Growing up, most children are told tales such as Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs, in which wolves are portrayed as evil, demonic and dangerous to humans. But in actuality, wolves are nothing like these stories make them out to be. In fact, most of the stories that we are told about wolves are created based on misconceptions.

An organization known as the Wolf Conservation Center (WCC) of South Salem, New York, seeks to change ideas about wolves by teaching people the reasons why wolves are essential to the environment and human life. It recently reached out to an audience at Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History through a workshop that featured a live, Arctic gray wolf named Atka.

Wild wolves perform a vital role in the environment and provide food for many other animals. They’re able to do this by hunting large animals, like elk, buffalo and moose, and allowing smaller animals to eat the remains of their “meals.” There is a balance of nature involved in this interaction, which means if you were to take an animal away from it, the whole system would be changed.

When there are enough wolves in the environment, they keep elk populations low. Since elk eat trees, they, in turn, have more chances to grow and become healthier. Beavers feed off trees, so, their population grows as well. Wolves help maintain an important balance in most environments, and without them the ecosystem could be at risk.

Some True Facts about Wolves:
· Wolves that are in the wild are not dangerous to humans.
· Most wild wolves do not like to interact with humans because they have an inbred fear of humans.
· Wolves have a very important relationship with the environment.
· All dogs are related to wolves.
· There used to be 250,000 wolves all around the United States, and now there are only about 5,000.
· There are no wolves on the East Coast.

It is important for others to understand real facts about wolves because it can change how they are viewed.

From a personal perspective, the WCC’s lecture made me realize how important it is to help reintroduce wolves into the environment and increase their population. As humans, we don’t think that animals such as wolves could really affect us. Not only do they affect us, but they also affect other living things in the ecosystem as well.

There many things that you can do to help support the reintroduction of wolves. It starts with taking care of the environment. A few ways in which you can do that include making sure you remember to recycle, pick up liter and conserve water.

If you want to help the wolves more directly, you could donate money online at the Wolf Conservation Center Web site, http://nywolf.org, or sponsor a wolf that is at the currently living at the center.

Melissa Marciano is a teen freelance writer.