The Return of the Mexican Gray Wolf: Back to the Blue [Paperback]

Bobbie Holaday (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2003

The return of the Mexican gray wolf to Arizona's Blue Range in 1998 marked more than a victory for an endangered species. Long hated by ranchers, the gray wolf had been hunted to the brink of extinction until one woman took on the challenge of restoring it to its natural habitat.

Inspired by the plight of the Mexican gray wolf, retiree Bobbie Holaday formed the citizens advocacy group Preserve Arizona's Wolves (P.A.WS.) in 1987 and embarked on a crusade to raise public awareness. She soon found herself in the center of a firestorm of controversy, with environmentalists taking sides against ranchers and neighbors against neighbors. This book tells her story for the first time, documenting her eleven-year effort to bring the gray wolf back to the Blue.

As Holaday quickly learned, ranchers exerted considerable control over the state legislature, and politicians in turn controlled decisions made by wildlife agencies. Even though the wolf had been listed as endangered since 1976, opposition to it was so strong that the Arizona Game and Fish Department had been unable to launch a recovery program. In The Return of the Mexican Gray Wolf, Holaday describes first-hand the tactics she and other ordinary citizens on the Mexican Wolf Recovery Team adopted to confront these obstacles. Enhanced with more than 40 photographs—32 in color—her account chronicles both the triumphs of reintroduction and the heartbreaking tragedies the wolves encountered during early phases.

Thanks to Holaday's perseverance, eleven wolves were released into the wild in 1998, and the Blue Range once again echoed with their howls. Her tenacity was an inspiration to all those she enlisted in the cause, and her story is a virtual primer for conservation activists on mobilizing at the grassroots level. The Return of the Mexican Gray Wolf shows that one person can make a difference in a seemingly hopeless cause and will engage all readers concerned with the preservation of wildlife.

All royalties go to the Mexican Wolf Trust Fund administered by the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Wolf restoration is one of the conservation movement's success stories. In the best-known case, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, and they have also reappeared in the Northeast, the Great Lakes area, and the Rocky Mountain region. Traditionally wolves also roamed in the Southwest, but these wolves have all been exterminated from their former range, victims of ranchers and the federal government. When the crusade to reintroduce wolves to the wilderness areas of Arizona and New Mexico began, there were no wild wolves left to translocate. Holaday, an ordinary citizen and a leading member of the Mexican Wolf Recovery Team, covers the tactics her team used to win the support of the ranchers, the problems of teaching zoo-born wolves how to be wild again, the joys of pups born to successfully reintroduced wolves, and the inevitable heartbreaks as wolves disappear or are shot by enraged local citizens. Holaday is a passionate advocate of the wolves and writes with intensity, but she never veers off into the rhetoric or sarcasm that often characterizes polemical writing. Highly recommended. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"Holaday, an ordinary citizen and a leading member of the Mexican Wolf Recovery Team, covers the tactics her team used to win the support of ranchers, the problems of teaching zoo-born wolves how to be wild again, the joys of pups born to successfully reintroduced wolves, and the inevitable heartbreaks as wolves disappear or are shot by enraged local citizens. Holaday is a passionate advocate of the wolves and writes with intensity, but she never veers off into the rhetoric or sarcasm that often characterizes polemical writing. Highly recommended." —Booklist "A must read for anyone truly interested in wolf reintroduction in the Southwest. . . . Holaday shows us the importance of bringing wolf-huggers and wolf-haters to a middle ground where wolves and people and mountains can mutually exist and we can still enjoy the call of the wild." —Sky Island Alliance "Perhaps the greatest value of this book is Holaday’s subtle reprimand of both cattle ranchers and environmentalists for remaining polarized and failing to understand the other side. Her collaborative approach is a model for success in other controversial projects. An ecological success story with the charismatic wolves at its center, this book will be enjoyed by any wildlife and nature lover, and wildlife managers and activists would do well to heed Holaday’s message." —Wildlife Activist

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Product Details

• Paperback: 270 pages
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press; First Printing edition (September 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816522960
• ISBN-13: 978-0816522965
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,978,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bobbie Holaday has been credited with spearheading the citizen effort behind the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Arizona Game and Fish Department program to reintroduce the endangered Mexican wolf to the Blue Range Area of Arizona and New Mexico. In 1988, she founded Preserve Arizona's Wolves (P.A.WS.), a citizen wolf advocate group that wrote letters to agencies and Congressmen, lobbied for an increased appropriation for Mexican wolf recovery in Washington, D. C., attended public agency hearings, promoted wolf educational programs, and raised funds to enable wolf recovery activities. After eleven years, her dedicated efforts were rewarded when she helped carry and open up one of three crates holding Mexican wolves in the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area.
Long a wilderness advocate, Holaday was responsible for two major wilderness designations in Arizona, the Hells Gate Wilderness and the Eagletail Mountains Wilderness.
The author, now in her eighties, received her undergraduate degree in English from Denison University, Granville, Ohio in 1944, and later completed many graduate courses at Arizona State University. During World War II, the author joined the U.S. Navy WAVEs and served as a Pharmacist Mate in a Naval Hospital, caring for returning veterans injured in the South Pacific. Following the birth of two daughters, she found employment with several large corporations including General Electric Company that later sold its computer plants to Honeywell, Incorporated. During her twenty-eight years with GE and Honeywell, she worked as both a technical writer and a systems analyst of computer software.
In addition her technical writing experience, the author wrote and edited PAW PRINTS, P.A.WS.' quarterly newsletter and had wolf articles published in WOLF! Magazine, The Howler, magazine of the Wolf Society of Great Britain, and the Canyon Echo, newsletter for the Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club. She has written articles on the wolf for The Arizona Republic, the Tribune Newspapers, and the Sierra Vista Herald. In 1985, she self-published a small volume of poetry titled: Wild Places. After the Mexican wolves were released to the wild in 1998, she wrote a book narrating the story of how she worked to see this endangered species returned the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area in Arizona. The book, titled: The Return of the Mexican Gray Wolf: Back to the Blue, was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2003. The author later wrote a children's story titled "The Poster Wolf "that tells the true adventures of one of the released Mexican wolves. The story appeared in International Wolf in 2005.
The author's awards include the 1994 Volunteer Service Award from the Arizona Heritage Alliance, the Arizona Game and Fish Commission's 1995 Environmentalist of the Year Award, the 1995 Arizona Cactus-Pine Girl Scout Council World of Outdoors Award, the 1998 Defender's of Wildlife's Conservation Award for Excellence, the 2001 Sierra Club Award of Appreciation for Outstanding Achievement and 25-year membership award. Her most recent award was the coveted "Who Speaks for Wolf" award, presented by David Mech, founder of the International Wolf Center, at the Center's Colorado Springs conference in October of 2005. In February of 2010 she was awarded a certificate and medal for outstanding achievement in wildlife conservation from the American Daughters of the Revolution. Her bio is included in the Marquis Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America and Who's Who of American Women.