Return of the Wolf
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This particular female wolf was black with a ruff of silver . . . they traced her likely path that brought her 300 miles down the Flathead Valley skimming numerous pastures full of cattle and sheep and pet dogs, then across a four-lane highway to another ridge where, somehow in the myriad of acreage covered, she connected with a lone wolf no one had seen before and who, by reports did not exist in the area previously.
The radio reveals the same sickly beep heard in the airplane, off mark and faint. But biologists rely on what can be seen or deduced, what is logic. And there is an equally compelling desire that your radio-collared specimen, your endangered species representative, is not dead until you see it dead. Or until you receive the radio collar with a bullet hole in it, in the brown-paper wrapped package via the mail, return address unknown.
[Ed] Bangs sees it only slightly differently: "All the issues are a way of asking if man should control nature. It's not about wolves at all."
"When people call you up at home at night, screaming at you and your family, you often have to stop them and ask whether they are pro-wolf or anti-wolf. The more extreme they are the more alike they sound." --
Ed Bangs, [retired] project leader for the U.S. FWS federal wolf recovery plan.
'Recovery,' and summer progressed quietly. The male wolf successfully fed and trained six pups without the benefit of social organization that would have left one adult to watch the pups while the others hunted and brought food home. . . . Over the summer the pups learned to wait for their father at the den until he returned with food. . . . Biologists knew that the male traveled nightly in search of food for the pups as they grew to 45 pounds. But no one knows what time the male decided to cross the road, but this cold morning, the male was found instead by the side of the highway: road-kill.
After two reports of a big dog dead on the road, the report was finally verified. Bangs and two partners went to the den site to check it out. With howling, the pups ran out, expecting dad with a meal. But it was the man with the collars. And a sad look on his face.
Wolves survive. We know this. We talk about it. But it is in the words — when accompanied by trust — that perhaps a bit of room on the edge of our psyches can be carved out that will allow them to go their own way. In that landscape of words, perhaps there Bangs' goal will be attained: We will change enough to let them survive.
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Please contact me about links and usage.