Wolf Nation
Page 29
This book is built upon many valiant voices of wolf advocates whose interviews make Wolf Nation a chorus, not just a solo: Yellowstone’s “Wolf Man,” Rick McIntyre, has studied and taught thousands of people about wolves for decades. When I was covering the 1995 wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone, it was Rick who firmly told me, “The wolf needs storytellers.” His stories have forever changed the way we understand and value wolves. I am especially thankful for in-depth and remarkable conversations about wolves with Amaroq Weiss of the Center for Biological Diversity; formidable French classical pianist Helene Grimaud, founder of the Wolf Conservation Center, and Maggie Howell, its director; far-sighted wolf biologist Christina Eisenberg; the knowledgeable Suzanne Stone of the Defenders of Wildlife; and those enduring wolf champions Wendy Spencer, Diane Gallegos, and Kim Young of Wolf Haven International.
Others whose wolf stories and science have profoundly influenced and inspired this book are Wolf Fund advocate and author Renee Askins; the late, great wolf researcher Gordon Haber; Alaska’s Vic van Ballenberghe; Yellowstone Wolf Project leader Douglas Smith; the “Living with Wolves” researchers, Jim and Jamie Dutcher; Laurie Lyman of Yellowstone Reports; and Story Warren of Kids4Wolves. Helpmates for this book include the French artist Virginie Baude of Among the Wolves Studio, Brett Haverstick of Speak for Wolves, and the Native wildlife activists David Bearshield, Rain Bear Stands Last—and always the revelations of my longtime coauthor, Linda Hogan, whose essay “Deify the Wolf” should be required reading for all wildlife managers. This book is graced by wildlife artist William Harrison’s gorgeous illustrations, Jane Raese’s elegant book design, the reassuring expertise of Christine Marra’s editorial production, and the hardworking publicist Michael Giarratano. Wolf portraits by wildlife photographers and my often coauthors, Annie Marie Musselman and Robin Lindsey, enliven my study and screen as I write. The intuitive Yeats scholar Anne DeVore has helped me navigate the literary life for decades.
Every author needs muses, and mine are both animal and human: my father, Chief Emeritus of the US Forest Service, first generously called me to meet him and witness Alaska’s 1993 Wolf Summit; my mother has filled my home with wolf art; my brother, Dana Mark, with his daughters and family, offers such support and loving kindness; my smart and witty friend Tracey Conway and her Siberian husky, Ella; Vanessa Adams, my traveling editorial assistant and photographer; my chosen sister, the editor and publisher Maureen Michelson; my musical mentor, Dianochka Shvets; my neighbor and time twin, Mindy Exum; and the gifted acupuncturists who keep me healthy and productive, Jim and Carey. The weekly dialogue with my students in our Salish Sea Writers community sustains my own work. I’m always amused and grateful for the felines Loki and Tao, who sit on my lap as I write—and are no longer startled by haunting wolf howls echoing out of my computer. Finally, my deepest gratitude to the wolves who have endured our history yet still claim their birthright in our wild lands.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
As a novelist and nature writer, Brenda Peterson’s curiosity about and respect for nature radiates through her twenty books, which range from her first memoir, Build Me an Ark: A Life with Animals, chosen as a Best Spiritual Book of 2001, to three novels, one of which, Duck and Cover, was chosen by New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year. Her second memoir, I Want to Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth, was selected by the Christian Science Monitor as among the Top Ten Best Non-Fiction Books and chosen as an Indie Next and a Great Read.
Her nonfiction books include Living by Water and the National Geographic book Sightings: The Gray Whale’s Mysterious Journey. Peterson’s anthology, Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals, is taught in university courses. Her nonfiction has appeared in numerous national newspapers, journals, and magazines, including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, Sierra, Reader’s Digest, and Christian Science Monitor. Oprah.com and the Oprah Book Club Newsletter often featured her Your Life Is a Book: How to Craft and Publish Your Memoir. Peterson’s novels include Animal Heart, River of Light, Becoming the Enemy, The Drowning World, and Tattoo Master. Children’s books include Leopard and Silkie and Seal Pup Rescue, named an Outstanding Science Book for Students K–12, and the forthcoming Wild Orca and Lobo: A Wolf Family Returns Home. Her recent best-selling photo-essay book is Wolf Haven: Sanctuary and the Future of Wolves in North America.
Peterson lives in Seattle. For the past two decades she has studied and written about animals, especially marine mammals and wolves. Since 1993 Peterson has contributed environmental commentary to NPR and is a frequent contributor for The Huffington Post. Read more about Peterson’s books on her website, www.BrendaPetersonBooks.com.
ORGANIZATIONS WORKING TO PRESERVE WILD WOLVES
Center for Biological Diversity
San Francisco, California
www.biologicaldiversity.org
Defenders of Wildlife
www.defenders.org
Endangered Wolf Center
endangeredwolfcenter.org
Howling for Justice
https://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com
Humane Society of the United States
Washington, DC
http://hsus.org
Living with Wolves
Sun Valley, Idaho
www.livingwithwolves.org
Lobos of the Southwest
http://mexicanwolves.org
Mexican Wolf Recovery Program
www.fws.gov/southwest/es/mexicanwolf
National Wolfwatcher Coalition
http://wolfwatcher.org
Natural Resources Defense Council
www.nrdc.org
Oregon Wild
http://www.oregonwild.org
Pacific Wild
http://pacificwild.org
Red Wolf Coalition
redwolves.com
Rick Lamplugh’s blog
http://ricklamplugh.blogspot.com
Speak for Wolves blog
www.speakforwolves.org
US Department of Fish and Wildlife
www.fws.gov
Wolf Advisory Group
http://wdfw.wa.gov/about/advisory/wag/
Wolf Conservation Center
Salem, New York
http://nywolf.org
Wolf Education and Conservation Center
Winchester, Idaho
http://wolfcenter.org
Wolf Haven International
Tenino, Washington
http://wolfhaven.org
Wolves and Writing
https://wolvesandwriting.com
Wolves in Yellowstone
www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/wolves.htm
Wood River Wolf Project
Idaho
www.facebook.com/woodriverwolfproject
Yellowstone Reports
www.yellowstonereports.com
NOTES
CHAPTER 1. AN HISTORIC RAGE
Search the Internet for “war against the wolf”: “We Didn’t Domesticate Dogs. They Domesticated Us,” White Wolf Pack, www.whitewolfpack.com/2013/03/we-didnt-domesticate-dogs-they.html.
“From the men’s cave comes the howling of wolves: Linda Hogan, “The Caves,” in Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 18, 35.
“What the colonists tried to do in their local area: Rick McIntyre, War Against the Wolf (Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press, 1995), 12–14, 24.
Early hunter-gatherer cultures coexisted: Rick McIntyre, A Society of Wolves (Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press, 1993), 18.
“there may have been a faithful Fido: Scott Neuman, “Who Let the Dogs In? We Did, About 30,000 Years Ago,” NPR, May 22, 2015, www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/05/22/408784216/who-let-the-dogs-in-we-did-about-30-000-years-ago.
But genetic studies reported: Virginia Morell, “From Wolf to Dog,” Scientific American, June 16, 2015, 31–32.
McIntyre tells the story of visiting an Alaskan Inupiat: McIntyre, War Agains
t the Wolf, 12–14.
“the U.S. Forest Service acquiesced to the stockowners: Bruce Hampton and Henry Holt, The Great American Wolf (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997).
A 1907 Department of Agriculture bulletin: McIntyre, War Against the Wolf, 149.
More recently the USDA reported: Emerson Urry, “‘Secret’ Federal Agency Admits Killing 3.2 Million Wild Animals in U.S. Last Year Alone,” Enviro News, June 27, 2016.
On its website Wildlife Services’ official mission: “Agriculture’s Misnamed Agency,” New York Times, July 17, 2013.
In the United States hunters are mostly male: USFW census report 2011: US Department of the Interior, US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Department of Commerce, “2011 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation” (US Census Bureau, February 2014).
Contrast this agency’s “take” with the fact: US Fish and Wildlife Service, “Birding in the United States: A Demographic and Economic Analysis” (Arlington, VA: US Fish and Wildlife Service, December 2013.
An award-winning investigative documentary: Predator Defense quotes from film: Exposed. See also “Meet the Whistle-Blowers,” Predator Defense, www.predatordefense.org/exposed/index.htm#whistle.
These often-hidden toxins: Christopher Ketcham, “The Rogue Agency: A USDA Program That Tortures Dogs and Kills Endangered Species,” Harper’s, March 2016; “The USDA’s War on Wildlife,” Predator Defense, www.predatordefense.org/USDA.htm.
Since the 1914 federal appropriation, the war against: John A. Shivik, The Predator Paradox (Boston: Beacon Press, 2014), 12.
This 2011 federal deslisting not based: Virginia Morell, “U.S. Plan to Lift Wolf Protections in Doubt After Experts Question Science,” Science Insider, February 8, 2014.
Wolf trapper turned wolf advocate, Carter Niemeyer: Carter Niemeyer, Wolfer (Boise, ID: Bottlefly Press, 2012), 280, 284, 287.
A 2011 report from the Department of Agriculture: “Coexisting with Large Carnivores,” Endangered Wolf Center, 2011.
Wolf parents pass down hunting skills: “Fair Chase Ethics,” Boone and Crockett Club, www.boone-crockett.org/huntingEthics/ethics_overview.asp?area=huntingEthics.
CHAPTER 2. “WHO SPEAKS FOR WOLF?“
One of the most far-sighted and still ecologically: Paula Underwood, Who Speaks for Wolf: A Native American Learning Story (San Anselmo, CA: Learning Way, 1991). Note: All spelling, phrasing, and capitalizations are from the original poem.
Writing in his journal, Thoreau mourned: Henry David Thoreau, The Journals of Henry David Thoreau (New York: Dover Publications, [1906] 1962); reprinted in McIntyre, War Against the Wolf, 51–52.
His best-selling animal stories: Ernest Thompson Seton, “Lobo, the King of Currumpaw,” in Wild Animals I Have Known (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/files/3031/3031-h/3031-h.htm.
Lobo’s cries were “sadder than I could possibly”: Steve Gooder, “A Man, a Wolf and a Whole New World,” Telegraph, March 29, 2008.
Lobo’s death profoundly changed Seton: Seton, “Lobo: King of the Currumpaw.”
In his “Note to the Reader”: Ibid. (Italics in original source).
Aldo Leopold, the visionary father: “Aldo Leopold,” www.wilderness.net/NWPS/Leopold.
Nevertheless, Leopold wrote in an unpublished foreword: Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949), 205.
So intense was the young Leopold’s zeal: Aldo Leopold, “The Game Situation in the Southwest,” Bulletin of the American Game Protective Association (April 2, 1920): 6.
20–21 Leopold concluded that the Biological Survey: Aldo Leopold, “The Game Situation in the Southwest,” Bulletin of the American Game Protective Association (April 2, 1920): 7.
An essay, “The Historical Sense of Being: Qi Feng Lin, “The Historical Sense of Being in the Writings of Aldo Leopold,” Minding Nature (December 2011).
In the unpublished foreword to Sand County Almanac: Aldo Leopold, unpublished foreword to Sand County Almanac, reprinted in McIntyre, War Against the Wolf, 324. More quotes from this unpublished foreword can be found online at “Aldo Leopold Quotes,” Green Fire, www.aldoleopold.org/greenfire/quotes.shtml#CSCA11.
he wrote, “my sin against the wolves: Leopold, unpublished foreword, 289, 322.
Leopold’s epiphany was vivid, heartbreaking: Aldo Leopold, “Thinking Like a Mountain,” A Sand County Almanac (1949), reprinted in Tom Lynch, El Lobo: Readings on the Mexican Gray Wolf (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005), 84–86.
The wounded wolf looks up at Leopold: “Aldo Leopold Quotes,” Green Fire. “There are two things that interest me: the relation of people to each other, and the relation of people to land” (Wherefore Wildlife Ecology?, unpublished manuscripts, AL 51).
When humans destroy wild wolves, it is because we “have not learned to think like a mountain: Leopold, “Thinking Like a Mountain.”
Leopold’s story of this dying wolf: James J. Kennedy, “Understanding Professional Career Evolution—An Example of Aldo Leopold,” Wildlife Society Bulletin 12 (1984): 215–216.
This new and more communal way: Draft foreword to A Sand County Almanac, 1947/1987, CSCA 282, “Aldo Leopold Quotes,” Green Fire; Leopold, Wilderness.net.
One of the most important lines Leopold ever wrote: Aldo Leopold, “On a Monument to the Pigeon,” A Sand County Almanac (1947).
Leopold’s legacy of ecology… pragmatic conservation of Gifford Pinchot: Julie Dunlap, “Educating for the Long Run: Pinchot and Leopold on Connecting with the Future,” The Aldo Leopold Foundation, August 11, 2015.
Leopold was Pinchot’s pupil: Kennedy, “Understanding Professional Career Evolution.”
Controversy about how to best manage: Dunlap, “Educating for the Long Run.”
Pinchot was the progressive but “ever practical: Steve Grant, “Gifford Pinchot: Bridging Two Eras of National Conservation,” ConnecticutHistory.org, http://connecticuthistory.org/gifford-pinchot-bridging-two-eras-of-national-conservation; “Gifford Pinchot: America’s First Forester,” Wilderness.net, www.wilderness.net/nwps/Pinchot.
CHAPTER 3. WOLF TEETH ON AN AIRPLANE WING
Alaska’s Governor Hickel proposed to exploit: Timothy Egan, “Alaska to Kill Wolves to Inflate Game Herds,” New York Times, November 19, 1992.
After retiring from eight years as chief of the US Forest Service: R. Max Peterson and Gerald W. Williams, The Forest Service: Fighting for Public Lands (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), 286.
In this position he often advocated before Congress: Testimony of Max Peterson Before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, March 18, 1999, www.epw.senate.gov/107th/pet_3-18.htm.
“You can’t just let nature run wild!”: Timothy Egan, “Everyone Is Always On Nature’s Side; People Just Can’t Agree on What’s Natural and What’s Not,” New York Times, December 19, 1998.
“These animals are being managed for the benefit of man: Egan, “Alaska to Kill Wolves to Inflate Game Herds.”
Enthusiastically echoing this hunter agenda: Ibid.
He predicted that aerial shooting would kill 300 to 400: Kimberly L. Bruckner, “Alaskan Wolf Plan Packs Plenty of Controversy,” Working paper, University of Colorado, February 1994, www.colorado.edu/conflict/full_text_search/AllCRCDocs/94-63.htm.
“They’d come in the spring: Marla Williams, “Wolves: To Kill or Conserve?—Alaska’s Dilemma Is Who Decides—And Who Benefits,” Seattle Times, January 24, 1993.
In a later interview for her book, Shadow Mountain: Gavin J. Grant, “Renée Askins” (interview), IndieBound/Booksense, www.indiebound.org/author-interviews/askinsrenee; Renée Askins, Shadow Mountain: A Memoir of Wolves, a Woman, and the Wild (New York: Anchor Books, 2002).
“The story of this conflict is the story”: “Readings,” Harpers, April 1995.
Monogamous, loyal to their families: Gordon Haber and Marybeth Holleman, Among Wolves (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2013), 9.
“The problem is,” he explained: Bill Sherwonit, “Gordon Haber’s Final Days,” Alaska Dispatch News, September 27, 2015.
A new democratic governor, Tony Knowles: Sherwonit, “Gordon Haber’s Final Days.”
In typical impatient style, Haber told the New York Times: Egan, “Alaska to Kill Wolves to Inflate Game Herds.”
Haber’s inside information: Haber and Holleman, Among Wolves, 204–205.
In 1991 Frost finally pled guilty: Timothy Egan, “Protecting Prey of Humans Sets 2 Against a Vast World,” New York Times, May 2, 1994.