Customer Reviews

Decade of the Wolf: Returning the Wild to Yellowstone

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No one is more qualified to write about the Yellowstone wolves than the wolf project leader of the Park for the last 8 years, Dr. Douglas Smith. Gary Ferguson is a very accomplished writer about western wilderness and wildlife issues. I read almost every one of his books in one sitting.

The book is a series of stories about individual wolves, packs, plus well known and lesser known events in the Park's wolf recovery. Chapters also explain concepts of wolf biology, and the effects wolves are having on America's first national park.

Those people who go to Yellowstone to watch wolves or follow these events will want to snap this book up.

Others interested in wildlife will find it less compelling, but still a useful and good read.

The book is a fitting story of ten years of wolf recovery in Yellowstone Park. Still to be told is the history of wolf recovery in areas outside the Park, especially in Idaho where the number of wolves outnumber those of the Park almost three to one.

Readers will enjoy a number of photographs of wolves and wolf interactions with other animals in the photo insert in the middle of the book. Many of these, such as those in the Park's remote Pelican Valley, could only be taken by the Park's wolf biologists.

I have followed the wolf reintroduction project with great interest since the very beginning. After many trips to Yellowstone and time spent hiking and camping in the backcountry of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem since the wolf reintroduction; I have yet to see a wolf in the wild. However, hearing them howl in the woods at night is enough to give a person goosebumps. Just knowing they are out there is enough for me.

This book is an excellent summary of the wolf reintroduction project and how the wolves have fared up to this point. The first hand accounts from Doug Smith about his experiences over the years will make you yearn to have the job and type of lifestyle that he is able to live everyday. Yet, this book is very realistic about the future of the wolves in Yellowstone and beyond. We all must learn to come together to make this world a better place, one step at a time. Until a balance can be found between the environmentalists and "big business" we will be less likely to see such a huge undertaking again to return some of last pieces of wilderness in the United States back to what they might of been so many years ago.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in where the Yellowstone wolves are now and for anyone who has fallen in love with the majestic landscape of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. We have a great deal to be proud of and we owe Doug Smith, Mr. Babbitt and all the others who were brave enough not only to imagine but to actually take the steps needed to reintroduce this great animal back to a small area in which they used to roam.

This is an engaging and informed account of perhaps the most important environmental story in recent years, the successful reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park. The authors have been involved in this project from the ground up, and it shows. They provide an impressive amount of information but even more important, they use some fascinating stories to convey the behavior of these remarkable animals. I've been fortunate enough to see the Yellowstone wolves, but when I see them the next time, it will be in a new light.

I read with great interest this next chapter in the ongoing drama of the wolf restoration to Yellowstone National Park. Ten years ago I studied the works of Smith, as a biologist on that effort, as well as Mech, Phillips, Ferguson, Schullery, Askins, and others in preparation for writing my novel, "Woman's Sigh, Wolf's Song". I became familiar then with 31 wolves bearing numbers instead of names, and in this book Smith and Ferguson gave me the unique pleasure of discovering how their families have fared since 1995. This very public controversy was well-documented a decade ago by Smith and fellow project leader, Michael Phillips, and here Smith and Ferguson continue to tell the story with the voice of those who have followed pawprints in the snow and fallen asleep with the scent of wolf on their hands. The photographs lend to their text a sense of reality - what it is like to manage wild animals in a wild environment. Without question the restoration of wolves to Yellowstone has been a stunning success - for the ecology of the park, it's animal residents, and the humans that visit. Smith and Ferguson were there at the beginning and tell this story with heart and mind both fully engaged, not only for the wolves, but also the human residents that surround the park. For those interested in the whole 10-year story I recommend Smith and Phillips, "The Wolves of Yellowstone", and Ferguson's, "The Yellowstone Wolves". Thanks, gentlemen, for a new look at the canis major family album.

The reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone park has been one of the most controversial feats of conservation of all time.

In this book, the project manager who supervised this effort tells the story of the release and the ten years of history that have followed. He had an interesting task of making the project work with the Farm Bureau on one side of the battle, and the Sierra Club on the other. Then there are the well meaning tourists, and the poachers.

In spite of it all, the reintroduction has prospered. the wolves have survived and in so doing changed the ecosystem of the park. In so doing, much more has been learned about the wolf behavior. The individual packs have been carefully studied, the pack dynamic, the survival of cubs in the wilderness, all have taught scientists more about wolf behavior.

The stories are not uniformly plesant, the pack has survived, but not all members. There's the story, for instance, of a mother chasing an elk and running into a stick that pierced her chest and killed her. No one else would take over her pups and they died.

This is a fascinating story of a decade of conservation.

I have read over 40 books about wolves over 35 years and this one stands out as one of the very best.

The book has two main themes -- the life histories of individual wolves brought to Yellowstone and their packs, and what wildlife biologists actually do to accomplish a successful introduction and gather the histories of these wolves. Both these themes are covered very well in exceptionally graceful writing.

Missing intentionally is a blow by blow history of the political controversy surrounding the introduction, and I am glad for that -- the focus remains on the wolves and how they deal with the challenges they face. The political history has been covered in other books and is a fairly depressing story of people shouting at each other.

The authors ability to describe in remarkable detail on the histories of individual wolves and their packs was aided enormously by the radio collars the placed on select individuals and the high visibility of the wolves in Yellowstone. The picture that emerges is of an enormously rich, complex, dynamic and tough world. Surviving is a constant challenge for a wolf, even in this prey-rich environment, and few wolves make it past 4-5 years old, much younger than the lives of wolves in captivity.

Their is so much information about their behavior that the wolves emerge as distinct individuals with dramatically different personalities and styles. Packs develop unique cultures (e.g. hunting bison). The static alpha male - alpha female hierarchy so often described in other books turns out to be far more variable with much greater roles in some packs for the alpha female and non-alpha wolves.

The authors note how frequently the wolves' behavior continues to them, particularly social behavior. There are far more ways to organize and "run" a wolf pack then previously thought, and the complexity of the dynamics described resembles human social interactions to a remarkable degree.

There is a lot that can be learned even by well-read wolf enthusiasts from reading this book. Yet, for those who are just beginning to read about wolves, this book is a superb introduction to these animals that get more fascinating the more we know about them.

Those who enjoyed the insight into the life of a wildlife biologist in this book would no doubt also enjoy Craig Packer's Into Africa, an account of his work with the social histories of African lion prides.

This book was a great read and, despite the rip-off for the CDN dollar by the publisher, I was very happy to recieve this in the mail. It made a good, informative and sweet read for those who love wildlife and wolves. The narrative isn`t borring or scientific which makes it easy to read. Of course there are a few things that bothered me while reading this.

Firstly, the people didn`t realy explore alternatives to wolves eating livestock, they just kind of shot them and didn`t take the responsibility to practice other non-lethal methods of controling wolves such as the use of guard dgs or deterrents. I was also looking forward to a lot more pictures of wolves, and while the ones in the book were beautiful, they were small and there were few. I really wish that the authors could have elaborated more about the indivdual wolves` that were the founders of Yellowstone`s packs. it seemed that just one peice of each wolf wasn`t enough to capture their intimate lives (and not enough pictures of the wolves themselves). If they ever re-do this book, hopefully more can be placed on pictures and what has happened to the wolves and their packs in yellowstone.

This book looks back at the ten years since wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park. The reintroduction has been a great success, with wolf packs filling up the park and dispersing outside its boundaries.

The authors are well-placed to tell this story. Douglas Smith is a biologist who has been closely involved with the wolf program, and Gary Ferguson is an award-winning journalist who has written on many outdoor topics connected to the American West.

Though it's certainly a good read, the book was nonetheless a bit of a disappointment to me. The reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone saw two big pieces of action: the political firestorm before reintroduction, and the animals' success afterwards. The biggest story was probably the former debate, but the book hardly discusses that.

Instead, Smith and Ferguson focus on the wolves since reintroduction. They alternate types of chapters - - a substantive chapter about some aspect of wolves, and then a chapter telling the story about some individual wolf. Intensive radio collaring of wolves in the park makes these histories possible, and it is interesting to see the lives of wolves in this way.

If you want to know how scientific research on Yellowstone's wolves has been carried out, the book is invaluable. If you're interested in the larger human story, especially the political battles, then you should try Martin Nie's _Beyond Wolves_ instead.

Having taken my family to view the wolves on a -22 degree day in the Lamar Valley, reading the book by Smith and Ferguson was like putting all the pieces together in being able to better understand what the introduction of the Yellowstone Wolves have meant. If one gets the chance to hear either of the authors in person, be sure and make the time. For their knowledge and frankness will remain in your mind forever, and impact how we all think about these past 10 years! Its a must read for adults and kids......not to mention the trip in Yellowstone!

I really enjoyed this book, and it is an easy read. I purchased it initially after visiting Yellowstone and learning more about the results of the wolf re-entry project. What I liked about this book was the mixture of stories about the original wolves released (and some offspring), as well as the research (academic) chapters on wolf behavior/communities, the discussion of pros and cons for land owners in the area, and the environmental/ecological impact of the wolf project on the Park. I felt a kinship with the wolves as the writers speak of them with such respect and warmth. They do not paint a pretty picture of the brutal life of wolves. As biologists and researchers they attempt to keep the human contact with wolves to a minimum to maintain the integrity of the project. As a reader I respected their ecological approach to the re-entry project -- and continued support of the wolves that remain in Yellowstone. I later purchased the book from Amazon to give to a friend who also loves wolves.