Walton Arts Center's Artosphere Festival celebrates how art and nature can coexist. The 2026 edition brings nature inside Tuesday night at 7 at the Walton Arts Center, with a special talk from Doug Smith titled "The Wild Wolves of Yellowstone." Smith, a wildlife biologist and National Geographic Explorer, led the project reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone. To get a preview of his presentation, we reached him by phone yesterday. But he wasn't in Yellowstone.
Smith: Toledo, Ohio, at a bird festival. So I'm doing a lot of birding.
Kellams: Yeah, because it's the migration time, right?
Smith: That is correct. hey hit Lake Erie and they don't want to cross it. So they pile up along the shore. And that's what I'm doing.
Kellams: Oh, that sounds so cool.
Smith: It is cool. And I grew up here, but I never did this, so it's even cooler that I'm coming back late in life.
You get the idea that Smith loves wildlife of all kinds, but wolves hold a special place for him.
Smith: Wolves have been kind of my life story. They are definitely not a job. They're a lifestyle, and I spent 45 years studying wolves. I had four different jobs, the last of which was in Yellowstone for 28 years. I was hired to reintroduce them. And I'm going to tell that story Tuesday night in Fayetteville.
Kellams: I imagine that no day is the same when you're working with wolves.
Smith: That's true. Very true.
Kellams: What will we learn about the earliest stage of introducing wolves and what you have to do to do that properly?
Smith: Well, two things. You have to learn about the people. We actually know a lot about wolves, and they're easier to live with than most people think. But the hard side about them is they're very controversial. There's a lot of mythology around wolves. There's a lot of culture and values associated with them, and that gets in the way of just managing them properly. And then I was part of the federal government, and a ton of people in this world today are anti-federal government. Anything that government does, they oppose. So that was a big problem. And then wolves have their own baggage. So that's another problem. But I looked at it as a good thing. They're not that hard to live with. The world doesn't end when wolves come back. And Yellowstone is the mother park. What I mean by that is it's the world's first national park. America's best idea. I truly believe that. And we wiped the wolves out for really no reason. The park wasn't complete unless it had wolves. They were the last animal to be restored. After all the animals that were there when Christopher Columbus hit America in 1492, wolves were the last one to be restored to put the park back in its original shape. So you really can't have a park like Yellowstone without an animal that important. And that's what the story is going to be about.
Kellams: When wolves were eliminated from the park — I think it was the early part of the 20th century — what happens? It's not just that you remove a species, but if you take a carnivore out of a place, everything from prey to vegetation might change over time.
Smith: Kyle, you've read a lot. Or you're a smart guy, because you're right on the money. Wolves are what's called a keystone species, a top-level carnivore. And they have what's called the trickle-down effect. It's also called top-down control. Some people refer to it as a trophic cascade. And that means they shape the ecosystem around them. A lot of what happens in an ecosystem depends upon them. And we took them out before we knew what they did. So a big part of the return of wolves is how the park is changing back to the way it used to be. That's a big part of the story I'll be telling Tuesday night. They are critical to ecosystem functioning. There's not many places left in the United States where we can have top-level carnivores like wolves. Certainly not in Arkansas anymore. It's just too settled. Too much agriculture, too many people. But Yellowstone is one of them. It's a crown jewel national park. Why not make it as pristine as we can? Wolves are part of that story. I'll tell it Tuesday night.
Kellams: When you release wolves, I have this romantic image that you set them down, the cage is open and they run out. But I imagine there's potential — I don't know if trauma, but if I was a wolf, I would want to take my time exploring a new home.
Smith: Yeah, they're not like that. Wolves don't worry about much. They just do what they need to do. And actually, it's helped me in my life. They're just all forward, no neutral, no reverse. They just do what needs to be done. They don't feel sorry for themselves. They go out and live life. Life is tough for them. Survival each day is a challenge. And their mindset is tough-minded. So yeah, if you're a wolf, you probably would not volunteer to get caught by a helicopter and driven to Yellowstone and let go in a completely new environment. But we did that to them and they didn't skip a beat. And they thrived, actually. If we could talk to wolves on that level, they would have signed up to come to Yellowstone, because we had an overpopulated elk population — too many elk — and where they lived in Canada, it was kind of nip and tuck. Plus they were hunted and trapped. In Yellowstone there's no hunting and trapping, and there were too many elk. If we could have told them what they were getting into, they would have loved it and signed up for it.
Kellams: Finally, you're in Ohio right now, birding. You've spent so much time with wolves. I know you've also researched beavers. I'm wondering if for you — and forgive me if this is a silly question — if there is an animal you haven't yet seen in the wild that you'd like to.
Smith: Good question. I've traveled North America pretty widely. Wolves are most abundant in Alaska and Canada, and I've been there a lot. And so the cool animals like wolverines and peregrine falcons and deer falcons, I've seen them up there. I'm a lover of nature, all of nature. And wolves are kind of a window into all of nature because of their ecosystem effects. What critter haven't I seen that I would like to? It would probably be on another continent. A Siberian tiger would be really cool. I'd have to go to Russia or China to see that, and right now I don't think I could go there. So yeah, that would be one I'd want to see. They're tremendous predators, and wolves are too. It'd be cool to see a big predator like a tiger. Sorry for the poor answer, but you caught me flat-footed.
Kellams: No, that's a great answer. You're just braver and bolder than I am. I would go with a platypus.
Smith: Yeah, that's a good one. To Australia. So either one requires a lot of travel, so I better save up.
Kellams: Well, speaking of traveling, you're going to be traveling here and speaking with us Tuesday at Walton Arts Center. Hey, thanks so much for your time. Get back to the birding, Kyle.
Smith: Thanks for having me. I look forward to visiting you in Arkansas.
Doug Smith is a wildlife biologist and National Geographic Explorer. He'll deliver "The Wild Wolves of Yellowstone" Tuesday night at 7 at Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville. More information at waltonartscenter.org. We spoke yesterday.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
