On these pages you will find useful information and facts about the Gray Wolf.
Wolf Biologist L. David Mech described the wolf as originally "the mostly widely distributed mammal in the world."
Here is the preface from the book *"The Wolf Almanac by Robert H. Busch"
I live in wolf country. The giant grizzly still pads through my forests at twilight, and a few lucky humans still glimpse the tawny blur of the cougar. All of these great beasts are predators, but only the wolf has been buried under a cloak of falsehoods, lies, and misconceptions.
One of my neighbors is a logger, a huge hulk of a man who looks
like he could tear out trees without the aid of machines. And yet, the one time
this man spotted a wolf striding quietly along the bottom of a valley, he rushed
back to his truck in fear. He later told me that he tried to light a cigarette
to calm himself, but his hands were shaking too badly to even strike a match.
Just what is it about the wolf that instills such paranoia in humans? What is it
that makes a 200-pound man run from a 75-pound wolf?
Two years ago, shortly after I moved to wolf country, I was serenaded one crisp December evening by the eerie howls of a pack of wolves. The next morning I found the tracks of five wolves in the soft fresh snow. They were huge. The paw prints of my 125-pound Malamute dog fit easily inside them.
And this, of course, is part of the wolf's problem: its very size. Big beasts are fearsome, small ones are not. People run from wolves, but run after coyotes.
There is no question that the wolf is hampered by the worst
press in all of the animal kingdom. Weaned on fanciful tales of Little Red
Riding Hood, werewolves, and man-eating wolves, we have created a beast straight
out of Hitchcock. And like most Hitchcock tales, the story of the wolf is one of
murder: the wolf has been exterminated from 95 percent of its former range in
the lower United States. Only in the remote reaches of Alaska are its numbers
relatively stable. But even there, the wolf is not safe, for it has been blamed
for decreases in numbers of moose and deer and large-scale wolf kills are
currently underway. Independent biologists like Gordon Haber have determined
that the wolf is not the only force involved in the decreased moose and deer
population; over hunting by humans and loss of habitat are also important
factors. But the wolf has
always been a convenient target, and it is paying for its diet with its life.
Not for the first time has the hunting and trapping fraternity failed to distinguish a wild animal's right to survive from man's wish for "sport."
Equally appalling is the antiquated attitude toward the wolf held by fish and game departments. Here in my home province of British Columbia, hunters must purchase a species license for all big game animals; all, that is, except for the wolf. When I questioned the provincial wildlife branch for the reasoning behind this distinction, I was told simply "It's always been that way." So much for science.
Today a growing number of people are thrilled by the thought of wolves running wild and free in the few remaining patches of wilderness on this continent. Others still run to lock up their children when they glimpse a wolf, their image of the wolf built purely on the shaky foundations of legends and fables.
Fables seem to endure forever, and many a man still believes that wolves howl at the moon, or weigh 200 pounds, or hamstring their prey, or go into killing frenzies in which they rip each other apart. All of this is pure myth.
But replacing myth with fact is only part of the solution to conserving the wolf. The other factor is preservation of wilderness.
When I first moved to wolf country, the surrounding mountains were carpeted with a thick tangle of cedar and fir. Today, I awoke to the roar of chainsaws. Clear-cut logging is mowing down vast swaths of forest across many portions of the wolf's remaining range, leaving behind a checkerboard of destruction. The wolf needs wilderness. One of the biggest hurdles facing wolf reintroductions in the United States is the lack of wilderness areas suitable for reintroductions. For the wolf, and far too many other creatures, there is simply no home to return to.
The wolf is one of the top members of the food chain, a chain that is today collapsing due to human interference. The deer population in many parts of the country is out of control due to the absence of predators from the ecological scene. And the fact that many of these deer face a tragic death by starvation is a sad result of man believing the myths about predators in general and about wolves in particular.
Wolf biologist John Theberge once described what he called "the gap between wolf myth and wolf reality." It is my hope that this almanac will help fill that gap with facts, and in so doing help to preserve one of the world's least understood and most persecuted predators.
---Robert H. Busch
British Columbia 1995
* The Wolf Almanac by: Robert H. Busch ISBN 1-55821-351-1