by Jim Dutcher
IN THE END, THE ONLY VIRTUE that wolves need from us is honesty—regarding them, regarding us, and regarding our shared past. Only by seeing them as they are, as neither demon nor deity but as creatures worthy of our admiration, will we find tolerance within our own human character. Wolves still have enough land to claim as home, enough prey to hunt, enough space to explore, but we have to let them. Ed Bangs is a retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife official who led the wolf reintroduction effort in the northern Rockies. For 23 years he was at the center of the storm, caught in the middle between wolf haters and wolf lovers. He put this ultimate truth as simply as anyone could when he wrote, “I’ve always said that the best wolf habitat resides in the human heart. You have to leave a little space for them to live.”
Kamots, Lakota, Matsi, and the other wolves of the Sawtooth Pack have done their part and told their stories to the world. Wolves across America have gradually revealed the depth and complexity of their lives to any willing to see. Nothing more should be expected of them. It is up to us now.
Amani on a crisp autumn morning
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
IT'S BEEN ALMOST 30 YEARS since our project with the Sawtooth wolves began. This book could not have been written during the years when the wolves were part of our daily lives, or even in the years immediately following. Sometimes the seeds of enlightenment need time to germinate.
We are grateful for the friendship and talent of James Manfull, the creative writer of our film treatments and books about the Sawtooth Pack. He has worked tirelessly, helping us shape this deeply personal story and share our journey with others.
We are thankful to our editor, Susan Hitchcock, who has always believed in our work and our story and who encouraged us to write this book about the gifts of wisdom the Sawtooth Pack taught us. With her at National Geographic Books, we thank photo editor Susan Blair, designer Nicole Miller, and production editor Judith Klein for helping make this book a reality.
We owe special thanks to Garrick Dutcher, the multitalented and creative program director of our nonprofit organization, Living with Wolves. His hard work and dedication are equaled only by his passion for wolves.
We are indebted to Marc Bekoff for his generosity in agreeing to write the foreword to this book. Through his research and many books, Marc has singlehandedly brought the emotional lives of animals to the forefront. No longer can people talk about animals without acknowledging the emotional lives they lead.
We would also like to thank our dear friend Norma Douglas, who has always been with us throughout our journey with wolves. Whether on our films, our books, or our nonprofit organization, Norma has always “had our back” and has been instrumental in helping us in whatever we set out to do.
In this book, in addition to the stories about our time with the Sawtooth Pack, it was important for us to share stories of many wolves we don’t know personally: the wolves of Denali National Park and Preserve and in Yellowstone National Park. These stories would not be as rich if it were not for the help and dedication of Rick McIntyre, who has kept a watchful eye on the Yellowstone wolves since they were reintroduced to the park, and of his many wolf watchers, too numerous to name, who are out there in the field day after day, rain or shine, extreme heat or bitter cold. We recommend that if you are ever in Yellowstone, you stop by to say hello to these volunteers. You can always find them parked on the side of the road with their spotting scopes!
We would like to thank Wally Montgomery for the many Yellowstone stories and the video footage he has shared with us, and Nell and Bob Harvey for taking the time to share their stories of watching wolves in Yellowstone as we stood together on top of a rise on a very cold May morning watching the Junction Butte Pack and their pups.
Thank you to Doug Smith for sharing so much of his knowledge and for always taking the time to speak with us, and to Kira Cassidy for her groundbreaking research on the importance of older wolves within a pack. It’s a wonderful thing to meet someone new whose theories, feelings, and ideas resonate so well with our own. And of course, we recall with gratitude the memory of Gordon Haber, who was able to express so well the emotional lives of the wolves he was watching in Denali for so many years. We feel very lucky to have spent the time we had with him in the field. He was ahead of his time, and his life was cut too short.
Most of all, none of this would have been possible without the wolves of the Sawtooth Pack. They gave us the greatest gift that could ever be given from one species to another—trust—and with that trust they opened their world to us. In the end, they made us better for it. We became better human beings by watching and learning what the wolves had to teach us about life, love, compassion, and care. We will never forget them or what they taught us. They are with us every day, in everything we do, guiding us forward.
Jim and Jamie Dutcher
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JIM AND JAMIE DUTCHER ARE universally recognized as two of America’s most knowledgeable experts on wolves. With nearly 30 years of their lives devoted to eradicating ancient myths surrounding wolves, they are dedicated to sharing their unique and personal eyewitness knowledge.
During the 1990s, they lived in a tented camp in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho, where they intimately observed the social hierarchy of the now famous Sawtooth Pack. Their six-year experience led to the creation of the National Geographic Society book The Hidden Life of Wolves, as well as five other books and three prime-time television documentaries on wolves.
In 1962 Jim Dutcher began his career as an underwater cinematographer and then a wildlife film producer for National Geographic. Combining extraordinary camera work and the trust he gains from his subjects, Jim’s films have taken audiences into a world never before filmed: inside beaver lodges, down burrows to observe wolf pups, and into the life of a mother mountain lion as she cares for her newborn kittens. His work includes the National Geographic special Rocky Mountain Beaver Pond and ABC World of Discovery’s two highest-rated films, Cougar: Ghost of the Rockies and Wolf: Return of a Legend.
In 1991 Jim received the prestigious Wrangler Award for his cougar documentary from Oklahoma’s National Cowboy Hall of Fame. In 1995 the governor of Idaho appointed Jim as an ex officio member of the Idaho Wolf Management Committee, where he served until 2001. As part of the wolf reintroduction initiative at Yellowstone National Park, Jim served as a consultant for the design of the pack holding enclosures and as a specialist in the handling of the reintroduced wolves brought from Canada.
Jamie Dutcher began her career as an animal keeper and veterinary technician at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C. She contributed her knowledge of animal husbandry and medical care to Jim Dutcher’s film projects and recorded the vocalizations of the Sawtooth Pack, winning an Emmy. Working together, Jim and Jamie created two of Discovery Channel’s highest-rated wildlife films, Wolves at Our Door and Living with Wolves. Their television specials on wolves have won three Primetime Emmys, for cinematography, for outstanding programming, and for sound recording. The Dutchers also led three National Geographic expeditions to Alaska, working with revered wolf biologist Dr. Gordon Haber, observing pack hunting techniques and the culture of shared knowledge within individual wolf families.
In 2006, moved by the plight of wolves, the Dutchers put down their filmmaking equipment and founded the nonprofit organization Living with Wolves, which is dedicated to raising public awareness of the truth about wolves, their social nature, their importance to healthy ecosystems, and the threats to their survival. Since then, they have presented trusted, factual information through social media, books, educator guides for schools, films, and museum exhibits to more than 30 million people worldwide, becoming the premier advocates for wolves, bringing understanding of this misunderstood and persecuted species by sharing their knowledge and lifetime of study. They have appeared at the New York’s American Museum of Natural History, Harvard University, Chicago
’s Field Museum, the California Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Museum of Natural History of London. They have been interviewed for radio, television, and print media including the New York Times, the Washington Post, PBS, NPR, BBC, Today, and Good Morning America. Their personal multimedia wolf presentation is a featured part of the National Geographic Live! programming.
* * *
—
MARC BEKOFF is professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has won many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship for his research in animal behavior and behavioral ecology. His latest books include Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence and The Animals’ Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age.
Jim with Matsi and Kamots
ABOUT
Living with Wlves
WITH UNIQUE EXPERIENCES and personal observations of wolves driving their concern, Jim and Jamie Dutcher continue to devote their lives to changing deadly misunderstandings about these keystone animals. Putting aside their award-winning film career, they founded the nonprofit organization Living with Wolves in 2006.
Dedicated to raising broad public awareness of the truth about wolves, their social nature, their importance in healthy ecosystems, and the threats to their survival, Living with Wolves fills a unique position as the leading national advocacy organization devoted solely to wolves. It provides a wide range of trustworthy and effective actions, building tolerance that can lead to coexistence between people and wolves sharing land.
Honorary board members Jane Goodall, Barry Lopez, and Robert Redford join an esteemed board of directors, all eminently qualified to oversee this wide range of outreach activities. Importantly, an impressive advisory board provides expert guidance in fields that include biological sciences, wolf recovery, ranching and livestock, the economics of wolf reintroduction and tourism, and ethical hunters who see the value in sharing the land with predators. Also important, the Dutchers’ long-standing collaboration with National Geographic continues to enable them to bring a wide range of programming to a constantly growing and diverse national audience.
The ongoing partnership with National Geographic has produced works in print that include The Hidden Life of Wolves, a book now available in six languages, and two award-winning books for children, A Friend for Lakota: The Incredible True Story of a Wolf Who Braved Bullying and Living With Wolves!
Also produced in collaboration with National Geographic, online educational guides for families and educators provide teachers, from kindergarten through high school, with activities, maps, and multimedia resources to enrich students’ understanding of wolves and their role in the natural world.
Jim and Jamie continue personally to present multimedia events about wolves in conjunction with National Geographic Live! to auditoriums of adults and children eager to learn.
Garrick Dutcher, program director for Living with Wolves, provides valued in-person reports to state, regional, and federal officials who decide the fate of wolves and who request trustworthy information as legislation is under consideration. Key to this important aspect of Garrick’s work is our funding of field research in Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and Denali National Park and Preserve.
Living with Wolves’ website and social media on Face-book and Twitter provide a source for accurate and factual information, read by many thousands of people who strive to bring a commonsense, fact-based, workable, and ecologically healthy approach to the forefront of the wolf controversy.
An extensive photography exhibition created by Living with Wolves to bring the world of the wolf to more audiences has been displayed at the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., at Chicago’s Field Museum, and at the Detroit Zoo.
To learn more about Living with Wolves, we invite you to visit us online at www.livingwithwolves.org.