Yellowstone reintroduced gray wolves in 1995. Lewis and colleagues started with estimates of how wolves move and leave urine scent marks. He said the animals can travel 5 mph, and when they encounter scent marks from another pack, they tend to move away from them. The wolf sees the world through its nose like we see it through our eyes. Scent tells them where their prey is and where other wolves' scent marks are.
Scents give wolves sort of an information superhighway to navigate around their territories.
So the concentration of scent marks is heaviest along territory boundaries. The results were compared with real observations of the density of real wolves or other carnivores. In a 1993 study in the journal Nature, Lewis and University of Washington mathematician James Murray showed the computer simulation accurately reflected how wolf packs in Minnesota established territories separated by mile-wide buffer zones. The study showed that because wolves either stay out of buffer zones or fight each other when they meet, buffer zones are safe havens for deer. Field studies showed that is exactly what happens.