by Michael Hofferber
The other night I watched a full moon rise over the mountains to the east, a magnificent golden orb balanced on the tips of rocky peaks, and I felt the urge to howl... like a wolf.
There is something about primal places that evokes elemental emotions. And there is something about feeling wild that remembers wolves.
On Friday nights on the western slopes of Mount Rainier, not far from the small town of Tenino, people gather around a campfire in the woods, throw back their heads and howl. Moments later, the cries of wolves issue from the darkness, howling back. Soon, everyone is howling together.
There have been no wolf packs in the forests of the Cascade Range for 50 years. Those heard howling in the night are three dozen residents of Wolf Haven America, the only wolf sanctuary west of the Mississippi River.
Steven Kuntz, founder of Wolf Haven, responded to a classified ad in 1976 that offered wolf pups for sale. The one he bought, named Blackfoot, was no pet. It tore up furniture and ripped up rugs before Kuntz faced facts: you can remove the wolf from the wild, but not the wild from the wolf.
With other wolf and wolf-hybrid owners, Kuntz started a makeshift sanctuary that evolved into a non-profit organization dedicated to providing refuge to abandoned wolves. Some came from overstocked zoos; others arrived from university research laboraties. Many were former pets, like Blackfoot.
Most of the wolves at Wolf Haven now are subspecies of the gray wolf, or timber wolf, once widespread across the West. Bounty killing and poisoning began in the 1850s and by 1930 nearly the entire population outside of Canada and Alaska had been wiped out.
Fourteen years ago, in a dramatic turnabout from a government-sponsored policy of eradication, the gray wolf was officially listed as an endangered species and efforts to re-establish wolf packs in the Northern Rockies were begun. In a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recovery plan, three areas of prime timber wolf habitat were identified: Yellowstone National Park, northwestern Montana, and central Idaho. Within these vast stretches of rugged mountains and remote valleys, the USFWS believes, as many as 30 wolf packs could safely roam and thrive without conflicting with the activities of man.
Attacks on domestic cattle earned wolves the wrath of ranchers, and the cultural prejudice of European settlers ("Little Red Riding Hood'' and werewolf legends) gave them a reputation as man-eaters. In truth, gray wolves prey largely on rodents and deer, and a few elk. They are opportunistic hunters that kill mostly sick or wounded animals; cattle were never a major part of their diet. And in 200 years of history, no healthy wild wolf in the U.S. ever attacked a human.
Biologists generally agree that wolves are good for a wild Rockies ecosystem. They bring balance to an environment that needs predators. But it will not be biology that reintroduces wolves to the wilderness; only politics can, and that which opposes wilderness also opposes wolves.
Wolves will kill some cattle, and they may take out some trophy elk. Those are the costs that man will have to bear in order to allow the wild back into the Rockies. In these mountains, a wilderness without wolves in like a forests without fires, or a river without rapids. You can't remove its wildest feature and call it wilderness.
c 1992 by Michael Hofferber