Wolf Nation

by Brenda Peterson

  “What do you think about the wolves returning here?” I asked when they’d finished their long, group howl.

  “It’s cool!” they again all cried out together, still in tune from their howling.

  “Yeah, I saw wolves in Yellowstone,” one of the kids spoke up, happy to have bragging rights. “They were hunting!”

  Not to be outdone, a girl searching in her backpack for her big glasses enthused, “Our whole class just adopted a wolf from the Wolf Education Center!” There was pride in her tone and immediate interest from the other kids when she talked about the wolf sisters, Motoki and Ayet. “Motoki is really shy and gets dominated a lot by her sister.” The girl told the story of the two surviving wolves as if they were her own family members.

  She explained that in her science class they had studied wolves and watched the documentary Living with Wolves about the Sawtooth wolf pack, the world’s most famous captive wolves. Filmmakers and wolf researchers Jim and Jamie Dutcher spent six years living alongside the wolf family in a tent camp high up in this wild and remote wilderness. Their work offers a rare and intimate glimpse into wolf biology and behavior. Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains were five hundred miles west of our Oregon experimental forest. But those tree-climbing kids had already made plans to go visit Motoki and sister Ayet in their retirement at the Nez Perce tribe’s Wolf Education and Conservation Center in Winchester, Idaho.

  Many of the kids climbing the trees already knew about the wolf rider and the hunts scheduled to begin that winter in Rocky Mountain states.

  “We’re gonna stop these wolf hunts if they ever try it here in Oregon,” the girl seemed to speak for all the kids. “We can do it!”

  Standing there in the benevolent shadow of the majestic old trees, I truly believed they could.

  THIS REUNION WITH the old trees and the determined children was a memory I held onto all during the next disturbing years as wolf hunts again became part of my daily news. Wolf hunting in the Rocky Mountain states began again in the winter of 2011–2012, and they were eagerly sanctioned by many state wildlife officials.

  Ed Bangs, a retired coordinator for the USFW Wolf Recovery Program, commented that killing wolves was not sound and “isn’t wildlife management—it’s farming. You are farming for elk hunters.” He added that the return to wolf hunts to “placate hunters” was telling: “A little blood satisfies a lot of anger,” he said.

  Bloodlust and backlash against wolves again had its day. In Montana there were 166 wolves killed out of a quota of 220. Most of the wolves weighed less than 100 pounds. Even after the official season in Montana was over in 2012, their Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks extended the hunt past the December 31 deadline because “not enough wolves were shot during the season. Just 105 wolves have been taken so far… and officials wanted hunters to harvest 220.” Wyoming hunters used snares and leg traps that inhumanely and very slowly strangle the wolf who tries to escape. Idaho, the self-described “ground zero” for wolves, gunned down radio-collared wolves from helicopters—a strategy that Governor Butch Otter still champions and Wildlife Services tragically employs today.

  Even in my home state of Washington, where wolves are still federally protected, at least in the western region, antiwolf factions again targeted the wolf. Ranchers suggested that wolves would attack livestock, pets, and people. They urged wolf recovery only in the urban, western part of the state, where liberal cities like Seattle passionately support it. To put this in historical perspective, in the past hundred years in North America only two people have allegedly been killed by wild wolves. Yet since 2002 bears have killed thirty-five people, and cougars have killed eleven people since 1990. In the United States domestic dogs kill twenty to thirty people every year. And human hunters kill nearly one hundred people in the United States and Canada every year and injure around one thousand. Even domestic cows kill more people than wolves do.

  As the wolf wars raged on under states’ control between 2011 and 2016, I caught up with wolf researchers Jim and Jamie Dutcher at their “Hidden Lives of Wolves” National Geographic presentation. In the standing-room-only Seattle concert hall, twelve thousand people listened to the Dutchers tell stories and show video about their field research on the Sawtooth wolves. Half of the audience was children—five thousand of them. Kids and adults were both spellbound as the Dutchers introduced us to wolves they’d come to know so well that they could recognize each one by their howls and could read their expressions, from fear to delight to wariness.

  “We’ve really learned a lot from the return of wolves,” Jamie explained. With her jet-black hair and small, wiry frame, she paced the stage. Jim was content to perch on a stool at the lectern. His silver hair reflected the subdued light of the grand hall. “In fact, it was the wolves who allowed us to become civilized. Over time, when we domesticated dogs—who descended from an extinct but common wolf ancestor—they helped us domesticate cattle and sheep. So we became a stable, agricultural society.”

  Jim Dutcher added, “Many people don’t yet know that wolves mate for life.”

  In their Living with Wolves website and many books the Dutchers tell the story of our long history of prejudice. “We completely misunderstand and reserve a spectral hatred for wolves that we show no other animal,” Jamie noted.

  When she told the kids about the rampant wolf hunting then underway in the Rocky Mountain states, they all screamed out in one strong voice: “Noooooooooo!”

  The fatal statistics for just that year of 2014 for all predator deaths were harrowing: Wildlife Services killed 322 wolves, 61,702 coyotes, 580 black bears, 305 mountain lions, 796 bobcats, 454 river otters, 2,930 foxes, 1,330 hawks, and 22,496 beavers. And the tab that taxpayers paid for Wildlife Services to destroy all of these wild animals was $1 billion. Jamie announced that at this date—the spring of 2014—over 2,262 wolves had already been killed since the 2011 federal delisting. She explained that Idaho governor Butch Otter proposed to reduce the wolf population to an unsustainable 100 animals. (This proposal would soon pass the Idaho State Senate.)

  For years the Dutchers’ research has been helpful in countering the regressive default to wolf hunting on the part of wildlife managers. “It’s a policy that shows no science or real understanding of the species’ survival,” Jim Dutcher told me in a follow-up interview. “We can’t treat wolves like rabbits or deer or like something that simply grows back. Just imagine if you killed off most of the members of your family—and expected the animals to go on as if nothing devastating had happened?”

  It was an analogy that brought home just how complex and integrated wolf families are. Like us. His experience replicates what new research is proving—that wolf culling may actually end up hurting ranchers.

  “When you decimate a pack—especially the experienced alphas—you end up with a younger, dysfunctional, and smaller family,” Jim concluded. “The young wolves really don’t know how to take care of themselves or hunt down larger prey. So they go after slower, easier animals—like the rancher’s livestock.”

  “Wolves are such highly intelligent and social animals,” Jamie echoed. “But we don’t want to acknowledge that… because it makes it so much easier to hate them.”

  Then she explained that when a wolf pack loses one of the family members, their howls actually change. “When the Sawtooth lost their omega wolf to a cougar attack, the whole pack mourned his loss. They moped around, tails tucked, ears back. For six weeks they even stopped playing. Their howls took on a searching and mournful quality.”

  The Dutchers’ work has revealed new insights into the close-knit family bonds among wolves. “We once found a wolf skull with signs of a broken jaw,” Jamie explained. “But the jawbones had mended, and the wolf continued to live for several years after the injury. The only way that wolf could have survived is if the other family members fed him, regurgitating for him and refusing to leave him behind.”

  It was not so dissimilar, Jim said, as when a human dies and their dog grow
s depressed and howls. Jim told the story of when a wolf was shot down, “the whole family howled for days and days. The wolves then traveled in figure-eight patterns as if searching for that lost wolf.”

  We talked about the future for wolves in America. “Remember that half your Seattle audience was children,” Jamie reminded me. “Do you know about Kids4Wolves and their social media campaigns to help wolves?”

  I was reminded of the tree-climbing kids in the Oregon forest and their keen interest in wolf recovery. I had never heard of Kids4Wolves or its hugely popular Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook sites that went live in 2013 and now have twenty-one thousand followers.

  “I really think we might have to wait another generation,” Jamie concluded. “The hope is in the children.”

  THAT NEXT GENERATION of wolf educators and advocates is here and already at work saving wild wolves. Washington State high schooler Story Warren, who was awarded a 2016 President’s Environmental Youth Award, is the founder of Kids4Wolves. I finally caught up with this busy young woman in the early summer of 2016 right before she was journeying to the nation’s capital to accept the PEYA at the White House. At my waterfront studio one of the first things she did was borrow my binoculars to watch an osprey diving and clutching a wriggling fish in its beak.

  Story understands predator-prey relationships as a natural cycle of life. She has a biologist’s perspective that comes from long hours studying wolves in the wild. “The first time I saw a wild wolf in Yellowstone I was six years old,” she recalls, her voice clear, her dark blue eyes still riveted on the waves—and perhaps spotting another osprey fishing the Salish Sea. “The wolf was just a black dot in the telescope, but I kept following that dot in the snow.”

  That first glimpse of a wolf leaping in the snow captured Story’s attention. She has been observing and following wild wolves ever since. Her family returned to Yellowstone every few years after that. “But pretty soon,” Story smiles, “we started visiting the Yellowstone wolves three times a year… whenever I had more than a week off from school.”

  Story launches into a detailed and very impressive record of Yellowstone wolf genealogies, complete with what she calls “all the crazy plot twists” of family dynamics. Listening to Story expound on her research, it’s impossible to tell her apart from any wolf biologist I’ve known. There is the same passion and practicality. Story can easily rattle off statistics—wolf depredation by territory or pack, wolves poached from each family, legislation that threatens the wolf recovery in each region, from red wolves in North Carolina to the recent killing of an Oregon alpha male, OR-4. Someone taking on the responsibility of educating her twenty-one thousand followers on Instagram needs this comprehensive knowledge.

  “Why did you start Kids4Wolves?” I ask her.

  Story’s face darkens. “After they shot the female matriarch, 06, and 754M, her mate’s brother, outside the Yellowstone Park boundaries,” she says, “I was so upset that I went to my parents and said, ‘I’m sick of you adults not getting anything done. Can I open an Instagram page for kids and wolves?’”

  That was in December 2012, and now Story spends more than an hour a day handling her Kids4Wolves online grassroots organization. That’s in addition to her homework. For this young science student wildlife is not just a study; it is already a calling, an avocation. On weekends she lugs a heavy backpack through knee-deep snow to track and document a wild wolf pack now claiming territory in Washington’s mountains. Story started looking for the wolves in 2013 and didn’t find any until the summer of 2014.

  “The wolf pack has gone through a lot,” Story explains, her voice shifting into a rather somber tone. “At least one member was poached, and there were no puppies last year.”

  “How is it different tracking wolves in Washington instead of just observing them someplace like Yellowstone?” I ask her.

  “It’s really different,” Story says. “Remember, Yellowstone Park has no cattle. But when you’re tracking wolves on the ground here, where there’s a lot of cattle grazing on public land, you see how often wolves and cattle are actually in contact. The wolves are raising their pups among cattle. For the most part, wolves don’t see the cattle as prey, and sometimes the living situation can continue for years.”

  The wolf family that Story has been diligently tracking has successfully shared the land with cattle for the past five to six years without a single known depredation until last year. Story has noticed that the cattle have adapted to the wolves recently by becoming much more alert. “Cows act more like elk. Now, with wolves around, cows will huddle together facing outward,” Story explains. “And I’ve heard of situations where mother cows will actually chase off wolves to protect their calves—just like elk do.… Wolves don’t chase cows who meet their advance. Cows will often hightail it after the wolves!”

  Like any good wildlife biologist in the field, Story is keeping data on her wolf tracking. “Every single day wolves and cattle are together during the summer grazing season,” Story reminds me, speaking quickly and earnestly. “We see cows right where we see wolf tracks. No way for wolves to live there without being among cattle all the time… sharing territory.”

  Story credits the Washington State ranchers for their use of proactive, nonlethal techniques to ward off wolves from their free-ranging cattle grazing on public land. “Many ranchers are using range riders to patrol their cattle and only ask for a wolf to be killed as a last resort.”

  Story would like to train as a range rider herself and in the future work with ranchers to facilitate wolf recovery. She already engages with ranch kids who respond to her blogs or Facebook posts.

  “When I first hear from a young rancher or hunter,” Story says wryly, “it usually starts with something hateful or violent… and I always try to begin a civil conversation. If I ask them questions about why they dislike wolves, then I can also learn a lot.” She pauses thoughtfully. “Sometimes when I talk to these other kids and show them actual data… like how many cattle wolves actually kill or examples of ranchers successfully using nonlethal tools… there is a chance for an open exchange. Kids know what their parents tell them, and often there’s no other point of view in their communities. So I just listen and keep asking them what their experience with wolves is. Then I tell them mine. If they prove me wrong, well, then I’ve learned something.” Story, however, doesn’t mince words when it comes to speaking out strongly about something she finds disturbing—like the Wildlife Services’ use of “Judas wolves” in their culling strategies.

  “Most of the time I can see why wildlife managers do what they do, and sometimes it’s hard to know what is the right course of action in a wildlife situation,” says Story. “But when it comes to a species as social and intelligent as wolves, I believe science as well as ethics should be a major consideration. There are some situations where I’m just not seeing that.” In her Kids4Wolves blog Story wrote:

  Sometimes these wolves were collared for research, but sometimes they are collared specifically so they can later lead the helicopters to their packs. After the sharpshooters have killed as many members of that wolf’s family as they can, they leave the collared wolf alive. The hope is that this collared wolf will later join up with other wolves or form its own pack, and the helicopters can come back the next year, using the collared wolf to track down and kill its family yet again. Conceivably this collared wolf could go year after year watching its pack die, oblivious that it is the one leading the helicopters straight to them. These wolves are sometimes called Judas wolves.

  This Judas wolf strategy is officially called “collaring for later control” by the Idaho wildlife managers. Imagine losing all of your family—over and over again. The lone wolf repeatedly loses his family for the four-year life of the radio-collar batteries. It’s one of the most inhumane wolf-control practices, harking back to the Old-West days when cowboys on horseback would each lasso a trapped wolf and then ride off in four different directions, literally tearing the wolf l
imb from limb.

  One of the most poignant and remarkable of Story’s Kids4Wolves/YouTube channel posts is, “Kids to Secretary Jewell: Follow the Science.” These brief but powerful video comments feature kids, from ages seven to eighteen, all across the country opposing Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell’s 2014 proposal to delist the gray wolf from the Endangered Species List. In their videos the kids point out that Jewell has promised to abide by “the best available science” on wolf recovery. Yet the scientists have rejected this delisting proposal, and the kids demand, “Who will inherit the benefits or consequences of your decision?”

  Watching these kids ask of us a future that includes wild wolves, I’m reminded of the venerable author Ursula LeGuin at a recent Seattle reading. When a teen stood up to ask LeGuin, “What is the most important thing your generation can give ours?” LeGuin answered without hesitation, “Hope.”

  Does Story feel hopeful about the future of wildlife—especially wolves—in America?

  The young woman surprises me with her direct and honest answer. “I’m a pretty cynical person,” she says. “I doubt I’ll ever accomplish anything concrete with Kids4Wolves.” Story pauses and then continues, “There is still so much hatred in rural cultures, and it seems to be passed down through the generations.” She adds with more energy, “But there is progress, especially here in Washington. I see the most hope here with all the stakeholders talking to each other, like with the Wolf Advisory Group.” A recent Kids4Wolves website post notes that Idaho ranks forty-ninth on school spending in the United States and forty-sixth in overall education. “Makes you wonder,” it asks, “if that $400,000 per year from the legislature to be spent exclusively for killing wolves could be better spent on educating Idaho’s kids.”

  It’s a good question. What if these state monies spent on lethal control of wolves were redirected to educating the next generation? Or given to ranchers to fund nonlethal wolf deterrence? The federal delisting of wolves in Idaho and other states through a congressional budget rider set a dangerous precedent for the future of wild animals and for our own children’s’ heritage, and it foreshadowed the now-repeated attempts to gut the popular Endangered Species Act by a Congress overrun by the Tea Party’s trigger-itch for budget cuts.