When I answered the question about there is/are a lot of wolves. It appears that I am in a tiny minority. The consensus is that there are is the correct answer. I remember in high school having a teacher correct me (or do me the disservice?) of explaining that a lot is a singular noun. Frankly I always thought it was a little uncomfortable in some situations. So my apologies to Cate, Jesse and Phil and to So28. Even my wife disagrees with me (because she a first generation American with her family coming from England. So I apologize. However, in my defense, I spent many years writing reports for a major bank where my supervisors were grammar tyrants and no one ever corrected me on this point. Also, I created a document in Word and wrote there are a lot of wolves and there is a lot of wolves. I put the grammar check on formal ,the highest level. Both sentences got a score of 100%.
(As an aside, when I first got married, I started hearing all sorts of strange things. That lasted until we were transferred to London and I discovered that people really talk that way.)
My apologies but I did learn something.
Je suis désolé et navré d’avoir répondu comme je l’ai fait. J’espère que après tant d’années, je ne vais pas apprendre que il y ont beaucoup de loups est correcte.