By the time you reach the end of the Gray Wolf fact sheet, you should be able to summarize its biggest ideas--the ones that are developed piece by piece through the article. It's important to know what these central ideas are, especially if you will need to use the information in a research project. It's also important to understand how all of the article's details fit together logically and which are most important, at least from the author's perspective.
The first and last paragraphs of an article are the best places to look for its most central ideas. Reread those parts of the Gary Wolf fact sheet below.
| Introductory Paragraph | Concluding Paragraph |
| Second only to humans in adapting to climate extremes, gray wolves once ranged from coast to coast and from Alaska to Mexico in North America. They were absent from the East and the Southeast, which were occupied by red wolves (Canis rufus), and from the large deserts in the southwestern States. By the early 20th century, government-sponsored predator control programs and declines in prey brought gray wolves to near extinction in the lower 48 States. | Wolf recovery efforts have restored a top predator to its ecosystem and improved our understanding of the complex interactions among species in their natural environments. |
Based on these two paragraphs, what idea has the author identified as most important for readers to understand?
Gray wolves once faced extinction because of human activity, but now--because of various wolf recovery efforts--the species has been restored to its important role in American ecosystems.
As you may recall, most of the details in the fact sheet are directly related to this idea--they provide evidence to support it. However, there are additional details that are connected in less obvious ways. For example, many of the article's paragraphs describe gray wolf behavior in great detail. Why are these details included? What purpose do they serve? Reread the paragraph below, which describes one aspect of wolf behavior.
Wolf packs live within territories, which they defend from other wolves. Their territories range in size from 50 square miles to more than 1,000 square miles, depending on the available prey and seasonal prey movements. Wolves travel over large areas to hunt, as far as 30 miles in a day. Although they usually trot along at 5 miles per hour, wolves can run as fast as 40 miles per hour for short distances.
Why would readers need to know these details about wolves, to understand the fact sheet's central idea?
The details help readers understand the natural range of wolves--the amount of land they would cover, if not for human intervention--and the ways in which they establish territories. If readers understand where wolves are supposed to be and how much total territory they need, they can better understand the goals of efforts to protect them. They may also see more easily why humans have sometimes reacted negatively to wolf populations: Wolves move quickly and travel far to feed themselves and to defend their territory.
Question
The article you read is titled "Gray Wolf (Canis Lupus)" and identified by the Fish and Wildlife Service as a fact sheet. Why does it emphasize facts related to conservation of wolves along with facts about the wolves themselves?
