The History of wolves in Yellowstone included extirpation, absence and reintroduction of the gray wolf (Canis lupus) to Yellowstone National Park. The reintroduction of wolves was controversial as it is with the worldwide reintroduction of wolves. When Yellowstone National Park was created in 1872, wolf populations were already in decline in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. The creation of the national park did not provide protection for wolves or other predators, and government predator control programs in the first decades of the 1900s essentially helped eliminate the gray wolf from Yellowstone. The last wolves were killed in Yellowstone in 1926. After that, sporadic reports of wolves still occurred, but scientists confirmed that sustainable wolf populations had been extirpated and were absen