Customer Reviews

Yellowstone Wolves: A Chronicle of the Animal, the People, and the Politics

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Wolves are a creature that has divided people, one person's precious creature is another's violent, carnivorous nuisance. "Yellowstone Wolves: A Chronicle of the Animal, the People, and the Politics" is a look at the Yellowstone Wolf in particular and its long running story of going into near extinction and back again. Once numerous hundreds of years ago, it was hunted to near extinction, and was kept alive only in captivity. Now they are being reintroduced with much success - but there are those who don't think this is an entirely good thing. "Yellowstone Wolves" is an intriguing look at how conservation battles with politics.

It would be nice if the one- star reviewer bothered to read the book.

Cat Urbigkit brings a unique perspective, as she is both a sheepherder and a naturalist- observer, one who can appreciate big carnivores but doesn't want them killing her sheep or her livelihood.

Her history is also unique. Before she was a shepherd she and her husband joined an unlikely coalition of stockmen and environmentalists who sued to protest the introduction of the Canadian wolf subspecies, arguing that there was a small and harmless population of the nearly extinct native subspecies already existing in the Yellowstone ecosystem. I admit that this was the most difficult argument for me to accept going in, but her careful documentation has made me a believer. Probably they nearly disappeared when the horrific poison 1080 was in use, and were gradually building their numbers. These wolves were smaller and probably would have been more fearful of humans, which emeritus large- mammal biologist Valerius Geist argues is probably a good thing-- more below.

She next documents the long drawn out legal battles, culminating in the "re" introduction of the big Canadian subspecies, and going on to document how they finally arrived in her sagebrush plains, in one case approaching her 12 year old son as he herded sheep.

There is a LOT more here, documented without editorial comment-- of the wedge the issue has driven between the government and stockmen (even worse down here in NM due to a program where the wolves are constantly handled, moved around and habituated); on the environmentalist side, the decision to sacrifice a unique subspecies without studying it to see if it was recoverable without intervention; on the utter uselessness of the compensation program, which demands an impossible standard of proof; even dark humor. When a hunter shoots a pre- intro wolf (?) he thinks is a coyote, he is held in legal limbo for more than a month. As the Jackson Hole Guide editorialized. "How is it that the Fish and Wildlife service-- our federal wildlife experts--can expect Kysar to have known he had shot a wolf when they have already spent six weeks in their laboratories trying to figure it out, and still don't know what it is they're dealing with?"

There are other issues in play than endangered species or embattled ranchers. As Cat reports, elk were eating the park, and there was no other politically acceptable way to reduce their numbers. As we are increasingly coming to know, big predators seem to control the whole ecosystem-- see William Stolzenburg's new book Where the Wild Things Were.

And there is one more issue, only hinted at in Cat's book: the increasing probability that wolves that become too habituated will also become dangerous. Dr. Valerius Geist, now retired, is the dean of North American big mammal studies, and author of too many books to cite, though I am particularly partial to the magisterial Deer of the World. He was one of the scientists called on to testify in the notorious Kenton Carnegie case in northern Ontario, where a young intern was killed and partially eaten by dump- habituated wolves (there was a ludicrous attempt to blame the killing on black bears, but anyone who has looked at the entire testimony of both on- the- spot observers and the scientists would be convinced, as was the jury, that wolves were responsible).

Geist is both a serious biologist and a serious backwoodsman, a rare combination in his youth and one that is getting rarer today. He used to believe that wolves were as harmless as their modern image suggests, until some scary encounters with habituated wolves in his own Vancouver backwoods, papers on habituated California coyotes' behavior before attacking children, and the Carnegie case made him study the history and literature of other countries' experiences with wolves. What he found suggested our "harmless" wolves are a historical phenomenon based on a unique phenomenon: our common use of guns. Wolves killed people in the Soviet Union until after WW II, kill people today in India, and are considered dangerous by Canada's northern "First Nations".

Wolves are magnificent, efficient, sometimes deadly predators, not "spiritual healers". To keep wolves near humans benign (to the humans at least), they should best be hunted. Could a similar phenomenon be behind the rise in cougar attacks in (over?) civilized places like Boulder and California?

In several papers and articles Geist seeks to mediate between our desire for a robust, healthy wilderness, the reasonable expectation of our ranchers to make a living, and safety. He proposes large wilderness areas surrounded by mixed land where big predators are allowed but hunted, in turn ringed by farms and suburbs where they cannot be tolerated. It seems that we already are well on the way to this in the US (perhaps more than in his Canada) with parks surrounded by National forests. It will still need both some tweaking and a lot more efforts to understand, coming from predator advocates and stockmen alike. Let's try to get this one right and maybe we can start to talk about "re- wilding". Cat Urbigkit's book is an excellent place to start-- for both sides.

i thought the book very informative. all the facts are stated and noted. interesting to see both views. highly recommend it for anybody interested in wolf issues, either pro or con.

I rated this book highly because it is a very important part of the history and politics of the human-manipulated wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone. Whether you disagree with the uniquness of the various wolf subspecies involved, or tire of the inane human politics that still swirl all around this introduction(all documented in detail in this book), there is no doubt this is an important documentation of what went on "behind the scenes" of wolf reintroduction. I personally(as a student volunteer) was involved in scouting for wolves in Montana back in 1982, and many people involved who truly wanted wolves to repopulate were still against the forced government reintroduction because it would infuriate and alienate the local populous, and cost the tax payers untold millions of dollars. Even then, to those in the know, wolf expansion from Canada and the possibility of isolated survivors were well known(though this book certainly documented even more accounts than I was aware of) and would have certainly, eventually, repopulated the area--all without any of the political upheaval and polarizations among people, or the expenditure of a cent--it would have just taken somewhat longer. No question the reintroductions speeded things up, but at what cost? That's what this book is about. If you want a fuzzy, happy wolf biology myth story, this is not for you. If you are a wolf lover, you'll likely be angered, but it is still good to see the views from the other side. This is NOT a book about wolf biology, but about human politics involving wolves. I consider it a very important part of any wolf afficiondo's library, for reference sake, and to develop a more balanced and truthful understanding of the whole quagmire....

Cat Urbigkit has written a very thorough and comprehensive book about the so-called "reintroduction" of Canadian wolves to Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. This book was not written from an anti-wolf viewpoint, as wolf-loving diehards would have us believe. Ms. Urbigkit did a fine job discussing the politics of the wolf program without the usual hysteria one encounters when reading anything having to do with wolves. It is truly sad and shameful what the Federal government, along with extreme pressure from so-called environmental groups, did to a truly native subspecies. I believe this book should be required reading for anyone who has any interest in wildlife, and especially for anyone who is considering giving financial or other support to environmental groups like Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, etc. These groups are causing more harm than good in the quest for preservation/conservation of wildlife.

Please readers of this book, do not believe half of what Cat writes, she is a sworn wolf hater and sticks with the Ranchers on all issues. She is very bias in her local articles and I am sure her book will be more of the same...