 Exclusive wolf-filming deal windfall for Yellowstone By MICHAEL MILSTEIN Gazette Wyoming Bureau YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. - Wolf reintroduction is paying off for Yellowstone National Park, and not only in the form of the park's burgeoning wolf numbers. The park's wolf program has collected about $7,000 from the sale of 20-minute videotapes documenting the return of wolves to the park and will soon acquire hours of film of the wolf's first years in Yellowstone - without paying a penny for the footage. The windfall comes courtesy of a 1995 agreement unique in the history of wildlife conservation under which the National Park Service effectively sold exclusive access to the first years of the wolf story in Yellowstone.
 "We probably wouldn't describe it that way, but, yes, we recognized the story had value and we saw an opportunity to have the story documented at no cost to us," said Yellowstone spokeswoman Marsha Karle. As the initial 1995 transplant of wolves from Canada to Yellowstone approached, park officials recognized that the historic reintroduction effort should be documented for posterity. At the same time, they began fielding many requests from wildlife filmmakers and the press to photograph and film the wolves in the acclimation pens where the animals spent their first months in the park and upon their release. Officials planned to restrict access to the pens so as not to disturb the wolves and saw an opportunity for that decision to pay dividends for the wolf program.
Under an unusual legal agreement completed a few weeks after the first wolves arrived in Yellowstone, the nonprofit National Fish and Wildlife Foundation - acting on behalf of the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - gave the Peter W. Busch Family Foundation the right to "exclusively document" wolf reintroduction on film. The Busch Family Foundation, which had produced other wildlife documentaries, was to film key events including the wolves' arrival in the acclimation pens, their release from the pens, their first kill, the first wolf den and the first wolf litter. The park pledged to provide the filmmakers "the most advantageous locations" for their cameras. In exchange, the Busch Family Foundation promised to provide park officials with short segments up to 1.5 minutes long for release to the news media, to provide the park with a short videotape documenting the reintroduction process. The filmmakers, though, retained "exclusive use and ownership" of all of its footage and sound recordings of the park wolves for at least five years. The filmmakers eventually sold an hour-long documentary on wolf reintroduction to Ted Turner's TBS Superstation, a cable television network based in Atlanta. The Yellowstone Park Foundation, a nonprofit group formed to raise funds for Yellowstone, began marketing the 19-minute videotape the Busch Family Foundation provided to the park under the agreement. The videotape, "The Wolf Returns to Yellowstone," is narrated by Jane Fonda. It costs $19.95 and the park has so far earned about $7,000 from the sale of videotapes, Karle said. The videotape should remain popular as the more than 100 wolves now roaming Yellowstone continue to recover their historic range in and around the park. Under the agreement, the Busch Family Foundation agreed to provide the park with all its raw footage of the Yellowstone wolves. Park officials expect to receive that footage soon, said Whitney Tilt, director of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. In 2001, the footage will enter the public domain and will be available for outside use and even for commercial purposes. Although the decision to allow one film company exclusive access to the wolves drew criticism from some competing wildlife filmmakers and the press at the time, those involved consider the arrangement successful. Tilt said it could serve as a model for other high-profile wildlife recovery efforts. "While it took a great deal of energy to get it all set up, the park got what it needed without laying out any money for it," he said.
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