Introducing 'Howl': How wolf reintroduction into Yellowstone and Idaho changed the West forever
Whenever a reporter comes to me with the phrase 'I have an idea for a longer series,' I admittedly take a breath and start to mentally prepare to make my case as their editor to say no. Usually it's a request for things, as a small but mighty staff of four journalists, that we just don't have the flexibility to provide.
Reporting time, for one. With three to four months out of the beginning year tied up with covering the Idaho Legislature – a core mission for us here at the Idaho Capital Sun – as well as election seasons that can take a month out of our planning calendar before the primary election in May and another month before the general election in November, we very rarely have the luxury of time for truly long-term projects.
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Financial support, for two. We're a nonprofit here at the Capital Sun, which means we rely solely on donations large and small from readers like you to keep our lights on. Any written series worth doing and worth doing well requires not just investment in reporting time, but also travel costs like mileage and hotel stays to meet sources where they are. To do deep stories real justice, we need to experience and observe these Idaho spaces for ourselves. In this case, I would soon learn, we'd also need several hundred dollars worth of audio recording equipment.
And three? Institutional knowledge of the topic and experience with controversial issues. And for this series in particular, Idaho Capital Sun senior reporter Clark Corbin was sure going to need a lot of that.
That's because his story series idea – dubbed 'Howl' – centers around the 30th anniversary of the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park and Idaho, which might quite possibly be the most controversial topic the West has ever had to offer.
'Howl,' a five-part print series and five-part podcast by the Idaho Capital Sun and Boise State Public Radio/NPR will launch Wednesday, June 4. Story installments will be released weekly each Wednesday morning at IdahoCaptialSun.com. Like all of our work, it will be available to any local news outlet to pick up for free with proper attribution. Podcast episodes will air on BoiseStatePublicRadio.org and are available on all the major podcast distributors, including the NPR app, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
https://idahocapitalsun.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Howl-Trailer_With-Credit-Language.mp3
We'll also co-host a live event that includes a panel discussion of three of our sources for this project: Former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Wolf Recovery Coordinator Carter Niemeyer, Wood River Wolf Project Co-Founder Suzanne Asha Stone, and Nez Perce Tribe Watershed Coordinator Marcie Carter. We'll host the free event the evening of June 17 at Boise State University's Special Event Center. Stay tuned for more details on this special opportunity to hear directly from the people who first brought wolves back to the West 30 years ago.
We can't wait to start sharing this epic story – our most intensive reporting project to date –with all of you this summer. Here's a bit more on how this massive project came to be.
'Howl' is the largest investment in time and resources we've put toward one project at the Idaho Capital Sun. If you find value in what we do, you can support work like this with a one-time or recurring donation at IdahoCapitalSun.com/Donate. To read the weekly installments of 'Howl,' released every Wednesday morning, sign up for our free email newsletter, IdahoCapitalSun.com/Subscribe.
The second Clark said the word 'wolves,' I knew we'd have our hands full. As a fifth-generation Idahoan with farmers on both sides of my family lines, and after being an Idaho reporter for the vast majority of my career, I immediately recognized just how sticky a subject they can be.
Wolves were extremely controversial in 1995 – when a team of biologists traveled to Canada to capture and bring the animals back to Yellowstone National Park and to the Lower 48 – and in 2025, 30 years later, they remain just as controversial still.
Clark pitched to me a series of written stories and a multi-episode podcast by teaming up with Heath Druzin, an experienced audio reporter who has previously freelanced for us here at the Idaho Capital Sun. He's a former war correspondent who covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is the creator and host of the award-winning 'Extremely American' podcast.
They wanted to spend weeks hiking through more than 20 miles of wilderness and drove more than 1,000 miles crisscrossing Idaho to interview sources directly in Yellowstone, the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, the Nez Perce Reservation in North Idaho, and dang near everywhere in between. And they wanted to take even more time reviewing and researching all of the past articles, books and memoirs – as well as old film of the wolf captures – that dealt with the dozens of wolf-and-livestock related sources they've talked to for Howl.
They'd also need some financial help to pull all this off, they told me, including help with applying for grants to support the reporting, as well as a chunk of our not-so-sizable annual travel budget and a chunk of our finite freelance budget to support hiring a skilled photographer in Pat Sutphin. And they'd need some new audio equipment (and a few bucks for non-negotiable bear spray) to ensure the podcast was as clear and engaging as the written series.
So while I had my initial, with-good-reason reservations, I also recognized the history of the reintroduction of wolves to the American West – and the impact the lineage that those wolves have on the West and Idaho today – is always a story worth pursuing.
After having spent the last 14 months organizing trips across Idaho, editing and re-editing drafts of the written stories, reading podcast scripts and listening to the first iterations of the podcast episodes, I know I can safely say all those investments were well worth it.
In the written stories as well as the podcast episodes, we connect you with the sources who understand this issue better than anyone else: wildlife biologists, ranchers, Native American elders and tribal members, Idaho Fish and Game officials, Idaho Gov. Brad Little, and trappers. We take you right into the wilderness with us, with its sights, sounds and smells (and scat. They saw and tracked A LOT of scat.)
We talked to wolf advocates who have spent decades of their lives following, documenting and trying to protect specific wolves in Yellowstone and across the West, and we've talked to people who have multi-generation ranches who have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to wolf depredation. Importantly, we also talked to people like Suzanne Asha Stone of the Wood River Wolf Project, who has spent decades trying to bring all sides of the wolf debate to the table to find solutions – together.
We look not only into the past of how the U.S. government essentially exterminated all wolves from the Lower 48 in the 1920s and '30s, but into the present day by detailing how controlling the wolf population continues to be one of the most controversial issues facing the American West – and its future.
With all the time and resources we've put into this, I hope you like 'Howl,' certainly, but I also hope you come away with a better understanding of our Western history and how we've come to be and live in such a special place that must find space for us: all of us.
We hope you'll check it out June 4. Enjoy.
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