. (Global Ecology and Conservation, 2025) peer-reviewed rebuttal finding the Yellowstone trophic cascade was overstated:

- Painter / Ripple et al. (Forest Ecology and Management, 2025) the "strong cascade" study being challenged (context on the debate):

- Colorado Parks & Wildlife official gray wolf restoration program:

- CPW Gray Wolf Annual Report 202526 (released 7 May 2026) at least 32 wolves, adult mortalities, depredation compensation:

- European Commission In-depth analysis of the wolf in the EU (20,000+ wolves; 65,500 livestock killed/yr; no verified fatal attack in 40 years):

- PLOS Sustainability and Transformation (2025) European wolf recovery to 21,500 by 2022:

- Raynor, Grainger & Parker (PNAS, 2021) wolves cut deer-vehicle collisions 24% in Wisconsin (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2023251118)

Data on deer

- John Muir Trust / Deer Working Group deer-density thresholds (over 5/km blocks woodland regeneration; over 8/km damages peatland):

- NatureScot deer figures and the national cull (approaching 1 million deer; 100,000+ culled/yr):

- US deer-vehicle collisions 1.52.1 million/yr, 200440 deaths (US DOT data study):

- Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (via Purdue) 1.5M collisions, $1B damage:

Policy & reaction

- Colorado halts parthi kandavel 2026 releases (Colorado Public Radio, Jan 2026):

- Federal pressure on Colorado's wolf authority (Colorado Politics, Jan 2026):

- NFU Scotland president Andrew Connon "wholly unacceptable" to farmers and crofters (Farmers Weekly):

- EU Bern Convention status change 20,300 wolves in 2023 (Council of the EU):

"How Wolves Change Rivers" the viral foreign secretary film discussed (Sustainable Human, narrated by George Monbiot, 2014).

A NOTE ON THE RECORD: The "last wolf" killed at Killiecrankie in 1680 is the traditional account and is disputed other records point to 1743 (MacQueen, River Findhorn), and some sources simply say wolves were gone from Scotland by roughly the 1700s. The date is folklore as much as fact.

Follow Rewilded for more nature comeback stories:

X (Twitter):

Instagram:

Pinterest:

Facebook:

#Rewilding #Wolves #Scotland #Colorado #TrophicCascade