War Against the Wolf: America's Campaign to Exterminate the Wolf - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0896582647 ISBN 13: 9780896582644

Publisher: Voyageur Press, 1995

Synopsis

Offers historical documents and modern articles documenting the evolution of attitudes toward wolves in America from 1630 to 1995, tracing the shift from policies of eradication to protection and re-establishment

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Reviews

The war began on a small scale within a few years of colonial settlement and eventually escalated to all the 48 contiguous states. Between 1870 and 1930, extermination of predators, especially wolves, became national policy carried out by a federal agency, the U.S. Biological Survey (now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). McIntyre (A Society of Wolves) has collected material from government reports, journals, newspaper and magazine articles and traditional Native American stories to illustrate our attitude toward wolves over three centuries. This anthology includes pieces by James Audubon, Theodore Roosevelt, Ernest Thompson Seton and Aldo Leopold-tales of outlaw wolves, hunters and trappers. These tales and agency reports are gruesome reading. In the last 50 years, attitudes have changed; with the passage of the Endangered Species Act (1973), wolves began to make their way back. The final section reports on their reintroduction in national parks. This is a fine companion to McIntyre's earlier books. Photos.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

America's "final solution" to the "wolf question" began with the colonists' guns and intensified through private and state bounties until, by 1919, when wolf extermination was federally mandated, Native Americans were essentially alone in espousing a respectful coexistence with this animal possessed of many attributes valued by humans: intelligence, courage, and family loyalty. McIntyre documents that wolves were frequently regarded, irrationally, with fear, loathing, and superstition, and he integrates narratives, legends, poems, news accounts, government documents, and photographs in detailing the execution, often with horrifying cruelty, of government-sanctioned "predator control" practices. In the 1920s, however, biologists began to criticize this mindset, and, since passage of the Endangered Species Act, public attitudes have also changed. McIntyre describes current efforts to reintroduce wolves onto public lands and attempts by ranchers and hunters to block reintroduction. An excellent resource book and an optimistic exploration of the changing fortune of this vital predator. Brenda Grazis

Edition details

• Publisher: Voyageur Press
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0896582647
• ISBN 13: 9780896582644
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 495
• Editor: Rick McIntyre