The Company of Wolves

What do we really know about wolves? What do we merely imagine? Author Peter Steinhart explores these questions and shows us why this elusive creature has taken center stage in the debate over the preservation and use of the wilderness. No other animal engages our emotions as fiercely as the wolf does, largely because we are so alike: both wolves and humans evolved as hunters in groups, as complex social animals who survive through an unpredictable mix of cooperation and competition, nurturing and aggression. Only recently have we had the technology and inclination to study wolves in the wild, but because human persecution has made wolves shy and wary, we still know very little about how they live. We fill the gaps in our knowledge with reflections of our own human nature. The wolf to us is both a biological and mythological species; we cannot avoid infusing it with symbolism. In exploring the tangled relationships between wolves and humans, Steinhart has listened to biologists, wildlife managers, ranchers, trappers, wolf lovers, and wolf haters, and what emerges is clear evidence that when we talk about wolves, we are saying something about ourselves, about how uneasy we are with aggression, predation, and ferocity--with wildness itself. He takes us to the woods of Ontario; to an Indian village in northern Alberta; to Alaska, where wolves have been hunted from the air; to a wildlife refuge in North Carolina, where wolves have been reintroduced; and to Arizona, New Mexico, and Yellowstone Park, where reintroduction was still hotly debated at the time of writing. He talks to a besieged rancher neighboring Yellowstone; to an Indian trapper who frequently shoots wolves; to David Mech, the "alpha male" of wolf researchers; to Diane Boyd, who follows wolves on skis and by plane in Glacier National Park; to John Theberge, who pioneered the study of howling; and to Rolf Peterson, who studies the mysterious population crash of the wolves of Isle Royale. All of these people, in various ways, argue for and against wolves. In this book we are powerfully persuaded of how much is at stake: not only the preservation of a fellow creature but the marvelous complexity of the unfolding process of evolution.--Adapted from dust jacket.