After a week of Yellowstone wolf watching, this nine-year-old is also so well schooled in the family history of the Junction Butte pack that she calls them by name: the Junction Butte sisters, F907 and F969, are simply “the JB girls.” The girl scribbles her field notes in a battered sketchpad for her school project.
At last the squall passes over the Lamar Valley, and we can all stand up straight again. Tripods and scopes become steady. Generous, dark clouds swoop over the hills, shielding us from still-intense evening sun. We wait for wolves.
“TO UNDERSTAND AN ECOSYSTEM, one also must know its human history,” wrote the longtime African Serengeti researcher R. E. Sinclair. Yellowstone’s human history is well documented: the scene of ruthless fur trade and predator control in the park from 1872 to 1926, fire, and, in the 1990s, finally rewilding of bears and wolves. Yellowstone’s success has inspired a European rewilding movement to increase wolf populations in Spain and Italy as well as in Scotland, where sheep are overgrazing. Author George Monbiot’s book, FERAL: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life, notes that in Scotland “people are less hostile to the reintroduction of the wolf than one might have imagined.… Even sheep farmers, surprisingly were split: antagonistic on balance, but not universally so.” This modern tolerance from sheep herders might vindicate Rick McIntyre’s Scottish ancestors, who were once forced to become wolf trappers before they too were also removed from their land.
After twenty years of studying Yellowstone wolves, our human history with them has also radically changed. Wolves have come back, says Douglas Smith, “because of a change in human behavior, not because their habitat has increased.” Fifty years ago, he notes, “everyone hated wolves. Now half the population hates wolves. We are progressing. It’s getting better. We are arriving at the idea that we can live with them.” Some wolves now reintroducing themselves in the West, like OR7, are descendants from these famous Yellowstone founder families.
Yellowstone is now a very different scene from when I first witnessed the reintroduction of wild wolves here in 1995. The once-sleepy streets of West Yellowstone are wide awake, even late at night. The Wolf and Grizzly Center welcomes thirteen hundred visitors every day during the high summer tourist season. The restoration of Yellowstone’s wild wolves is so lucrative for tourism that local gift shops are full of wolf T-shirts, baseball hats, books, jewelry, rugs, and other wolf memorabilia. Walking the crowded streets of West Yellowstone, one might wonder whether wolves were our national totem, our First People.
At the Speak for Wolves conference Blackfoot elder Jimmy St. Goddard’s remarked, “It’s time for mankind to realize that they are not the only sacred beings on earth.” When I interviewed him, St. Goddard told me that in his tribe, speaking out for wolves “is a spiritual fight.” Several other Native men spoke at the conference, including Rain Bear Stands Last and David Bearshield, one of the Guardians of Our Ancestors Legacy (GOAL), which is one of the largest tribal organizations in North America. GOAL is working against the current plan to delist grizzly bears. They fear that delisting the grizzly is scientifically unsound and will only encourage trophy hunting, which 99 percent of Americans oppose.
“In earlier centuries of Manifest Destiny,” Rain told me, “Americans carried a killing gene: if they did not understand a wild animal, they killed it.” His Native tradition gives him an alternative view of wildlife management. He has suggested moving endangered wildlife to tribal lands and letting tribes partner with the federal government to protect top predators. “We do not want to see what has happened to the wolf happen with the grizzly bear,” he said.
David Bearshield added, “Tribal societies have always observed wolf packs and learned their societal concepts. For example, it’s not just a female wolf who raises pups; it’s also a family responsibility. Wolves also taught tribal peoples about hunting and tracking. Our tribal scouts were called ‘wolves.’ These scouts would signal when buffalo or relatives or enemies were close.”
Rain Bear Stands Last recounted a Cheyenne wolf story told to him by his uncle, GOAL founder and Sun Dance Priest, Don Shoulderblade. In June 1876, prior to the Battle of Little Big Horn, a blind elder named Thorny Timber, Old Brave Wolf, who had the gift of speaking the language of wolves, asked his daughter to take him to the river where Custer would make his last stand. Wolves spoke to the elder and told him they had been following Custer’s soldiers from Black Dust River all the way to Little Big Horn, or what the Lakota call Greasy Grass River. Wolves warned Old Brave Wolf that the next time the sun was at the center, “soldiers will be upon you.” Because of the wolves’ warning, the Cheyenne military society kept their war ponies near their lodgings. Forewarned by the wolf clan, their tribal warriors were prepared and the first to get into the fight.
BACK ON THE LAMAR VALLEY BLUFF I can’t help but notice how many of us are wearing wolf hats and shirts as if to identify ourselves as wolf clan. Evening shadows the valley and darkens green hills. We watch with an alert anticipation—and the wolf stories continue.
Our resident alpha elder tells us that long-term Yellowstone research has showed new and surprising nuances in wolf family dynamics, especially among young wolves. There are now many examples of young wolves protecting each other, even at the risk of their own lives. This summer Kira Cassidy of the Yellowstone Wolf Project wrote the story of Triangle, a young male wolf born to the last litter of the Druid Peak pack. Smaller than both his brothers and one of his sisters, Triangle came to his sister’s defense when several members of the Hoodoo pack attacked her. “Instead of running to safety,” reports Cassidy, “Triangle jumped into the melee twice, bit one of the Hoodoo wolves and distracted the opposition long enough for his sister to escape.” After his heroic efforts Triangle was himself bitten on the back but somehow managed to flee his attackers along with his sister.
Cassidy points out that in Yellowstone 68 percent of natural wolf deaths are a result of interpack fights. In the thirty-four attacks that researchers have witnessed, other wolves tried to rescue their pack mate at least six times. Why such self-sacrifice? Cassidy confirms what we have only recently had the scientific data to acknowledge: wolves are capable of much empathy and loyalty to each other, stating, “The family is a crucial part of a wolf’s life.”
Rick McIntyre now pulls up below the trail in his muddy car, side panels painted with murals of a soaring eagle over a Yellowstone valley. He unfolds his long limbs from the car and immediately sets up his well-worn telescope and tripod. McIntyre is the very definition of calm and patience. Everyone encircles him eagerly.
“Let me just look a little,” McIntyre says, his voice as calm as an air traffic controller in the midst of our enthusiastic crowd. Settling on his metal stool, McIntyre sweeps the valley with his scope, hesitating, then scanning intently along the creek.
“You know,” our elder wolf watcher laughs and easily yields her solitary alpha status to share it with McIntyre. “Wolves have probably been here the whole damn time. Sometimes it’s only Rick can spot them.”
Rick McIntyre has been spotting and teaching the public about wolves ever since they arrived in Yellowstone. He’s given over two thousand presentations and will be writing books about their stories. McIntyre’s field notes and daily, long-term observations of Yellowstone wolves make him a trusted witness to wolf behavior. He’s seen wolves—like one of his favorites, M21—take care of a sick wolf and, after defeating other rival wolves in battle, never kill a defeated opponent. This loyal caretaking, he said, might “help explain why dogs tend to devote extra attention to a sick or depressed person.”
McIntyre also has a recent theory that dogs, who, recent research has shown, have detected cancer in our species, have inherited this expert sensory skill from wolves. This skill “developed evolutionarily as a way to help wolves survive in the wild,” McIntyre notes. “Their descendants, the modern dog, can use it to aid human beings.”
We all gather around McIntyre as if around a warm fire. His telescope is never st
ill.
“I’ve heard you haven’t missed a day of wolf watching for twenty years,” I tease McIntyre as he searches the long and lush Lamar Valley.
A faint smile, but McIntyre keeps his head down, eyes scanning with his scope. “More like fifteen,” he corrects me.
McIntyre explains that he uses telemetry to track the wolves by radio collar and has seen wolves on 95 percent of his days watching wildlife in Yellowstone. Even though he’s seen generations of wolf families, McIntyre says he’s always excited to get up at first light and watch for them. When asked in his Yellowstone Staff Report profile interview if he ever wanted just to sleep in some dawns and forego wolf watching, McIntyre says, “No. I would feel like I might miss something important… like a parent missing his or her child’s big sporting event or music recital. I need to be there.”
Now McIntyre is practicing what he does so well—explaining the real lives of wolves to those of us who usually see them only on television nature shows. In the field with wild wolves, some of whom now have celebrity status, McIntyre has explained, it is like being a “tour guide in 1964 London, pointing out some guys walking down the street who happen to be the Beatles.”
Balanced on his folding stool, McIntyre suddenly leans forward and says softly, “Quickly now… take a look.”
Instantly we line up to peer through his telescope. Among the children there is a little shoving to get to the scope, but McIntyre tolerantly offers them each a turn.
“He’s really knows how to manage wildlife,” my friend Vanessa grins as we watch McIntyre make sure everyone, especially the children, gets a chance to see a wolf.
“Do you see the yearling?” McIntyre asks as I crouch to get a better view through the cold scope.
At first I see only rolling green and the lazy gathering of bison. Then suddenly a black flash weaves through brown buffalo. She comes into focus: a sleek and long-legged young wolf trotting toward two grazing bison. The bison are so huge that they dwarf the yearling wolf, who now feints and leaps near the bison. The yearling looks like she is playing. Or is she practicing for some future hunt? After enduring a few more somewhat comic maneuvers from the yearling, both bison suddenly raise and shake their shaggy heads. Each takes only one step forward to threaten the wolf—and the yearling quickly skitters backward to safety.
It is a scene that is so vivid that we all murmur in astonishment. Everyone around me who is witnessing through a telescope the yearling practice-play at hunting the nonchalant bison narrates the events for those who have only binoculars or naked eyes. It is like hearing a story being created by oral tradition.
“She has two twin sisters,” McIntyre explains, then asks a girl who is jumping up and down waiting her turn at the telescope. “Do you have any sisters?
The girl nods excitedly and says, “These are my sisters and they are also twins!”
McIntyre nods. “This yearling female has two sisters that are her same age and also three brothers. She helps out with the little pups, so they’re about three months old. She’s fifteen months old. She’s the big sister to eight pups. She has a big family. Her mother has died, but she has two older sisters—”
“How do you know all this?” the little girl demands.
“Because he watches wolves every single day,” our alpha female says firmly.
McIntyre continues his narration, like a voice-over on a documentary. “F970, the grandmother, died in the spring… she used to be the alpha female. She is the mother of these two new mothers sharing the same den. There’s also a grandfather and father wolf. Father wolf is black… the two mothers are gray.”
It’s a dizzying amount of wolf genealogy to take in, and yet I see people scribbling in notebooks. These are regular people, not wildlife biologists, writing down family histories that are not just their own.
A new visitor joins us and greets McIntyre. “Once awhile back we saw the Druids family. Are these wolves descended from the Druid wolves?”
“Yes,” McIntyre nods. “They’re descended from the very famous Druid wolves M21 and F42.”
I’m thrilled to witness wolves descended from the steady and long-suffering M21 and the “Cinderella” wolf who survived her sister’s relentless attacks (with the help of her own sister wolves) and then mated with M21 to become the enduring alpha female of the Druids (see Chapter 5). It’s like stepping into a living history, still evolving. M21’s death at the old age of nine affected McIntyre as deeply as the loss of a good friend. “He wandered off and curled up under a tree,” McIntyre said, “looking like he had just gone to sleep.”
Older wolves in any pack are “the most influential factor on whether or not a pack defeated an opponent.” Because Yellowstone has low human-caused mortality among wolves, scientists have been able to study more “complex social organizations within wolf packs, including very different roles for old individuals.” These older wolves may actually be the “social glue” that helps the pack thrive. Their experience and knowledge, as in any culture, are passed down to help the younger generations survive.
“So these two young mothers, the sisters,” I ask McIntyre, “how are they doing with all these new pups?”
“Well, they’re going to have to work out who is the alpha,” McIntyre explains. “In the past they’ve not gotten along. The father of these pups is M890, and he’s very popular with the female wolves. We have a theory—M890 was born with black fur. He’s middle-aged. And of course,” McIntyre adds drily, “this won’t happen to anyone here, but M890 started to turn gray. We think there’s a connection between him and this other gray male, who also seems to be popular with all the females—like George Clooney.”
Suddenly McIntyre straightens on his camping stool and asks for his scope back. He makes some adjustments in its range and then announces with quiet satisfaction, “We have a pup. Look now past that river of grass and near the dead tree.” He gives the children the first turns at the telescope. “Look for anything that’s small, black, and moving. Much smaller than you might expect.”
An audible sigh of excitement rises as we all search for one of the new Junction Buttes wolf pups. It’s what our alpha woman calls “the Holy Grail” of Yellowstone wolf watching—actually witnessing a new life. When it’s my turn to watch the gray-black pup, I am amazed at how little he is silhouetted against a dark boulder, how long legged as he all but prances into the meadow.
“He’s all alone,” a woman says with some alarm. “Where are the other wolves?”
“Not far,” a veteran wolf watcher reassures us. “Never far.”
YEAR AFTER YEAR thousands more visitors will travel here to Yellowstone to experience what Douglas Smith calls “wildness in a modern age.” After over twenty years of research, after millions of people from around the world have witnessed wild wolves, after all the endless listing and delisting based on politics, not science—what has changed? Everything.
Most of all, we have changed. “Wolves are back because people wanted it,” says Smith. “We want to put real facts and real answers back in place of myths and tall tales of what people think wolves are like.” Future scientific studies will include looking at how wolf interactions might be tempered by biological kinship or escalated by wolves who are unrelated. Yellowstone scientists are patiently piecing together the many puzzles of generational wolf relationships. “That’s in the future, and it is remarkable work,” he concludes. “Rarely done.”
Even though there are still many political struggles, the Yellowstone wolves have given us an insider’s view of wolf societies that we’ve never had before. Because these wolves have been protected in the park for so long, scientists have been able to establish a “natural baseline” for wolf biology that has “led to greater insights into how nature works.” This knowledge changes our wildlife management and our policies.
“We have to get beyond the endless cycle of listing, delisting, hunting or killing and then relisting,” said Brett Haverstick, who organized the Speak for Wolves Confe
rence. “We need alternatives to just bringing lawsuits for wolf recovery.” Haverstick argues that we need a Carnivore Conservation Act, federal legislation that would permanently protect carnivores like gray wolves, cougars, coyotes, grizzly bears, and black bears. These species, he says, would then no longer be under the jurisdiction of state fish and game departments. “Hunting, trapping, snaring, and baiting would be off the table,” he says and adds, “The best available science does not support ‘managing’ these species.”
The same week I was in Yellowstone the Republican House again passed another rider to strip wolves of protection in Wyoming and the Great Lakes region. But in a nod to wolf advocates, the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission rejected a proposal to triple the wolf hunting quotas in areas around Yellowstone from two to six. Commissioner Gary Wolfe said, “I think we are putting pressure on those wolves.” This vote was noted nationally because the wildlife commission was finally more balanced by some “nonconsumptive” users of wildlife.
When a pendulum swings out and back, it never returns to its exact starting place. Wolf recovery moves forward, seemingly advances, then just as quickly regresses. But small advances grow bigger with each forward swing—and that’s where change takes place. Wolf recovery is a long game.
Yellowstone wolves are now well woven into the fabric of our human story—perhaps very much as wolves first were when our ancestors were more intimate with, and dependent upon, wilderness and wild animals. “Wildness needs wolves,” wrote Durward L. Allen in his study of the vital role of wolves in a wild community. More than ever, we need wilderness and wolves.
In Yellowstone and throughout this country as well as in our science and stories, the wolf nation must thrive if we are to make the world wild and whole again.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Every book has its believers, those allies who help the author find her way through the seeming wilderness of creation. From the beginning Merloyd Lawrence was the editorial guide for Wolf Nation, helping me build a narrative arc. It was at Merloyd’s urging that Wolf Nation strives to be both historical and yet up to date, combining science with storytelling. Sarah Jane Freymann, my longtime literary agent and coauthor on Your Life Is a Book, is my wisest ally in all my writing. I cannot imagine doing a book without her brilliant counsel, her bracing call-and-response. My fiercely talented editorial assistant, Hailey Dowling, kept pace with the revisions and tight deadlines. She is not only my right hand; she is another set of keen eyes and a quick-witted editor, with an impressive literary sensibility. My trusted, longtime editor, the writer and publisher Marlene Blessing, has lent me her guidance and poetic insights for thirty years. It was my great fortune that Kelley Roe Yavorsky line edited and midwifed Wolf Nation before birthing her own daughter. My expert researcher, Mike Scstrez, ploughed through many scientific publications to fact check, but he also challenged me on some of my own dearly held opinions. Another of my wolf researchers, Anne Griggs, lent me her wolf library, her years of Yellowstone activism, and her lifelong devotion to canis lupus.
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