A record number of Yellowstone wolves have been killed. Conservationists are worried

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This winter saw the most wolves from Yellowstone National Park killed in about a century. That's because states neighboring the park changed hunting rules in an effort to reduce the animals' numbers. At the same time, wolf biologists inside the park are finding out what losing the animals means.

"This was the winter of my discontent," Yellowstone National Park senior wolf biologist Doug Smith says while driving over a washboarded dirt road near the park's northern border.

"The park line's right over here, and that's where a lot of the controversy occurred," he says, gesturing to the unmarked edge of the park just in front of us.

There's no wolf hunting inside the park itself, but when wolves set paw over the boundary into Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, they're fair game, at least during the hunting seasons that states are allowed to establish. This season, hunters killed 25 wolves — about 20% of the park's population. Smith says the wolf population varies throughout the year. Right now, he estimates the population is at something of a low point — likely numbering in the 80s.