In the Company of Wolves

In the Company of Wolves
by Diane Alden

As long as he lived, Thorn was an overgrown 125-pound puppy, full of enthusiasm and giving us more laughs than comedic writer Norm Liebmann. Every Saturday morning Thorn and my adopted greyhound Brin, clambered onto the front seat of the truck, nearly knocking each other over. Sitting next to each other like two pashas on a trek into an Indian bazaar, they were excellent company. Inspiring conversations with strangers about how beautiful they were and where did I get dogs like them. When we finished at the bank, the cleaners, and the feed store, the last stop was McDonalds for hamburgers. The two bozos would gulp down a couple and then beg for mine. Brothers by ancestry if not by pedigree, Thorn and Brin knew what Saturday was all about.

While the greyhound was all dog, Thorn was three quarters timber wolf. Raised as a member of the family since a pup, Thorn was just like one of my teenage kids, albeit with a bite potential that could take down a creature five times his size. At the time Thorn lived with us it was not against the law to own a wolf hybrid as it is today.

We were Thorn's pack and my son was the alpha male. In his great dark head he had concluded that the rest of us were higher than he was in the pecking order. That was a very good thing. If Thorn had chosen, he could have seriously injured any one of us. However, we were lucky and he never did anything harmful to any of us. Admittedly, keeping Thorn as a pet was a dangerous thing to do. That is why it is now against the law in most places to own a wolf hybrid.

A hybrid is only a couple of generations from the wild. They keep many of the traits needed for surviving in the wilds. When Thorn died at the all too early age of six, I was heartbroken. Even though I wouldn't give up my experience with that wolf/dog for anything - neither would I choose to keep another like him. As one resident of northern Minnesota put it, "You never know what a wild thing will do."

The world is full of oddities and follies. This era's folly is the tendency of the environmental movement to play god. They do this oftentimes with no thought as to how an action will affect wildlife, nature or human beings. All too often their actions are based not on science but on myth and prejudice and a "Bambi" idea of what nature is all about.

One of their more cruel and heartless actions is the reintroduction of wolves in areas where they were once hunted to extinction or disappeared. It is cruel because they are pitting poor rural areas and families against the unnecessary act of bringing wolves where they are not wanted. They are pitting an animal and its survival against that of a way of life on the edge of extinction.

Even though they almost became extinct, they have existed forever in Alaska, Canada, northern Minnesota, Michigan's Upper-Peninsula, and Isle Royale in Lake Superior.

Today they are so numerous in Minnesota and causing so much turmoil for people, livestock and pets that the state of Minnesota wants to declare a hunting season on the worst offenders. The environmental movement is taking them to court to prevent this.

Playing God

Wolves have been reintroduced in Idaho, Montana, Arizona and New Mexico. Again showing the tendency of the federal government and the environmental movement coalition to want to play God.

Reintroduction has brought problems to ranchers and homeowners. While the environmental movement, specifically the Defenders of Wildlife, insist that they pay for livestock which are killed. That claim is all smoke and mirrors and propaganda. The rancher has to move heaven and earth in order to prove his case. Oftentimes they give up the struggle and just swallow the loss.

The Wyoming Department of Agriculture tells ranchers to preserve scat and tracks, take pictures and basically rope off the "scene of the crime." These and other demands would be worthy of a human murder crime scene.

According to investigator and journalist Dave Skinner, "Defenders has long promoted its idealistic-sounding "Trust," which over ten years actually only paid out about $11,000 a year. A "wolf restoration fund" replaced the trust in 1998. In 1999, there were 38 incidents in which about a hundred sheep; cows and dogs were proven killed by wolves. Total payout was roughly $33,000, triple the previous amount." However, millions are pumped into the trust by well meaning people who believe the majority of the money is going to pay ranchers and other who have lost livestock. The Defenders and groups like them never indicate that the money is really going to keep them in offices, computers, postage, and personnel. Like most environmental organizations the end is to stay in business rather than to help the environment.

Additionally, you have a billionaire like Ted Turner, who apparently has turned his back on rural America, to bring wolves onto one of his massive ranches in the West. According to a "U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service" pamphlet on the Mexican one of the sites for reintroduction is the Turner Endangered Species Fund located on his Ladder Ranch in New Mexico. Five Mexican Gray Wolves from the Gavilan Pack have been placed on the ranch. The pack is responsible for killing a 1600 pound bull in New Mexico. They have also been responsible for killing family pets and they have been sighted in most of the Glenwood, New Mexico area.

Environmental groups and the Ted Turners of the world are refugees from elsewhere. They have decided to mold the environment according to ignorant notions of how things might have been once upon a time. Outsiders who in their every day lives are so totally out of sync with the natural world that their collective guilt drives them on an erstwhile crusade to save what is not theirs. Yet at the same time they attempt to convince the locals how ignorant they are.

The reintroduction of the Mexican Gray near Glenwood, New Mexico has the residents in an uproar. They worry about the possible confrontation between wolves and humans - especially children. They have good reason to have their fears.

In 1996 in northern India, 50 children were killed and more were mauled and severely wounded. Biologists indicate that small children made easy picking especially when you have 800 people per square mile and no real prey available. That is the problem near Glenwood. The deer population is miniscule. That leaves only a couple of alternatives for the wolves. Livestock, family pets, and possibly small children.

In Minnesota, where wolves are common place, it is not unusual to see them. While driving on the back roads one day I sighted a big gray timber stalking some dairy cattle. We were also witnesses to a male caring for some pups off in the woods near the cabin. They are beautiful creatures, but so are grizzlies and cobras. As one Minnesotan put it, "You never know what a wild thing will do."

A long time businessman from Isabella, Minnesota related his wolf story. He stated: "They don't know what they are doing -- those scientists - about the wolves. They come here with all their experts and do dumb things - cause they want to prove a point. Like a couple of years ago they tried to introduce a little she-wolf into one of the packs around here. You can't do that - except maybe in early spring. But they did it any way. I was snow shoeing one day and found what was left of her -- her head and her paws. That is all. Why do they do that? They just got to play God I suppose." Then he added, "you never know what a wild thing will do, but they don't know that. It is cruel and dumb what those wolf people do."

In my book, this big lug of a man, who has stayed fifty years worth of violent winters in the coldest place in the lower 48, is a true environmentalist. He lives where nature happens all the time and wild critters are a daily occurrence. He has observed with some despair, as arrowhead country has changed for the worse and outsiders have returned to "nature."

The Unpredictable Those in favor of reintroduction of the wolf into places like New Mexico, Idaho, Montana, Arizona point to their almost human behavior as a reason for reintroduction. By seeking to return wolves into areas where they were eradicated in the early part of the 20th century they are attempting to create a scenario that they believe existed before the arrival of the white man in North America. The problem with this seemingly good intention is that there are more people living in the intermountain west than ever before. Additionally, the livestock grower and rural resident doesn't care to put their children or livestock in harms way.

Those who promote the cause of wolves talk about how the creatures are "family" oriented. Having a social hierarchy where pairs of males and females bond in a life long relationship. Maintaining that such qualities as the pack caring for offspring of absent parents are worthy of human respect. However, the wolf is not human, it is an animal and its behavior is unpredictable.

In a widely documented Michigan study done in the 80s, the female offspring of an alpha pair displaced her female alpha mother and took up with the alpha male, her father. The former alpha female had to be separated from the pack lest she be torn apart. Just as in the case of human beings there are anomalies in species interaction. These anomalies are in reality the norm. It is the unexpected differences and unpredictable behavior where problems between humans and wolves begin.

Every Wild Thing

In the way of most wild things, wolves are predators. They are survivors first, last, and always. Unlike certain humans, they put the survival of their species before anything else. Wolves, bears, mountain lions are not Mother Theresa in fur. They are wild critters who have spent eons fighting one another and mankind for a place in the world.

As one who has lived with a wolf hybrid and on several occasions observed them in the wilds of northern Minnesota, I have no romantic notions about how wolves act in their quest for survival. I have witnessed the stalking of livestock and seen the remains of pets. On several occasions I visited the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minnesota and watched as wolves interact with humans. This has caused me to appreciate and respect wolves, while at the same time accepting the reality of how dangerous they can be. Dangerous because they are wild creatures and do what wild creatures are prone to do.

Man has done enough damage by ignorantly playing god. The wolf will survive and prosper if allowed to reintroduce himself in places where he will be accepted as part of nature. Bringing him into intermountain west as some kind of experiment is playing god - again.

But then arrogance knows no bounds these days, and men play games with people's lives and livelihoods with no concern for man nor beast.

www.american-partisan.com