Gray Wolf: Encyclopedia II - Gray Wolf - Past human perceptions of wolves

Gray Wolf - Past human perceptions of wolves

The relationship between people and wolves has had a very long and turbulent history. Traditionally, humans have viewed wolves negatively, perceiving them to be dangerous or as nuisances to be destroyed.

European folklore exacerbated this negative image, which was brought over to North America as it was settled. During this time, the wilderness was perceived as something to be conquered, settled, and cultivated, as through Manifest Destiny or by man's inherent worldly right. Wolves, for a time, were partially valued for their fur, but in the majority of circumstances (and in some instances today), they were viewed as wholly worthless and decidedly despicable creatures. Humans destroyed the vast majority of their habitat and food source in North America, replacing forests with farms and wild ungulates with cattle. When the wolves preyed on what little of their natural prey was left, hunters complained; when they then began preying on the cattle, ranchers, of course, complained, too. Eventually, North American society's perception of the wolf was one defined by indifference or outright hatred. With few vouching for them, wolves and other predators were destroyed en masse, resulting in a so-called "hunters paradise" free from irritating predators. To accomplish this, there was no limit to the extent hunters and trappers were willing to go in order to kill predators in large numbers. Besides traps, snares, and other mechanical methods, hunters would line carcasses with poison (usually strychnine), which would then kill the animals that preyed upon it. The corpses of affected animals would then themselves become poisonous, which tended to result in a rather long chain reaction of death. It is somewhat unbelievable that wolves managed to garner such an incredible amount of hatred for having done little else than what any species would do if both its habitat and main food source were destroyed. Ergo, they were destroyed completely in the contiguous 48 states, with the exception of Minnesota, over the subsequent decades.

Since the late 1960s, wolves have been protected in the U.S. in some form or another by a national endangered species bill, the latest of which is the Endangered Species Act of 1973. In a somewhat novel development, they have been allowed to naturally propagate in the upper Midwest, and have been reintroduced to areas in Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Arizona. In Alaska, where they are not listed under the Act, their populations continue to be controlled (usually by aerial hunting) in an effort to increase yields for hunters.

Gray Wolf - Changing attitudes

In the late 20th century, American society underwent a dramatic change of heart, so to speak. The works of wolf supporters such as Farley Mowat, L. David Mech, and Adolph Murie helped to shift the wolf's image to that of an intelligent and affectionate creature essential to the proper functioning of a conventional North American ecosystem. This increased awareness exposed the beneficial nature of wolves, and helped lead to their eventual endangered classification and subsequent reintroduction efforts. Accordingly, while the stereotype of wolves as malicious, wanton killers and vile, worthless beasts still has influence in certain circles, a significant portion of the public has developed a more positive opinion of wolves as interesting, valuable, and noble animals. Society as a whole has begun to realize the morality in attempting to make up for centuries of undue persecution, and knows of the justification behind trying to return a portion of our ecological integrity back to the American landscape.

Today, organizations such as the International Wolf Center, Defenders of Wildlife, and Mission: Wolf attempt to educate people about the true nature of wolves, and such action has proven helpful to past reintroduction efforts, especially in places such as Yellowstone National Park.

In certain parks, tourists enjoy participating in wolf howls, in which a person or a group attempts to imitate a wolf's howl well enough to induce a response from resident wolves. Even this undertaking has it drawbacks, because, as naturalists point out, tourists sometimes intrude on wolf habitat, consequently disturbing them in an attempt to communicate with them in this manner.

The large amount of research done on wolves in the last half century has also helped to educate people in a way that helps them to realize how sociologically similar humans are to wolves, and how people have little to fear from these naturally cautious, complex animals. Biologists L. David Mech and Luigi Boitani have arguably been the two leaders in contemporary wolf research.

This onslaught of pro-wolf publicity, including that which is procured from nature documentaries and books, has undoubtedly played a role in changing attitudes for the better. Such mediums tend to emphasize the wolf as an affectionate, devoted parent and fraternal animal that is deserving of our respect and protection as integral members of our global biodiversity.

Gray Wolf - Reintroduction

In the United States, wolves are repopulating where they were eradicated, and numbers have been increasing in Alaska and Minnesota, where some packs remained in the deep forests despite bounty hunting and other past eradication efforts. Not only are they slowly but surely coming back naturally from Canada, they are also being successfully reintroduced in some states such as Idaho and Wyoming. It is curious to note that some ranchers prefer reintroduction, as they can kill wolves that eat their livestock and get reimbursement for their losses, while wild animals are protected by law. In fact, wolf reintroduction was pushed hard by the U.S. Government, primarily by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees threatened and endangered species within the United States. This includes several studies looking into the feasibility of reintroducing the wolf in places farther east, in areas like Adirondack State Park in New York and certain areas of Maine.

Recent studies have shown that the wolf would have enjoyed greater protection had it been allowed to repopulate areas on its own without human intervention. Reports by wildlife biologists working for the National Park Service who stated that they had seen, though rarely, wolves in Yellowstone National Park, and had photographic proof of their limited presence prior to the "reintroduction", were essentially suppressed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Where wolves are reintroduced after a long absence, it has a marked influence on the coyote population. As they started to fill in the niche of the top predator, they started to grow larger. With the return of the wolf, these bigger coyotes are forced to return to their previous niche, or face attacks from wolves.

In Sweden, there is a long and ongoing conflict between some groups who claim that the wolf has no place in nature, and that it has been reintroduced by the Swedish government with some sort of secret agenda. The opponents are generally the rural working class who fear competition for Roe Deer and moose; they consider the wolf to be a foreign element, much like immigrants. It has been argued that modern Scandinavian wolves are recent arrivals from Russia, not the remnants of the old wolf tribes. In spite of the fact that attacks on people are virtually nonexistent historically, and hundreds of dogs are killed each year in hunting accidents, the wolves' possible threat to dogs and people is often cited by these people as a strong argument against the wolf's right to exist in Swedish forests.

In Norway the situation is further complicated, since sheep farmers use the forests as pasture for their animals during summer. It is difficult to hinder the wolves from preying on the sheep, and in areas where the wolf has been reintroduced many farmers have quit. Generally, the urban population is most positive to the wolf, while people actually living in the designated "wolf zones" are far more skeptical.

The situation is similar in Finland, where the number of wolves has been increasing over the past decades. Reindeer farmers in Lapland are affected by the increase, and other parts of the population wish to lift bans on wolf hunting. There is an ongoing controversy, since regulations of the EU may make this impossible.

Gray Wolf - Wolves in religion and folklore

In many ancient myths, the wolf was portrayed as brave, honorable, and intelligent. The best examples of these myths can be seen in those of the Native Americans. The wolf was also the revered totem animal of Ancient Rome (see Romulus and Remus and Lupercalia). The gray wolf is also the focal point of Pan-Turkism and related mythology. In Proto-Indo-European society, the wolf was probably associated with the warrior class, and the term was subject to taboo deformation, the Latin lupus being an example of a mutated form of the original Proto-Indo-European *wlkwos. Many Germanic personal names used to and still include "wolf" as an element (e.g. Wulfstan, Wolfgang, Wolfhard).

In more modern western folklore, the wolf is a creature to be feared. The iconic examples of this image are the Big Bad Wolf and the werewolf—a human that transforms into a wolf through magic or a curse, one that is shunned and reviled in regular society. Norse mythology prominently includes three malevolent wolves: the giant Fenrisulfr, eldest child of Loki and the giantess Angrboda, (who was feared and hated by the Æsir); and Fenrisulfr's children Skoll and Hati, who will devour the sun and moon at Ragnarok.

Human fear of the wolf is responsible for most of the trouble the species has received, and the reason it was nearly hunted out of existence. However, in the 20th century, with the new knowledge of wolves and the growing respect for Native American folklore, the animal has been generally depicted much more positively.

Despite their often negative image, wolves have variously been credited, in mythology, fiction and reality, with adopting, nursing, and raising human feral children, the most famous examples being Romulus and Remus and Mowgli of The Jungle Book. In Mongolian mythology, the Mongols believe that they are descended from a male Gray Wolf and a white doe. The Mongols' greatest hero Genghis Khan called his people 'Clan of the Gray Wolf'.

There has been no documented proof in the past 150 years that any wild, healthy wolf has killed a human; wolves are more likely to flee than to attack. However, some sources claim to have documented attacks, but in those cases, it is likely that the attacking wolves were suffering rabies, which is common in the areas in which the attacks occurred.^[13] In general, it is considered dangerous to approach or provoke wolves, as they are wild animals that will defend themselves if they feel threatened.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Past human perceptions of wolves", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki