Wolf Nation: The Life, Death, and Return of Wild American Wolves

by Brenda Peterson

Overview

In the tradition of Peter Matthiessen's Wildlife in America or Aldo Leopold, Brenda Peterson tells the 300-year history of wild wolves in America. It is also our own history, seen through our relationship with wolves. The earliest Americans revered them. Settlers zealously exterminated them. Now, scientists, writers, and ordinary citizens are fighting to bring them back to the wild. Peterson, an eloquent voice in the battle for twenty years, makes the powerful case that without wolves, not only will our whole ecology unravel, but we'll lose much of our national soul.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306824937
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	05/02/2017
Series:	A Merloyd Lawrence Book
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Brenda Peterson is the author of eighteen books, including the novel Duck and Cover, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and I Want to Be Left Behind, selected by the Christian Science Monitor among the Top Ten Best Non-Fiction Books of 2010. Her most recent work, Your Life Is a Book, was a monthly Oprah book club selection. Peterson's work has appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and she has contributed environmental commentary to Seattle NPR stations and on animal and environmental issues for the Huffington Post. She lives in Seattle on the shores of Salish Sea.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Big, Good Wolf ix

Part 1 What We Almost Lost

1 An Historic Rage 3

2 "Who Speaks for Wolf?" 14

Part 2 Wolf Wars

3 Wolf Teeth on an Airplane Wing 29

4 A Taxidermist's Dream 40

Part 3 Recovery and Backlash

5 Yellowstone: "A Wolfs Paradise" 53

6 Trophic Cascades: A Not-So-Simple Story 69

7 06: The World's Most Famous Wolf 82

8 Old Growth and Young Howls 98

Part 4 Wolf Nation

9 Wolves and the National Commons 115

10 Wolves at Play 137

11 Raised by Wolves 151

12 Wolf Music 163

Part 5 Wolves Return

13 OR7: A Wolf Called Journey 179

14 Sheep Highway: Coexisting with Wolves 199

15 El lobo returns home 223

Epilogue: Speaking for Wolves 242

Organizations Working to Preserve Wild Wolves 258

Notes 259

Acknowledgments 280

Index 282

About the Author 292

Editorial Reviews

"A rich account of a most enigmatic creature."—Library Journal

"In eloquent language, Peterson brings us to the truisms that not only does wilderness need wolves, but wolves must thrive to make the world whole again."—Booklist

"Blending solid history with on-the-ground reportage, Peterson turns in a spirited defense of Canis lupus."—Kirkus Reviews

"Gripping and wonderfully lucid, this is both an entrancing and necessary read."—Manhattan Book Review

"[Wolf Nation] is a comprehensive look at these animals - their behavior and biology, why they howl and how they hunt, how alpha females can lead a family pack, and how their presence has improved every ecology to which they have returned."—Cosmos

"The story of how wolves...came to reinhabit the American West is recounted in Brenda Peterson's instructive new book...[She] has ideal credentials to undertake such a project."—Wall Street Journal

"In Wolf Nation, Peterson adeptly captures the plight of wolves on this continent, stressing the importance of their return to prominence in nature."

—Winnipeg Free Press

"A riveting, heartwarming, and occasionally heartbreaking history of wolves in America."
—Chicago Review of Books

"Peterson broadens the existing wolf-behavior knowledge base through well-informed discussions of the pivotal effect that wolves have on wild ecosystems, the increasingly sophisticated study of wolf biology, and not only why wolves howl but what they might be saying."
—Santa Fe New Mexican

"Peterson's considerable writing skills shine brilliantly through her engaging, flowing prose as she seamlessly interweaves science, history and memoir in this important and meticulously researched book."—Forbes, 'The 10 Best Environment, Climate Science and Conservation Books of 2017'

From the Publisher

★ 04/01/2017
A veteran of the "wolf wars," Peterson (Sightings: The Gray Whale's Mysterious Journey) draws on her own deep experience and artfully mixes it with science, history, and Native American lore to create a rich account of a most enigmatic creature. She fully explores lupine biology and ethology, and chapters devoted to two famous wolves, "06" and "OR-7" (aka "Journey"), complement that information. Readers learn how apex predators benefit ecosystems, and witness reintroduction in progress with Mexican gray wolves. Although the author leaves no doubt as to where her sympathies lie, she spends time with hard-core opponents to wolf conservation as well as with hunters and ranchers who are warming to the idea. Readers get an aching sense of what Canis lupus is up against—two-legged mammals with guns, of course, and, behind them, state wildlife commissions stacked with hunter-members gung-ho about removing wolves' protected status. Equally malignant, Peterson says, is the negative mythic weight of imported big bad wolf fables and homespun Old West tales of the animal as public enemy. Her book stands as a wise and potent antidote. VERDICT Highly recommended for most public libraries and readers interested in the natural world. An accessible, worthy update to classics such as those by Farley Mowat and Barry Lopez.—Robert Eagan, Windsor P.L., Ont.

Library Journal

2017-03-21
Blending solid history with on-the-ground reportage, natural history writer Peterson (Wolf Haven: Sanctuary and the Future of Wolves in North America, 2016, etc.) turns in a spirited defense of Canis lupus. The war on wolves is an ancient one. In the American West, where the author lives, ranchers fear wolves for their supposedly ravenous, profit-reducing hunger; elsewhere, wolves have been made into fairy-tale monsters. Against such clichés, Peterson serves up a few of her own, including the old saw about superior Native American wisdom in asking, "who speaks for wolf?" and the rather obvious nostrum, "to declare a person or an animal an enemy requires dehumanizing the other." Much of the spiritual ground, so to speak, that she covers has already been explored in better books by Barry Lopez and Peter Matthiessen, while Thomas McNamee and Rick McIntyre (who makes an appearance here) have done more comprehensive work in studying the fate of the wolf population of Yellowstone National Park. Yet, while she does not surpass them, Peterson adds important information, including her account of the recently articulated mechanisms of "trophic cascades," by which wolves are seen to have large implications for the health of wild ecosystems. "We are just beginning to understand wolf biology," she writes before examining some of those implications as they center on the fate of one fallen wolf. Often, Peterson's passing observations are as useful as the data she presents on wolves themselves. For instance, she notes, hopefully, that the millennial generation, though not identifying as "environmentalists" strictly speaking, are "the most environmental generation ever," supporting clean energy, strong regulatory programs, wilderness protection, and, yes, wolf reintroduction. There are other good takeaways here as well, including a lively discussion of why wolves howl and what kind of "vocabularies" they employ when doing so. Though with some overlap with the existing literature, a useful survey of the current state of all matters lupine.

Kirkus Reviews