Reading Barry Lopez's book "Of Wolves and Men":
[...] disadvantage. The important thing to bear in mind is that generally wolves do not overrun the prey population and kill it out, although they have been known to do so, just as they have, extraordinary as it seems, practiced a kind of fallow-field farming by not killing deer in certain parts of their territories for four or five years, letting the prey population recover there.
I think he got his fiction mixed up with reality, wolves don't live very long; this would be half of their lifespan.
They could very well be leaving an area alone because there's less of their favorite prey there. How would you determine their motivation?
Wolf science needs more scrutiny on its claims, ever since the alpha male paper which did an incredible amount of damage to society.
To me it sounds like they moved to richer areas where it was easier to find suitable prey.
Fallow-field farming doesn't seem like a good analogy at all here. Leaving a field fallow allows other things to grow in the field which then provide nutrients for the crop you grow after re-sowing. This is just waiting for the population to recover. That would be more like not harvesting as frequently, rather than not sowing as frequently.
Interesting if true.
Really makes me feel the one quote from The Matrix where Agent Smith calls humans a disease for constantly moving to one area, consuming all the resources in said area and moving on.
In comparison, animals are so much more considerate.
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