Wolf Nation

by Brenda Peterson

  The risk-adverse preferences of domestication—whether it’s in more cautious dogs or in humans—can have an evolutionary and ecological cost: less exploration, fewer new if radical or brave ideas, and, of course, often much less exciting rewards.

  “Wolf pups play not only as preparation for future activities, such as stalking, hunting, and social hierarchy,” Amaroq continues. “They play for fun—every chance they get.” She talks about the Legend of Lamar website with their many videos of Yellowstone wolves at play. “What appeals most of all to people is wolves—just playing.”

  She reminds me of video footage taken by wildlife videographer Bob Landis and narrated by Yellowstone biologist Douglas Smith of a young wolf trying to hunt an elk. Amaroq often shows this footage to her audiences to counter all the stereotypes of wolves as efficient killing machines. “It’s hilarious because the wolf is only seven or eight months old and goes after the elk,” Amaroq explains. “The elk just struts and chases the juvenile away. Then the wolf play-bows to the elk… and this ‘practice session’ of how to hunt continues, with this same sequence repeated multiple times. The elk handily survives, and the young wolf has learned that taking down an elk is no task for ingénues!”

  Amaroq and I riff on wolf play and why it engages us so enthusiastically. We touch on the lifework of Dr. Stuart L. Brown, a psychiatrist and clinical researcher who founded the National Institute for Play. Brown has pioneered studies on why play behavior makes our own and other animal species so successful. “Nothing lights up the brain like play,” Brown says in his very popular TED talk. His work, especially with animals, has taught him that play is not just about rehearsing for adult skills. “Play has a biological place, just like sleep and dreams do… the next step of evolution in mammals and creatures with divinely superfluous neurons will be to play,” he predicts.

  In his article “Animals at Play,” Brown expands on the rewards of play—from play fighting among brown bears to object-play with rocks as toys among New Zealand parrots, social play like somersaults and pirouettes among chimpanzees, playing to learn body language and facial signals among foxes and mountain gorillas, and play as exploring habitat among wolf pups.

  James C. Halfpenny’s Yellowstone Wolves in the Wild runs through the many reasons wolves engage in sophisticated play patterns—racing to build stamina, wrestling to learn how to take down a larger animal, dominance displays, flexibility, creativity, and maintaining social hierarchy. He describes a scene in which fifteen wolves race out of the forest onto a frozen lake. Slipping and skidding across the slick ice, the wolves are like living bumper cars crashing into each other, rolling, and tumbling together in what the biologists could only call gleeful play. Does play always have to have some evolutionary purpose or lesson? As any human will tell you, not at all. Sometimes play is just fun. Sometimes play is just play.

  Amaroq surprises me by telling tales of her nearly five years playing competitive women’s flat-track roller derby. “It’s like a game of chess on wheels,” she says. “When the two opposing teams are competing in the rink, it’s called a ‘pack.’ Skaters jam and block and pivot in this really complex, evolving sport.” She pauses and laughs, “Roller derby skaters have skate names, and my initial skate name was ‘Howl on Wheels.’ Now I use that as the team name for me and my huskies when we go urban mushing.”

  “So is it just animal survival out there on the roller derby skating rink?” I ask.

  “It is survival,” she says. “But you’re not alone. It’s teamwork. It’s truly like being part of a pack.”

  Laughter as well as play is hardwired into us. Rats have been recorded chirping, a primitive form of laughter. Psychologist Robert Provine finds a link between chimpanzee and human laughter. “Laughter is literally the sound of play, with the primal ‘pant-pant,’” he says. “The labored breathing of physical play—becoming the human ‘ha-ha.’” Laughter is not consciously controlled and therefore rises up from the most ancient and instinctive impulses of our brain. As science continues to search for “the genes that control joy,” laughter appears to be a key to understanding—perhaps even treating—human depression.

  Laughter is not always the tenor of wolf people, with so many sad statistics and often unbearable tales of generational wolf hatred and increasing wolf hunts. I hadn’t expected such a joyful encounter with Amaroq, and I didn’t want to remember that the next day she’d sit at the Wolf Advisory Group hearing about what circumstances might justify lethal intervention or “wolf culling.” So instead I ask Amaroq about why she thought wolf advocates seem like such a harmonious and noncompetitive group compared to other conservationists I’ve known. There is a buoyancy and optimism that is inspiring and necessary for those who devote their lives to wolves.

  “So many women are involved in wolf advocacy and have been all along,” Amaroq says. She explains that women wolf advocates call upon a kind of feminine pragmatism: cooperation, a focus on the long-term health of our shared habitats, and a deep understanding that when it comes to a subject as contentious and controversial as wolf recovery, this is a marathon, not a sprint. Women also truly understand that, for a wolf, it’s all about family and pups.

  “As a former criminal defense attorney, I know people make decisions based on their emotions,” Amaroq emphasizes. “So I think it’s more important to talk about how it impoverishes our souls when we kill off so many species. We see more people now open to the idea that animals have intrinsic value all their own.”

  THE SPECIAL INSIGHTS brought by women scientists is not confined to wolf research. The baboon researcher Barbara Smuts defied all the male scientists whose previous brief forays into the field portrayed baboons as locked in mortal combat over “king of the hill” hierarchies. Instead, after long field studies living alongside baboons, Smuts documented the phenomenon of “female choice” in choosing mates. She discovered that the most successful male baboons were those who, through babysitting and friendship, established strong partnerships with female matriarchs.

  In her essay “What Are Friends For?” Smuts notes that “friendship among animals is not a well-documented phenomenon.” She found that “virtually all baboons made friends” and that older males had the most friends. As they groomed each other and shared child-rearing chores, the females and their chosen male friends—not necessarily their mates—forged lifelong friendships. With these male friends, female baboons “exhibited the most reliable sign of true intimacy; she ignored her friend and simply continued whatever she was doing.” For a female of any species just to continue what she is doing without having to please, attend to, or serve an alpha male is unusual and liberating.

  Wolf families are led by an experienced breeding pair, alpha male and female. Power and responsibility are equally shared. And the relationships among other wolves in the family are not about sex, as only the alpha pair may breed—a form of self-regulating birth control among wolves. So what are those other wolves doing? They are going about their own business—cooperation, babysitting, and ensuring the survival of the family’s next generations.

  With the return of the wild wolf we’re learning more and more about their intimate family lives. Amaroq tells me about USFWS wildlife biologist Cathy Curby, who has been closely observing wolf families in northeast Alaska. In her presentation “A Family of Wolves” Curby notes that she’s “spent hundreds of hours watching caribou walk, wild sheep feed, and wolves sleep.” One summer Curby camped near a wolf den, using her spotting telescope to observe and record the daily life of a wolf family—eight adults and four pups. All the wolves were tan-brown except the white matriarch, nicknamed “Pearl.” The mother wolf was devoted to her four pups but often had to leave them to hunt so she could nurse her hungry young. One balmy day, Pearl didn’t return but instead paused to rest a little distance away. A babysitter wolf settled down beside her. Soon the babysitter wolf trotted off to the pups, leaving Pearl a little solitude. Any new mother understands how rare that quiet time is—and Pearl
seems to luxuriate, stretching and napping in the sunlit arctic tundra.

  For the babysitter wolf there was no such rest. Time after time she tried to coax the pups away from their den, across the sharp, talus rock and scree slopes, back through a quarter mile of willows to their mother. A mother wolf will train her pups to follow her by adjusting her pace: “if she walked away slowly—at the speed short puppy-legs could keep up with—the pups would accompany her; but when she walked away at an adult pace, they learned to stay where they were until her return,” notes Curby. But the babysitter wolf hadn’t mastered the pace that would convince the puppies to follow her. They have no idea their mother is awaiting them. With each attempt the wolf pups balk at the babysitter wolf’s increasingly agitated antics and stubbornly stay close to their den.

  For the observing biologist, watching the two hours it took for the babysitter wolf to persuade the four puppies to follow her was like watching a wolf learning lessons in both play and survival. Even after setting all sorts of paces—from awkward and comic slow-motion walks, to pushing the pups from their rear ends, to carrying them by the scruff of their furry necks to try to move them—nothing worked. Finally the babysitter wolf began an energetic, noisy dance of jumping and yipping while moving backward toward the rough rocks. It looks like a “Come and play!” invitation that the puppies at last accepted. All but one of the pups picked their way across the steep rocks, through the thick shrubs to their reward: mother Pearl with her full and milky teats. The pups jumped on her excitedly, now having learned to trust and obey their babysitter—a lesson it takes human children time to learn as well. If in the future the mother were to be killed by hunters, these pups would have to follow another adult to survive.

  But one of Pearl’s pups was still lingering at the den. Alone. In danger from any predator. Again the babysitter wolf returned and went through her repertoire of enticements for the pup to follow. No movement. In fact, the pup shrank away, lying down as if determined never to budge. Then the babysitter wolf tried something new. Picking up a caribou shank from a recent hunt, the babysitter wolf growled, shaking the bone. Immediately the pup leapt up and engaged in the tug-of-war over the tasty bone. Anyone who has ever played this game with a dog knows how oblivious the pet is to anything but winning this struggle. And that’s how the babysitter wolf led the recalcitrant pup, slowly backing up and over the rocks, through the willows, all the while playing a ferocious game of tug-of-war. At last the wolf pup was reunited with Pearl.

  “This glimpse into the behavior of a family of wolves taught me a great deal about how wolves interact and solve problems,” concludes biologist Curby. “It even taught me many lessons to improve my own mothering and childcare skills.”

  ANOTHER WOMAN IN WOLF RESEARCH, geneticist Linda Rutledge, at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, has tracked changes in wolf populations. In a precedent-setting New Scientist article, “Wolf Family Values: Why Wolves Belong Together,” Rutledge argues against the wildlife agencies’ single-minded focus on wolf populations as the main marker by which they manage and hunt wolves. Just studying the numbers of a wild animal—and then setting wolf-culling goals—is looking at the most superficial and simplistic data. Rutledge insists that wildlife managers “look beyond numbers” and instead make decisions based on “the social dynamics of wild creatures.” The more we understand about the social life of wolves and their family values, the better we can live alongside them in the future.

  In my studio Amaroq and I have enjoyed our afternoon together. Yet she has several hours to drive across mountain passes to get to the Eastern Washington Wolf Advisory Group meeting. As our time together ends, she says thoughtfully, “What we are doing now is really for future generations—and I do have hope for them and the wolves.

  “We really need wildlife commissions with a broader view of wildlife,” Amaroq explains. “Not just ranchers, hunters and anglers but those who represent the interests of nonconsumptive users, like tourists, photographers, educators, and conservationists. I even know some hunters who love the idea of wolves not because they want to shoot them but because they want to be out there hunting with the wolves.”

  Wildlife commissions must represent all of us, says Amaroq, because the lands and animals they control are for all of the public. “The doctrine of the Public Trust has long been applied to waterways and upheld in courts across the country as a right the whole public has—not just the monied few who want to make a buck off of a water project,” Amaroq notes. “Wildlife advocates are fighting hard to see this same principle applied by courts in cases pertaining to wildlife,” she says firmly. “That is the new reality for wildlife managers and one that conservationists see as making a big difference for the future of wolves on public lands.”

  Balancing the hopes of “hunters who want to take more wolves and tourists who want to see wolves” is every wildlife commission’s job, says a Bozeman Daily Chronicle article. Yellowstone has economically benefited from tourism—and many people come just to see wolves. Since the 1995 reintroduction of wild wolves, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming have received $35 million each year in tourism. In Alaska wildlife viewing brought $2.7 billion in state revenue in 2011.

  New reports show that wolf sightings in both Yellowstone and Alaska’s Denali National Parks have been cut in half since increased wolf hunts and wolf trapping has been allowed just beyond the protected park borders. Borders are human constructs. Wolves don’t know they’ve crossed out of a protected area into a free-fire zone until it’s too late. Visitors were “twice as likely to see a wolf when hunting wasn’t permitted adjacent to the parks,” the report concludes.

  Important new research from scientists such as University of Wisconsin’s Dr. Adrian Treves and Ohio State University’s Dr. Jeremy Bruskotter reveals that “a great threat to achieving wolf recovery is current lethal management, not intolerance by citizens.” Their 2015 open letter to Congress signed by more than seventy other scientists and scholars offers strong evidence that “the vast majority of the U.S. public holds positive attitudes toward wolves and support of the ESA”—79 to 90 percent public support. They point out that public support for wolf recovery has “actually increased substantially over the past three and a half decades.” The letter notes that special interest groups that are “vocal, but small in number” have fueled the increasing lethal management of wolves. It concludes by asking that the Great Lakes wolves remain protected under the ESA.

  In a spring 2016 follow-up research project Treves and Guillaume Chapron of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences studied decreased wolf protection laws in Wisconsin and Michigan between 1995 and 2012—and how that affected wolf populations. One of the rationales for lethal management of wolves, which is often touted by state and federal wildlife agencies, is that it will make local people more tolerant of wildlife living alongside them. This study found that the exact opposite was true: when the wolf population, when culled, declined by one-third, there was actually more poaching. “If poachers see the government killing a protected species,” the study found, “they may say to themselves, ‘Well, I can do that, too.’” Culling wolves is not the answer, says the study: “You do not reduce looting by allowing shop-lifting, but instead by having zero tolerance.”

  The authors of this new study expect a backlash from the wildlife manager establishment because it disproves their long-held lethal management practices. But the scientists hold true to their need to serve the public: “The traditions in wildlife management are finally being subjected to scientific scrutiny,” they argue, “and we are learning new things that will probably improve co-existence.” The study concludes with the truism: “Wolves are quite adaptable to humans. The question is whether humans are adaptable to wolves.”

  Perhaps it is in the West, the so-called left coast, that we will at last find ourselves more adaptable to wolf recovery than other regions. WAG has hired a veteran conflict mediator, Francine Madden. She prefers the word “conflict transformation
.” Her subtle but very effective work with WAG is showing signs of success. Madden has helped negotiate a wolf-management agreement between livestock producers and environmentalists that sets new precedents for possible partnerships in the future. Madden told all sides gathered at WAG, “Every one of you is going to have to ask yourselves if you are willing to take a risk to move in a direction of peace rather than staying with what is familiar and really comfortable.” She concluded, “There is common ground here.… We need to build on that.”

  MEANWHILE THE Center for Biological Diversity keeps on with its playful and persuasive antics. Amaroq showed me the YouTube video entitled, “What to Wear at a Wolf Rally,” a how-to in which Amaroq, using paper and bold paint, demonstrates how to make your own highly stylized and customized wolf mask.

  Amaroq asks, “Have you ever stayed home from a wolf rally because you just didn’t have anything to wear?”

  “Well, snap!” says Amaroq as the video shifts to four wolf people beautifully masquerading with their silver-gray, brown, and bright-red wolf masks, all happily howling.

  Amaroq gives step-by-step artistic directions on creating a personal wolf mask, complete with shaggy fur, eyebrows, realistic muzzle, and open eyes. The wolf-making mask video is such a tonic for those of us who have watched way too many films of wolf slaughters or seen one too many downer documentaries that leave us wishing we could leave our own species as easily as we might emigrate to another country. The YouTube video ends with this droll promise: “Next time you’re going to a wolf rally, my guess is that you’ll be the most stylish and sophisticated wolf person at the event.”