Netflix original titles released per year

Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolves have multiplied in close proportion to Netflix original titles, which suggests an alpine recovery program nobody told the streaming industry about. The wolves, presumably, are not watching. They are too busy being wolves.

Both rose for entirely unrelated reasons. The Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf population recovered through the 2000s and 2010s after federal reintroduction efforts and habitat protection, while Netflix's original content output exploded after 2013 as the company shifted to in-house production. One ecological success, one entertainment business strategy.

So the correlation is two recovery stories from very different ecosystems. The wolves came back. The Oscars, more reluctantly, did too.