Good Afternoon, Friends, Imagine a forest alive with life: birds darting through the trees, salamanders sliding through the leaf litter, and wolves quietly tracking deer through the understory. Every species has a role to play, and the loss of any one can ripple through the ecosystem in ways we often can’t see. Humans have already changed these forests dramatically—through habitat loss, hunting, and introduced species. Wolves, once roaming across every state East of the Mississippi, were nearly wiped out. In their absence, Coyotes have expanded their range, raising a vital question: can one species truly replace another? Research shows that while Coyotes step into some of the ecological roles wolves once held—like controlling deer fawn populations or dispersing seeds—they do not fully replace wolves. Wolves hunted larger herbivores, like Elk and Moose, in ways that shaped entire ecosystems, and they provided food for scavengers that Coyotes cannot. This isn’t just a story about pre...