Whereas the Gray Wolves now reintroduced into their former ancestral habitat of Yellowstone National Park rely on the area’s population of North American Elk (Cervus canadensis) to provide their primary source of food, in Isle Royale National Park, it’s Moose (Alces alces) that sustain the pack. However dietary differences aside, both wolf populations have and continue to face challenges to their existence – both natural and human directed.
Whenever I visit the UK, I am invariably asked about my experiences with large animals. Bears, moose, puma, wolves – they’re all a source of curiosity to enquirers from a land where the largest wild land mammal most people will ever see is a Fox. I welcome such opportunities to talk of North America’s charismatic megafauna, of course, as it gives me the chance to in turn learn more about how the British people see the wildlife of their own land.
What with all the recent bad news for and involving wolves in the press these past few weeks, I was particularly gladdened to receive a copy of a new book that recounts the life and adventures of one of my home state’s best known members of the species, Beckie Elgin’s “Journey: The Amazing Story of OR-7, the Oregon Wolf that Made History.”
It is one of history’s great ironies that the same source that gave mankind its proverbial best friend also gave it one of its greatest nightmares. Yet while the domestic dog has long-since become a trusted companion and protector in most human societies throughout the world, the still wild descendants of their ancestors – even though most of us have long-since developed a lifestyle to which they are not even remotely a threat to our health or well-being – continue to haunt the minds of far more of us than will ever (much as we may wish to) actually see one.