The Wolf: Messenger of God?

Canis lupis, lupis in the north, rufus in the Southeast and baileyi in the Southwest. According to the books, the Wolf of North America is 70 to 120 pounds. A big dog, saddled with the same genetic material as the common schnauzer. But the wolf is a perfect machine perfected for working in wildness. It is a symbol and for some a messenger of God.

It was November, the snow was falling, the trail starting to white out and across the river, a family of wolves were dining on an early morning meal of Lamar Valley elk. Yellowstone, the National Park, is found in northwestern Wyoming. The Lamar River drains the Mirror Plateau country and meets the Yellowstone River in the north central part of the park.

Two friends are standing next to a Bozeman, Montana rental car, in the middle of a roadside pull-out six or seven miles east of Tower Junction. It was early morning. Eight power binoculars in hand observing one of the great canids of the world, we happily risked getting snowed in. We were not alone. We had camped the previous night in a motel in Gardner, Montana, home of the north entrance to the park. Off season rates. We ate at a local restaurant, drank at the bar, bought gas at the local station and packed a lunch from geedunks we bought at the local market. In short we spent our dollars, helped the local economy and in general were not much of a bother. I like to think we were being good tourists.

The point I want to make is this; Yellowstone is not in British Columbia or the Yukon and the wolf watching tale is not a reading from Hafen and Carter's "Trappers of the Far West." Yellowstone National Park is one of the natural wonders of the world, a world heritage site, but it was not just the natural beauty of the park that brought us there, it was the chance to see and hear a wolf in the wild. We were among the tens of thousands that have visited the park for the same reason.

Why would conservationists and tourists travel to Yellowstone to Wolf watch? The Simple answer is that the Wolf is one of the great animals of the world. It is considered by many (by most if the polls are any indication) to be one of the greatest species in our North American wildlife heritage.

However, government policy was not always based on polling results and from the time of European occupation until recently, the wolf did not always engender high ratings. There were many, and there still are, who hate and loathe the wolf. The wolf was made a target... Death a symbol of wildness tamed.

By the late 1880s most of the bison had been destroyed and big game was being ravaged by market hunters. In the west, the last stronghold of the wolf, times were hard. They were hard for settlers, Native Americans and they were hard for predators. Wolves and other predators were forced to adapt to cowboy excess, taking what food they could. Cattle and sheep numbers were headed toward record numbers. It was a simple equation: No bison, deer and elk = starvation or depredation. The wolves, acting on ancient social practices and DNA, did what wolves are want to do---they avoided starvation, they adapted. This adaptation took many forms but the one pattern ranchers and stockman would not tolerate was the killing of livestock. Even limited killing was intolerable to this provincial clan.

However ranchers were not alone in hating the wolf. Wolves had long been a target. From the time the Massachusetts Bay Colony levied its first wolf bounty to the turn of the 19th century the wolf was unrelentingly hunted. But by the start of the 20th century the end was in sight. Massive droughts in the late 19th century added to the loss of the wolves' natural prey and left the prairies littered with dead and dying cattle. Wolves preyed on and ended the suffering of over abundant cattle and stock growers and their federally funded compatriots at the United States Biological Survey, USBS ( "Animal Damage Control" aka "Wildlife Services" ) escalated their predator war in earnest.

Over the next 60 some years they spent millions upon millions of dollars, federally funded tax dollars, to eradicate the wolf from the lower 48. With guns, traps, poisons, denning and paid bounties the USBS worked, side by side, hip to hip, and holster to holster with ranch hands to rid the range of wolves. Most professional hunters were good with their rifles; they had plenty of practice, but they were better with their poisons. The real killer, the final coup de gras, was the poisoned carcass. "Hunters" baited the carcass with strychnine, placed the harvested animal in known wolf country and returned after several days to gather the dead. And to bury the many "non-target" birds and smaller predators that fell prey to their deadly hoax.

Unlike today's federal agents, these early pioneers in "wildlife management" had no restrictions and fewer qualms. They were very good at what they did. By the 1950s the wolf population in the lower forty-eight had dropped from an estimated 2 million to just a few hundred. For all intents and purposes, the wolf was gone. It had been exterminated from 99% of its range.

But the wolf was not the only target, all predators were treated as the enemy. The war on wolves is one symptom of an overall sickness called "predator prejudice" that still infects the rural west. The same good folks that brought on the elimination of the wolf wished the same fate on the mountain lion, grizzly bear, and any other animal deemed competition.

The Return...
Despite a mountain of scientific evidence to the contrary, the wolf is still vilified as a rampant killer and an evil herald bent on destroying a way of life. Even in this more "enlightened" age, many consider it a ruthless, savage beast. "The wolf is an indiscriminate killer!" cries the rancher. "It will ravage your children and dig up the graves of the recently dead!" cries the wife.

It is true the wolf kills and at times it kills in ways that we do not understand. But ruthless and indiscriminate it is not. These are merely superficial labels foisted on an animal that we do not fully understand. In truth more people are killed by bad egg salad in one year than have ever been killed by wolves. But bad egg salad does not sell tabloids to the ignorant and intolerant.

It is ignorance and intolerance that killed the wolf and even today with millions in favor of wolf reintroduction it is these same two demons that stall and continue to escalate the cost of these efforts. The wolf is not an endangered species because it lacks prey or habitat. It is listed because rural human beings have failed to show they have the humility and greatness of heart to share the land with another of God's creatures.

Although there are some that wish it were not so, wolves held on in Canada, the upper midwest and in Mexico. Times change and with that change comes greater understanding. The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is a prime example of that enhanced understanding. Times have changed and predator ecology is better understood today than at anytime in our history. With limits on killing wolves imposed by the ESA, the wolves returned. For the wolf, being listed as endangered was the first step on a long and still untraveled, trail to recovery. They loped along ancient runways into former homelands, set up house and established territory. They have started on a slow and bumpy road to recovery.

While wolves were moving south from Canada and spreading east from the Boundary Waters Wilderness, other populations were being reestablished in our national parks. The Red Wolf was reintroduced into the Great Smokey Mountain National Park region and still holds on in the Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge. The reintroduction effort In Yellowstone National Park has been the most successful and is widely acclaimed as one of the great restoration undertakings in the history of wildlife management. Wolves in Yellowstone have changed the social pattern of competing predators and reduced the number of prey. Wolves in Yellowstone have turned out to be a boom to the ecology and commerce of the region. In general wolves have been a wonderful addition to an otherwise depauperate wildlife and human community.

However, as successful as this project has been, it has come at a cost. A recent report found that wolves rarely survive outside of the recovery area. In the Greater Yellowstone region two-thirds (22 of 30) of the human-caused moralities have occurred outside the national park, even though the wolves spend the majority of their lives within the park borders. About half of the dead wolves were killed because they preyed on livestock; the other half were illegally shot or died in government traps set to capture coyotes. Even in and around our national parks the wolf is not yet welcomed by the ignorant.

In the Southwest the numbers are even more disturbing. Mexican Wolves have been reintroduced into Arizona's Blue Range Primitive Area. With a high prey base, very few cattle and even fewer roads, this would seem to be the landscape of tolerance that any predator would relish. Unfortunately it just ain't so. Of the original 11 wolves released into the wilds of Eastern Arizona 5 died and one is missing in action. All of the dead wolves were shot and the others were eventually removed for their own safety. Once again fear and story tellers have painted a target on the wolf.

The Mexican Wolf is considered by many to be the most endangered large carnivore in North America. At one time it numbered less than a hand full of known individuals. The last known wild animals were captured in Mexico in 1978 and their offspring raised in captive breeding facilities in Mexico and the United States. The young were returned to the wild in March 1998; a little over a year later they were gone---they were never given a chance.

But the effort continues. After failing in the first round, the Fish and Wildlife Service is back. Better equipped, so they say, to deal with the eco-terrorists and wildlife poachers that murdered the early recruits. In all fields of battle, walking point has never been an envious position. The same holds true for the Mexican Wolf. The first wolves to lead a band that will establish a legacy for the future were the first to fall. We can only hope that they will not suffer the same fate.

The federal government has spent millions of taxpayer dollars to turn the tide in the war on wolves. They have spent untold millions more because they have been forced to placate a small-minded minority. While the vast majority support the wolf and most consider it one of the great creatures of the known universe, the farm bureau and cattle industry busily continue to thwart the will of the people. In spite of the great success of the Yellowstone reintroduction the cattlemen continue to battle in the courts and the criminals continue to kill on the land.

The war on the wolf, like so many other "customs and cultures" of the American West, is based on a stock pile of irrational fear and illogical exaggeration. This myth is continually reinforced in order to maintain the cowboy status quo. It is reinforced by lies in a fruitless attempt to constrain the changing landscape and maintain control.

They battle for one reason and one reason only. They fear this animal in a way that no animal has ever been feared. They fear what this animal symbolizes. Even though a "little red riding hood" myth once permeated most of society and found fertile ground in the livestock industry, the cattlemen truly fear the challenge the wolf makes to their self-declared independent life. The fiercely independent westerner, hero of the John Wayne movie, cowers in the face of the truly independent wolf. The fear is real---the wolf and other endangered animals will challenge the cultural hegemony of the western rancher. It will cause them to adjust. Like it or not it will force them to come into the 21st century.

The wolf is a symbol. It is a symbol of a natural heritage equal to or maybe greater than the landed gentry, the timber baron or the logger, miner, saloon keeper and railroad . It is a symbol of wildness and self-willed land. It is a very ancient and very valuable addition to our heritage and one that needs to be shared by all. When the wolf can no longer work the wild lands we may no longer have land worth working. As Henry David Thoreau once pointed out "In Wildness is the salvation of the world."

Rod Mondt has worked for the U.S. Forest Service and for the National Park Service at Yellowstone National Park. He has been a strong advocate for wolf reintroduction for almost a decade.

For more on wolves contact The Defenders of Wildlife at: www.defenders.org