American Grey Wolf

A gray wolf stopped in a snowstorm, looking straight back at whoever is looking at it.

Yellowstone got rid of its wolves on purpose. Between 1914 and 1926 at least 136 were killed inside the park, and the last pack was gone by 1926. For nearly seventy years the country's first national park had elk, bison and bears, and no wolves at all.

That changed in January 1995. Biologists from the United States and Canada captured wolves in Canada and brought 14 of them to acclimation pens in the park, eight on January 12 and six more a week later. A second group of 17 arrived the following January. Those 31 animals founded the packs that spread back across the Yellowstone country, and the howling returned to valleys that had been quiet since the 1920s.

The picture is in black and white, and the snow does most of the work. Flakes hang in the air in front of dark conifers, the far ridge dissolves into gray, and the ground is a thin white crust with dry grass poking through. The wolf stands broadside with its head turned to the viewer: thick ruff, pale mask around the muzzle, ears up, tail low. Nothing in the frame is moving except the weather.