Wolf Mountains: A History of Wolves Along the Great Divide

Wolf Mountains

Wolf Mountains A History of Wolves along the Great Divide

Karen R. Jon

UNIVERSITY OF

CALGARY PRESS

© 2002 Karen Jones. All rights reserved. University of Calgary Press 2500 University Drive NW Calgary, Alberta Canada T2N 1N4 www.uofcpress.com National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data Jones, Karen, 1972Wolf mountains (Parks and heritage series, ISSN 1494-0426 ; 6) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-55238-072-6 1. Wolves—Rocky Mountains. 2. Wolves—Public opinion. I. Title. II. Series. QL737.C22J66 2002 599.773 C2002-910480-7 The University of Calgary Press acknowledges the financial support of the International Council for Canadian Studies through its Publication Fund.

Canada

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDIP) for our publishing activities.

Canada Council for the Arts

Conseil des Arts du Canada

All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical— without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or reproducing in information-storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed to CANCOPY, One Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5E 1E5. Printed and bound in Canada by AGMV Marquis ©This book is printed on acid-free paper. Cover design by Kristina Schuring. Interior design by Jeremy Drought, Last Impression Publishing Service, Calgary, Alberta

Contents Preface and Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: National Parks and the Wolf

1

I Wolves in Yellowstone National Park The Thunderer and Canine Howls The Changing Nature of Yellowstone National Park The Wolf's Last Stand in Yellowstone From Dissenting Opinion to Park Policy Lupine Ghosts in Yellowstone? The Wolf Returns to Yellowstone

2 Wolves in Glacier National Park

3

15

15 22 31 36 43 47 59

The Demise of Chief Wolf The Establishment of Glacier Park Wolf Policy in the Early Park Changing Opinions in Glacier The Rise and Fall of Wolf Fortunes in Glacier Wolves Resettle in Glacier

59 64 67 75 79 82

Wolves in Banff National Park

99

From 'Wolf Country' to the ' Whoop-Up Trail' The Establishment of Rocky Mountains Park The Development of Predator Policy From Cages to Wild Habitat: Re-Appraising the Wolf Canine Battles in Banff National Park Lupophobia and the Rabid Wolf A Den of Wolf Defenders Wolves Retake Banff Wolf Paradise Lost?

99 107 111 lll 119 123 133 136 140 147

Wolves in Jasper National Park

153

From Earth-Maker Wolf to the Fur Trapper Nature, Railroad, and National Park Wolf Policy in Jasper Park Wrestling with Wardens and Wolves From Outlaws to Lupine Legends Nature's Cycles and Human Constructions

153 162 166 169 183 187

Conclusion: The Trials and Trails of Wolf History Exceptionalism in the Rocky Mountain Wolf Parks Crossing National Park Boundaries Restor(y)ing the Wolf

201 201 210 215

4

Epilogue: Legal Wrangles, Canine Appetites, and Shifting Cultural Attitudes ..219 Notes

223

Bibliography

301

Index

325

Wolf Mountains is dedicated to the memory of Lagi.

Preface and Acknowledgments

Y

ELLOWSTONE, GLACIER, BANFF, and JASPER NATIONAL PARKS are

situated in the North American Rockies, an imposing mountain range that dominates the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, and the U.S. states of Montana and Wyoming. Physically connected by wolf trails, each of the four parks enjoy distinctive lupine histories. Attitudes towards Canis lupus have changed drastically over time. Prior to the establishment of national parks, wolves in the Rockies interacted with Native peoples, who regarded the large canines as powerful supernatural hunters, and white trappers, who valued lupine animals for their pelts. From the late nineteenth century onwards, Rocky Mountain wolves encountered patrolling national park wardens and awestruck visitors. Whilst park authorities engaged in zealous campaigns to exterminate 'noxious' predators in the early 1900s, federal officials reintroduced the wolf to Yellowstone in 1995 under the terms of the Endangered Species Act (1973). Wolf Mountains explores this progression in Canadian and American ideas concerning national parks and wildlife protection, tracing how the wolf figured in competing visions of the North American landscape. Numerous individuals offered valuable assistance during my own travels across the Rocky Mountains. I thank the staff in Ottawa at the Public Archives of Canada, and Celine Racette and Barry Hughson at Parks Canada. Park historian Graham MacDonald and regional biologist David Poll never failed to answer my e-mails, while Walter Hildebrandt from the University of Calgary Press proved an enthusiastic supporter of this project. Thanks also to John Bonnett in Ottawa, and Marge Lasky in Berkeley, California, for providing exemplary hospitality. In Yellowstone, Lee Whittlesey and Sue Consolo-Murphy enthusiastically responded to my requests for information, and Deb Guernsey kindly allowed me to tag along on a trip to feed ' Big Sandy,' a wolf-hybrid interned in one of the reintroduction pens. Regards also to John Varley, Wayne Brewster, and Douglas Smith, who took time out from their busy schedules to offer personal recollections of Canis lupus. On my journey north along the ' Backbone of the World,' wildlife

ix

WOLF MOUNTAINS

biologists Diane Boyd, Daniel Pletscher, and Michael Roy proved similarly generous. Further thanks to Deirdre Shaw, Lyn Kleiner, Steve Gniadek, and Gary Brandow in Glacier National Park for providing documents, interviews, accommodation, and a bicycle. Transportation assistance, together with engaging conversation, was furnished by Bart Robinson, David Johns, and Anne Peyton Curlee, who aided me on my journeys across the forty-ninth parallel. In Banff and Jasper national parks, librarians Cathy Hourigan and Kim Forster were equally obliging, as were biologists Wes Bradford and Tom Hurd. Many people on the other side of the Atlantic provided essential help with Wolf Mountains. At Bristol University, I thank my doctoral adviser, Dr. Peter Coates, for consistently providing worthy commentary on my lupine tales. Appreciation is extended to the university interlibrary loan staff, who tirelessly tracked down obscure canine titles (and sometimes expressed mystification at what ' exactly ' I was researching). Further salutations to Professor William Beinart at Oxford for introducing me to comparative environmental history. Heartfelt thanks also to my parents, who lent their support to the project. Childhood vacations climbing Hay Tor in Dartmoor National Park provided rudimentary training for the rugged peaks of the North American Rockies. Given the focus of this work on non-human protagonists, it seems only appropriate to offer a few words of appreciation to the various faunal characters that enriched my experience of the Rocky Mountain landscape. Along with moose and elk, a curious grizzly bear greeted me in Glacier National Park, galloping across a meadow in the North Fork before standing proudly on his hind legs. Canis lupus made a brief appearance in Yellowstone, a large black canine racing through the woods as I explained the vagaries of my project to a hiker on the Blacktail Plateau. Finally, earnest thanks to my trail companion, John Wills, for sharing my fascination with North America and its wild inhabitants and providing inestimable support with this project. Karen R. Jones Elmstead Market, England March, 2002

X

Introduction

National Parks and the Wolf

W

• ITH THE DESIRE to "rediscover this monster land,"John

ITH THE DESIRE to "rediscover this monster land," John Steinbeck embarked from Long Island, New York, on an epic journey across the United States in 1962, accompanied accompanied by his "old French gentleman poodle," Charley. After touring the eastern seaboard and the states of the mid-west, Steinbeck entered Montana. The acclaimed writer explored the towns of Billings, Livingston and Butte, visited the Little Big Horn battlefield, and then travelled south towards Yellowstone National Park. With typical candour, he confessed a certain "laxness in the matter of National Parks," finding little of interest in "the highest waterfall, the deepest canyon, the highest cliff." Steinbeck believed that the national parks enshrined "the freaks of our nation and of our civilization," with Yellowstone "no more representative of America than Disneyland." Despite these personal qualms, the roving writer nevertheless felt obliged to investigate the legendary preserve. Anticipating neighbourly cries of "you mean you were that near to Yellowstone and didn't go?," Steinbeck ventured into the park. The writer had scarcely driven a mile along the entrance road when a grizzly bear sauntered across the asphalt. At the sight of the bear, Charley became a frenzied animal, hurling himself at the windows of the camper van, growling and snarling. The affable poodle, who usually had trouble devouring dog biscuits, became "a primitive killer lusting for the blood of his enemies." The wild terrain of Yellowstone National Park appeared to bring out the wolf in Charley. Shocked at the spectacular display of canine ferocity, Steinbeck related how "no amount of natural wonders, of rigid cliffs and belching waters, of smoking springs could even engage my attention."1 The Biological Animal

The Biological Animal

Despite marked differences in size and pelage,charley the poodle and

Despite marked differences in size and pelage, Charley the poodle and

1

WOLF MOUNTAINS

million years to a time when the first recognizable wolf-like canids emerged. Humans domesticated the wolf at least twelve thousand years ago, with cave fossils in Idaho confirming the breeding of dogs by PaleoIndians in North America in 8400 B.C. At the time of the Roman Empire—a civilization whose legendary founders Romulus and Remus were reputedly suckled by a maternal she-wolf—Canis lupus signified the most widely distributed land mammal on the planet. Wolves ranged throughout the northern hemisphere, inhabiting diverse terrains with the exception of deserts and rainforests.2 Given popular perceptions of the wolf as a formidable beast, the physical size of Canis lupus surprisess many observers. Adult wolves usually

weigh up to 115 pounds, span five to six feet from nose to tail, and stand approximately thirty inches at the shoulder. The largest animal on record, captured by a hunter in 1939 near Seventy Mile River, Alaska, weighed in at 175 pounds, and Jasper National Park wardens captured an adult male of 172 pounds in 1945. The name 'grey wolf relates to the common colour of the lupine coat, although pelage can range from jet black to blue-white, encompassing a multitude of shades in between. In the Rocky Mountains, wolf pelts vary from grey to black, with a preponderance of darker animals in northerly climes. The coyote (Canis latranis] and the domestic dog (Canis familiaris)) represent the wolf's closest relatives.

As they travelled across the Western landscape, Euro-American explorers found it hard to differentiate between wolves and coyotes, resulting in the popular name given to Canis latranis of brush wolf. Subsequent scientific research nonetheless confirmed the two canids as separate species, wolves distinguished by their larger size, longer limbs, and elaborate social networks, coyotes by their pointed ears, fox-like muzzles and solitary behaviour. Compared to domestic dogs, wolves sport longer snouts, larger jaws, bigger paws, and greater intellectual capacity. The ability of the domestic dog to forge powerful ties with humans reflects its genetic roots as a pack animal. The pack comprises the basic unit of lupine society. A tightly knit community marshalled by strict canine etiquettes, pack size varies according to territory, number of prey species, and mortality factors. North American wolf families typically contain a dozen animals: the alpha male and female, attendant pups, together with offspring from previous years. Individual animals exhibit distinctive personality traits and hunting skills. Liaison between pack members is facilitated by a complex array of oral, postural, and olfactory signals. The howl represents the most famous lupine form of communication. When wolves howl they tend to vociferate in harmonies,

2

INTRODUCTION • National Parks and the Wolf

one of the reasons why human listeners typically overestimate the number of lupine participants. Community and amicability define pack society. Writing in the 1940s, acclaimed wolf researcher Adolph Murie noted: "The strongest impression remaining with me after watching the wolves on numerous occasions was their friendliness."3 Lupine animals establish social bonds in the den. As blind and vulnerable pups, they get to know each other while depending on adult wolves for subsistence. After two months of earthy security, pups leave the den for a 'rendezvous site'—usually an open meadow bordered by forest cover—where they learn survival skills and confirm their place in pack hierarchy through boisterous play. Although wolves can live for up to sixteen years in captivity, the rigours of wilderness terrain limit the average life span of the Alaskan wolf to three or four years. In order to prosper in harsh environments, wolves depend on finely honed senses, mental acumen, and an instinctive awareness of danger. In the mid-1800s, Euro-American hunters applauded the culinary opportunism displayed by wolves, who learned to rush to the sound of gunfire at the promise of freshly skinned bison carcasses. Later, when rifles turned in their direction, wild canines manifested a canny ability to stay out of range. Teamwork skills, stamina, and resilience mark the wolf pack as an efficient hunting unit. With their distinctive loping gait and svelte demeanour, wolves can easily range forty miles a day, and are able to sustain short sprints of up to thirty miles an hour. Bison, moose, caribou, dall sheep, deer, and elk number among the favoured prey species of Canis lupus, although wolves have been known to supplement their diets with beaver and other, smaller rodents. A successful wolf hunt requires careful implementation. Engaging in what nature writer Barry Lopez called "a conversation of death," wolf packs identify likely prey on the basis of species abundance, ease of capture, and individual vitality.4 After an animal has been singled out, the pack moves quickly to isolate the target, executing their attack before lupine energies expire. The hunting methods employed by Canis lupus probably contribute to the animal's reputation as a bloodthirsty killer. In the 1800s, EuroAmerican observers related with disgust how wolves slashed at the flanks of their prey with snapping jaws or sunk sharp incisors into the noses of fleeing herbivores, worrying animals until exhaustion or loss of blood facilitated their demise. Even today, some nature documentary aficionados baulk at the sight of wild hounds gorging themselves on mortally wounded ungulates. Nevertheless, it remains imperative to

3

WOLF MOUNTAINS

judge the wolf hunt as a biological rather than an (im)moral act, putting aside human sympathies for the 'victim' in favour of a semblance of species relativism. Canines undertake sizeable risks in their quests for sustenance. The sturdy hooves and sharp antlers sported by North American bucks and bulls render the contest a life-and-death experience for predator as well as prey, a well-placed kick resulting in broken bones or even death. Following the hunt, pack leaders are sometimes too exhausted to share in the fruits of their labours. As Murie noted, "When [the male wolf] arrives at the den, he flops, relaxes completely, and may not even change his position for three to four hours. Often he may not even raise his head to look around for intruders."5 Although aggressive when defending pack territory from unfamiliar wolves or other predators, Canis lupus typically exhibits a shyness of Homo sapiens. Lupine proclivities for ambushing humans have been grossly exaggerated. The unsavoury reputation of the North American wolf heralds from medieval Europe, where the tendency of hungry canines to stalk battlefields for human corpses is well documented. Contemporary scientific evidence suggests that many of the renowned 'killer wolves' of Europe were either crossbred with domestic dogs or animals suffering from rabies. In the 1760s, the so-called 'Beasts of Gevaudan' killed at least sixty-four people (mostly young children) in south-central France. Reviewing the reign of terror, C. H. D. Clarke of the Canadian Wildlife Service concluded that the two animals responsible were most likely wolf-dog hybrids. In the New World, the threat posed by resident canines to humans proved somewhat muted. Wolves were undoubtedly curious about twolegged strangers, and inquisitive animals entered campsites, killed tethered animals, and raided food caches. Canis lupus constituted a nuisance animal for roving Euro-American explorers and pioneer communities struggling to survive in unfamiliar climes with limited provisions. However, no attack on a human by a healthy wolf has ever been authenticated in North America. Scientists from Parks Canada investigated various reports of wolf attacks in the Northwest Territories during the 1920s and found no material evidence, while renowned wolf biologist L. David Mech noted the absence of any confirmed accounts in his acclaimed work on lupine biology, The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species (1970).6 In 1940, James Curran, editor of the Sault Ste. Marie Daily Star (Ontario) offered a $100 reward for credible information regarding wolf attacks on humans.7 The prize remains unclaimed.

4

INTRODUCTION • National Parks and the Wolf

Writings on wolf biology reveal an abiding human interest in documenting lupine attributes. From medieval bestiaries to twenty-firstcentury Geographic Information Systems, scientists have sought to understand the social lives of wild canines. Scientific perspectives on Cants lupus have varied over time, reflecting salient biological theories, social and economic priorities, and changing environmental sensibilities. Many older texts retain value more as historical sources than biological guides. In a thirteenth-century European bestiary, Albertus Magnus conveyed how "wolves eat the mud calledglisy not for the sake of getting nourishment but to make themselves heavier. Having eaten it the wolf preys on very strong animals—the ox or stag or horse—by leaping at them, straight on, and clinging to them."8 Such conclusions may strike us as fantastical, yet they represented cogent biological tenets in the medieval world. Meanwhile, Stanley Young and Edward Goldman's The Wolves of North America, (1944)—once assumed an authoritative tome on lupine biology—reads today as a mixture of natural history and folklore.9 The most credible modern scientific source on Canis lupus remains L. David Mech's The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species. R. J. Rutter and D. H. Pimlott's The World of the Wolf (1968) and F. H. Harrington and P. C. Paquet's Wolves of the World (1982) serve as useful introductions to canine biology and natural history, while studies by Durward Allen and Adolph Murie furnish in-depth surveys of wolves in specific locales. Information on the essential players and key tenets in the biological field can be found in Mike Link and Kate Crowley, Following the Pack: The World of Wolf Research (1994).10 The Mythological Beast Even a rudimentary survey of lupine natural history intonates key differences between the wolf as a biological animal and the wolf as a mythological beast. John Steinbeck's fascination with the canine ferocity aroused in Charley illuminates an inveterate enchantment in human society with Canis lupus as a wild hunter. In the realms of fiction and folklore, the wolf has retained a remarkable cultural allure. Sapient protagonists have embellished and transformed the biological wolf into a folkloric creation. Material wolves have given way to mythic beasts of legend and fable. As nature writer Barry Lopez noted in his classic treatise Of Wolves and Men (1978): "In the wolf we have not so much an animal that we have always known as one we have consistently imagined."11

5

WOLF MOUNTAINS

Native American spirituality attributed an instrumental role to Canis lupus. A creation story told by the Kwakiuti of the Pacific Northwest related how their nation descended from four wolves who survived a great flood. Finding refuge from the rising waters on a mountain, the four lupines shed their skins and became human. 'Listened to,' the leader of the bedraggled band, donned his fur coat one last time to see if anyone else had survived the deluge. He howled across the water, and received a lone response from a distant island. Mindful of the similarities between pack and tribal society, indigenous groups revered the wolf for his loyalty to kin and territorial lifestyle. American Indian folklore aggrandized the wild canine as a powerful hunter-warrior. The Lakota Sioux adorned themselves with wolf pelts in order to absorb lupine hunting skills, while Owl Man, leader of the feared Cheyenne Wolf Soldiers, reputedly received instructions on war dances and strategy from dozens of wolves that rescued him during a snowstorm. Native Americans paid homage to the wolf as a powerful and sacred being, but that did not prevent them from killing their four-legged brethren. Respect and killing remained intricately connected in Native American mythology. The Sun Dance ceremony practised by Great Plains tribes required the skins of dead animals in order to glorify the spirit of the wolf. Using snares and deadfalls, Indian hunters captured wolves for use as clothing, medicine, and even food. Misfortune befell those individuals who killed canines without subscribing to ritual code. The Cherokee believed that a gun fired at a wolf had to be disassembled, filled with burnt sourwood sticks, and placed in a running brook overnight. The most common image of the wolf in European folklore is that of a devilish beast, an incorrigible ravager lurking in the forest eager to devour lost travellers. Although an alternative tradition of benign wolf tales exists—witness the story of St. Francis and the wolf of Gubbio or the nurturing she-wolf of Romulus and Remus—visions of lascivious and hostile canines predominate in Old World folklore. Fairytales such as 'Little Red Riding Hood' and 'The Three Little Pigs' conjure Canis lupusas a debased and canny fiend with probing yellow eyes and bloodsoaked teeth. Storytellers took the biological attributes of wolves—their distinctive almond pupils, sharp incisors, and heightened sensory perceptions—and transformed them into villainous chimeras. A razorsharp bite marked the wolf as an arch-predator while his penetrating gaze emerged as a salient indicator of the alien wilderness, the 'other.' Lupine ability to melt effortlessly into the forest gloom created a sense

6

INTRODUCTION • National Parks and the Wolf

of lurking malevolence and omnipresent threat for travellers navigating dusky groves. Christian teachings promoting the wolf as an emissary of the Devil accentuated popular angst. Biblical metaphor portrayed Jesus as a shepherd securing his flock from the temptations of satanic predators, while the medieval Catholic Church engaged in fervent campaigns to rid local communities of werewolves. The wolf became synonymous with bestiality and unbridled carnality, a symbol of lust, greed, violence, and other undesirable human traits. The Malleus Maleficarium or Hammer of Witches (1487) warned sinful brethren of the prophecy in Deuteronomy: "I will send the teeth of the beast down on them."12 Vigilance soon gave way to hysteria. Between 1598 and 1600, one French judge convicted six hundred 'werewolf citizens to death for crimes of Devil worship and attendant shape shifting. European mythology posited a sacrosanct divide between the civilized, rational, and just human society and the realm of the untamed, evil wild. Derided as profligate killers and tainted by a rich folklore of devilish associations, wolves were eradicated from England by 1500. Wild canines persisted longer in continental Europe, finding refuge in dense forests and remote mountain ranges. Denmark's last wolf succumbed in 1772, and wolves were rare in Germany by the mid-18OOs. Antipathy towards the wolf found fertile soil in New World climes. Commonly interpreting their flight from Europe in terms of religious salvation, early colonists found it easy to conjure Canis lupus as a symbol of rancour. Strongly identified with the Devil and temptation through European association, North American canines were viewed as supernatural forces sent to try the pioneers in their New Jerusalem. Seventeenth-century New England pastor John Winthrop described himself as "a poor shepherd ... among the small flock of sheep I daily fold in this distant part of the wilderness ... to secure them from the wild rapacious quadrupeds of the forest."13 Canis lupus represented an economic as well as spiritual enemy. North American pioneers settled in historic wolf territory and their subsistence needs inevitably clashed with resident lupines. Dependent on small collections of cattle and sheep, settlers fretted over incursions by hungry canines. Wolf predation on wild ungulates was similarly disavowed, as colonists prized deer and elk for their own hunting and culinary needs. Keen to prevent wild carnivores from roaming farmland, the Massachusetts Bay Colony inaugurated a wolf bounty in 1630, just ten years after the first emigrants berthed on New World shores.14

7

WOLF MOUNTAINS

Images of Cams lupus as a beast of savage intent found fresh application in the nineteenth-century West. According to American manifest destiny, the wolf represented an impediment to progress and civilization. The practical tribulations of Western society produced enmity between settlers and wild predators. Physical descriptions of wolves were often appended with derogatory remarks. Settlers labelled the wolf as "the shark of the plains," an appellation which candidly illustrated human prejudice towards aquatic as well as terrestrial carnivores.15 Frontier myths grew up around Canis lupus. Storytellers spun legendary tales of ghostwolves able to destroy hundreds of cattle and magically elude capture. As park rangers Lee Wilder and James L. Jackson noted: "Isolation in a wilderness area may have encouraged many imaginations to run wild."16 Popular mythology, a biological imperative to suppress rival predators, coupled with a need to master the natural landscape engendered the deaths of one million wolves in the nineteenth-century American West.17 While notable naturalists from William Bartram to Ernest Thompson Seton manifested a keen fascination with wolves as interesting and likeable animals, a reverential tradition in Euro-American wolf folklore only proliferated in the latter years of the twentieth century.18 Reflecting the post-1945 dissemination of ecological tenets, together with a romantic nostalgia for untamed wilderness, citizens subscribed to a new environmental folklore positing the wolf as a friendly, useful, and charismatic creature. T-shirts, mugs and posters advertised the wolf as a graceful, playful and loveable animal, while Internet sites invoked Native American spiritual affinity with 'Brother Wolf.' The new environmental mythology rested on a poignant image of the wolf as a persecuted icon. Literature and film, from Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf (1963) to the 'new Western' Dances with Wolves(1990), cast Canis lupus as the victim of an inherently destructive Euro-American society.19 In developing this critique, eco-feminist and Native American historians hailed the large canines as fellow sufferers of frontier masculinity and ecological imperialism.20 Even the wolf of children's literature received reappraisal. The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (1989) offered a retelling of the traditional fairy tale. Its author, 'A. Wolf,' dispensed with older truisms by detailing events as they really happened by blaming the entire debacle on media hype.21 However, in crafting the wolf as a 'hero' of the American wild, advocates sometimes overlooked lupine biology. Rather than bloodthirsty brutes with slavering fangs, the new folklore transformed the wolf as an affable wilderness pet complete with (radio) collar. Individuals subscribed

8

INTRODUCTION • National Parks and the Wolf

to popular environmental myths suggesting that wolves rarely caught ungulates, and dined exclusively on mice. Meanwhile, the growing cachet attached to Canis lupus manifested in a burgeoning market for wolfdog hybrids, pet-owners seeking to transplant a wilderness icon to their own backyard in an symbolic re-naturing of Canis familiaris. Such practices intonated little regard for the psychological and physical needs of wild canines. The cultural resonance of wolf mythology in diverse cultures and across continents presents a remarkable phenomenon.22 In North America, the power of the human imagination to craft animals into malleable icons was ably demonstrated by the different identities grafted onto wolves and coyotes. While the two canids shared numerous biological traits, habitats, and even the bones of fallen prey, EuroAmerican folklore rendered the animals as entirely different. In Native American tradition, the coyote, or great trickster, attained a status analogous to that of his larger canine cousin. However, Canis latranis failed to attract attention from Euro-American storytellers. Though the coyote experienced cognate persecution in the West, the 'brush wolf failed to achieve renown in pioneer or environmental folklore. That the coyote was neither feared nor revered testified to the strength of mythology over biology in crafting popular perceptions. Canis lupus appeared to have a distinctive impact on the human psyche that few other animals matched. Wolves and Protected Areas In common with John Steinbeck, early national park authorities in Yellowstone found canine activities wildly distracting. Late nineteenthcentury conservationists and resource managers regarded national parks as places for the exclusive preservation of monumental scenery.23 Ancient Sierra Nevada giant sequoias and grand Rocky Mountains provided North Americans with an unsullied and sublime natural past to rival the cathedrals of Europe. Charley's distant relative represented an unwelcome addition to idyllic, awe-inspiring landscapes of spectacular mountains, crystal-clear lakes and crashing waterfalls. Anxious over the effect of predation on dwindling game herds, wardens engaged in vitriolic campaigns to eliminate wolves from the national park scene. In 1919, Stephen Mather, Director of the United States National Park Service, celebrated that "our efforts to reduce the number of predatory animals in the national parks have met with unusual success."24 Disparaged by

9

WOLF MOUNTAINS

settler society and rendered pariahs in nature preserves, wolves roamed a fraction of their former range by the early twentieth century. However, national park agencies in Canada and the United States gradually revised their policies towards resident carnivores. In the 1930s, biologists argued that national parks should preserve ecological systems rather than freaks of nature.25 Conservationists stressed the need for protected reserves to provide refuge for four-legged citizens as well as urban tourists. In 1934, Congress authorized the creation of Everglades National Park, a flat, alligator-inhabited swamp in Florida. In preserving an area for its wilderness and wildlife values rather than its monumental scenery, Everglades set a precedent in park legislation. Stress on protecting biological integrity inevitably altered perceptions of wolves. During the inter-war period, Canislupusw&s re-appraised as an important ecological agent. Wolves retained a powerful identification with ecology in post1945 North America. The influential Leopold Report (1963) emphasized a need to restore extirpated predators as part of a proclaimed philosophy to preserve the national parks as "vignettes of primitive America."26 Scholarly works on the U.S. national parks mimic the landscapes they purport to describe—some areas offer a bounty of diverse and fertile material while others suffer endemic neglect. Traditional works on the U.S. parks have emphasized legislative and political developments or explored the contribution of key individuals.27 Meanwhile, interest in environmental, social, and gender history has injected fresh dynamism into national park erudition, providing critical studies of Native American land rights, the evolution of the park ideal, female preservationists, and ecological science.28 Yet, academic attention remains geographically transfixed on the 'crown jewel' national parks of Yosemite and Yellowstone.29 Despite popular identification with the U.S. preserves as places of abundant fauna, issues of wildlife management have attracted perfunctory attention from U.S. environmental historians.30 Faunal chronicles have often served as 'cannon-fodder' in battles over the 'naturalness' of protected landscapes. Journalist Alston Chase emerged as a leading critic of the National Park Service in the 1980s, admonishing the agency's policy of natural regulation as merely "the bewitching power of a false idea."31 In the 1990s, vociferous parties wrangled over Yellowstone's lupine heritage.32 Public interest in the 1995 wolf reintroduction program spawned a series of books. Usually written by 'insiders' to the project, these works satiated public hunger for wolf tales.33 By contrast, wolf history in Glacier has been almost entirely overlooked.34

10

INTRODUCTION • National Parks and the Wolf

Literature on Canadian national parks follows the same well-trodden trails as in the United States. Historians, geographers, and political scientists have ignored social denouements in favour of legislative and bureaucratic matters.35 Janet Foster completed a study of early wildlife preservation in Canada, although she stressed the introductory nature of her work.36 Environmental historians Thomas Dunlap and Alan MacEachern examined predator policy disputes during the inter-war period, positing provocative conclusions regarding the role of science as a tool for canine protection.37 Despite these pioneering ventures, environmental history north of the forty-ninth parallel remains underdeveloped in comparison to the U.S.A.38 Although visited by four million tourists every year, and enshrined as the second national park in North America (and the third in the world), Banff National Park has received cursory attention from historians.39 A few unpublished reports and articles by wildlife biologists provide the only coverage of Banff's turbulent wolf history. Scholarly treatment of Jasper National Park proves equally sparse.40 Naturalist Dick Dekker affords the only commentary on Jasper's wild canines in Wolves of the Rocky Mountains from Jasper to Tellowstone (1997). Providing a "sympathetic yet realistic perspective" on Canis lupus for a popular audience, Dekker's work blended his own wilderness experiences with a treatise on lupine natural history.41 Chasing the Rocky Mountain Wolf The aim of Wolf Mountains lies in exploring the shifting fortunes of Canis lupus in four national parks in the Rockies, exploring how changing scientific and emotional rationales facilitated the persecution and subsequent protection of resident canines. Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper lie within the Rocky Mountains in a line running south to north. Seven hundred and seventy-five miles of rugged topography separate Moose Falls, near the southern entrance to Yellowstone, from Azure Lake, on Jasper's northern boundary. The discipline of environmental history operates on multiple levels. Documenting the history of wolves in Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper requires consideration of local, regional, national and transnational perspectives.42 Marked by individual human agencies and timehonoured wolf trails, each preserve retains its own unique history. Regional economic and political exigencies, together with wildlife movements across invisible park borders, also place Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper in a wider Rocky Mountain system. The story of

11

WOLF MOUNTAINS

wolves in these preserves cannot be told without considering the surrounding terrain. Along the Continental Divide, citizens wrangle over definitions of wolves, nature, and 'the West.' The ideals, and the conflicts they generate, emerge clearly in park debates. Roaming lupines from Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper navigate multifarious boundaries. In 1987, one wolf from Glacier traversed seven hundred kilometres of Rocky Mountain range to reach Fort St. John in northern British Columbia.43 Despite wolves crossing borders, scholars have confined their attentions to either side of the forty-ninth parallel, as if the land ended abruptly at the international boundary.44 The semantics of geographical definitions illustrate this tendency. For Americans, the rugged ranges of Glacier National Park comprise part of the Northern Rockies, while Canadians, with their more northerly latitude, situate Banff and Jasper in the Central Rockies. The Canadian and American Rockies are defined by different mentalities and identified according to national borders. Environmental historians have similarly framed human interactions with the natural world in the context of nation states. In 1968, American historian Roderick Nash claimed that Canadians lagged two generations behind their southern counterparts in appreciating wild nature, while park scholar John Ise argued that Canadian preserves followed "our lead."45 Paeans to the singularity of the U.S. park system reflected the influence of American exceptionalism, a potent idea suggesting that the United States harboured a climactic historical destiny. Exceptionalist rhetoric lauding the United States as the inventor of the national park concept reflected an exalting tradition in American history from the Pilgrim Fathers to the warriors of the Cold War.46 Meanwhile, Canadian academics distinguished their environmental history from that of the United States by stressing continuing imperial links and the importance of state government in guiding westward movement.47 With the beaver and maple leaf as naturalistic symbols of their country, Canadians presented themselves as more respectful of the environment than pioneers south of the border.48 Few works blazed historical trails across national lines, despite nature's obvious tendency to confound political boundaries. Whoop-Up Country (1955), Paul Sharp's engaging study of whisky traders, horse rustlers and trappers in Montana and Alberta, deftly illustrates the boons of exploring history from a trans-national perspective.49 Provocative studies on settler societies in North America, South Africa and the Antipodes illuminate the fertile ground of comparative environmental history.50

12

INTRODUCTION • National Parks and the Wolf

Wolf Mountains draws inspiration from such works in using nature's boundaries for its historical and geographical parameters. Wolf Mountains offers a history of Rocky Mountain canines that considers images of wolves in the country of the mind and the treatment of wolves in the material environment. It contends that wolf-human interactions can only be fully understood by consideration of the biological animal and the mythological beast. Stress is placed on the collision of environmental ideals, park policy, and wolf activities in Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper. Dramatic shifts in public and official opinion reveal the Rocky Mountain wolf as a creature constantly re-invented by human imagination, while the physical landscape bears witness to changing ideas about nature preservation. Wolf Mountains also tentatively advances a lupocentric history of Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper. Humans undoubtedly circumscribe wolf fortunes in the physical environment, but Canis lupus remains a significant actor in the historical process, an independent agent blazing historic faunal trails. Inspired by Donald Worster's call to place the 'four-leggeds' back into history, Wolf Mountains subscribes to a biophilic chronicle of national park development that considers nonhuman as well as human activities.51 This is not a rationale borne of misanthropy, but instead reflects a desire to forge a history situating humans within a wider community of species.52 In order to fully document the history of places and animals hitherto neglected by scholarly enquiry, Wolf Mountains details denouements in Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper in four separate chapters. The conclusion adopts a comparative framework to consider trends and phenomena across the forty-ninth parallel, although inter-park exchanges between human and canine protagonists are referred to throughout. Park trails explored during the course of Wolf Mountains show Canis lupus to be a complex and adaptable creature. As John Steinbeck noted following Charley's outburst in Yellowstone, "I wonder why we think the thoughts and emotions of animals are simple."53

13

WOLF MOUNTAINS

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

14

1

Wolves in Yellowstone National Park The Thunderer and Canine Howls Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.1 ALDO LEOPOLD, "Thinking Like a Mountain" (1944)

O

NE SUCH MOUNTAIN replete with wolf wisdom is 'The Thunderer,' a rugged ten thousand feet peak that rises abruptly from the grassland savannah of the Lamar Valley in the northeast of Yellowstone National Park. For at least sixteen hundred years, the Thunderer has witnessed contests for survival between wolves and their prey—elk, pronghorn, bison and sheep—in the valley below. The bones of wolves found in nearby Lamar Cave, along with those of thousands offish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and other mammals, testify to a long heritage of wildlife abundance in Yellowstone. Archaeological findings in the Rocky Mountain West suggest that wolves have been part of the landscape for twenty thousand years.2 Wolf history in Yellowstone predates that of the human natives of North America. When Paleo-Indians crossed the Bering land bridge onto 'Turtle Island,' they entered the domain of the dire wolf.3 The dire wolf, prehistoric relative of the grey wolf, boasted a massive skull and powerful jaws. The territory of these formidable carnivores spanned North America, and undoubtedly included the Yellowstone region. However, following climatic alterations and Native American overhunting, the faunal landscape underwent a fundamental change in the Pleistocene period.4 The large species that had prevailed—beavers as big as bears, giant herbivores such as the mammoth, and predators in the form of the sabre-tooth tiger, giant short-faced bear and dire wolf—died out in an dramatic spate of extinctions twelve thousand years ago. 15

WOLF MOUNTAINS

The ecological niche left vacant by the demise of the fauna! giants allowed smaller species to evolve. Elk, deer, moose, antelope and grey wolves subsequently thrived, as did Homo sapiens. Wolves and Native Americans co-existed as top predators in the Yellowstone ecosystem for ten thousand years, until their removal by Euro-American pioneers. Sungmanitu tnnka,y the Lakota name for wolf, translates as "the big dog who lives away from humans."5 However, in practice, indigenous peoples drew less distinction between themselves and the 'big dogs.' The activities of indigenous peoples in Yellowstone impinged on resident packs. Sheepeater, Shoshone, Bannock and Lemhi tribes transformed the landscape, using fire to enhance the grassland environment and drive herds of grazing animals towards awaiting hunters. Four-thousand-year-old hunting trails remain visible in Yellowstone. American Indians learned from wolves, but they also learned to use them. Aboriginal hunters killed Canis lupus for ceremonial purposes and for clothing.6 Assiniboine, Gros Ventre and Crow tribes likely bred their domestic dogs with wild canines in Yellowstone.7 Hunting by Native Americans also affected the availability of lupine prey in the region. Alston Chase even claimed that, "Indians, the best predator ever, kept game numbers down, leaving little for wolves to eat," the implication being that humans forced wolves out of Yellowstone.8 While the historical prevalence of wolves in Yellowstone has been a matter of debate, there is no reason to claim the absence of Canis lupus in the region prior to the park's establishment in 1872.9 Indigenous peoples modified the environment and influenced populations of prey animals, but it is far less plausible that wolves were driven out of Yellowstone entirely.10 An adult wolf can cover up to thirty miles a day, and, without the barbed wire fences, asphalt roads and sprawling settlements which later adorned the Western landscape, roving canines most likely ranged widely throughout the region. Native peoples named the watercourse that would later become known as the Yellowstone 'Elk River' after the abundant fauna grazing along its banks.11 Enough land and food existed in Yellowstone for both humans and wolves. Exploring Yellowstone's Wolves A few decades prior to the establishment of the national park, and indeed for a few years after, Yellowstone's history can be interpreted as a distinctively Western one. Euro-Americans perceived the region as

16

CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

remote and inhospitable terrain. It was classic 'Indian Country.' Th first white travellers to the area were mountain men: guides like John Colter, who visited Yellowstone in 1807-9, and trappers such as Jim Bridger and Osborne Russell who worked beaver streams in the Rockies between the 1820s and 1840s. In the 1860s, prospectors journeyed up the Yellowstone River, hoping to strike gold in the yellow rock. They travelled through an unexplored land, dreaming of unexploited wealth. These white visitors to Yellowstone afforded vivid descriptions of encounters with Cants lupus. Wolves encapsulated the frontier identity of the region: symbols of a place of abundant fauna, of a wild and remote landscape, and of human solitude and vulnerability. While wolves were perceived as integral parts of the Western experience, they were little valued and often disliked. For roving explorers struggling to survive in forbidding environments, resident canines represented nuisance animals and harbingers of danger. Meanwhile, the incursions of nineteenthcentury Euro-Americans drastically affected pack life in Yellowstone. The fate of wolves in Yellowstone proved inextricably linked with conquest, a central theme of Western history. On their voyage across the West in 1804-6, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark discovered wolves in abundance. On April 29,1805, along the Yellowstone River, the Corps of Discovery were "surrounded with deer, elk, buffaloe, antelopes, and their companions the wolves, who have become more numerous and make great ravages among them."12 A journal entry by Captain Clark near the site of present-day Billings, Montana, also alluded to the region's fauna! bounty: "For me to mention or give an estimate of the different Species of wild animals on this river particularly Buffalow, Elk, Antelopes and Wolves would be incredible. I shall therefore be silent on the subject further."13 Faced with traversing formidable Rocky Mountain topography, braving extreme weather conditions and making first contact with Western tribes, Lewis and Clark likely regarded wolves as "more bothersome than remarkable."14 The large canines occasionally loitered on the margins of the campsite, hoping to purloin tasty morsels from the expedition's food cache. The indefatigable explorers noted that, "whatever [meat] is left out at night falls to the share of the wolves, who are the constant and numerous attendants of the buffaloe."15 One night as the Corps of Discovery camped along the banks of the Yellowstone River, an inquisitive lupine ventured into a tent where Nathaniel Pryor was sleeping and allegedly bit the slumbering sergeant on the hand. In the wolf's defence, he apparently mistook Pryor's sleeping form for a corpse. However, the

17

WOLF MOUNTAINS

animal was not forgiven for the case of mistaken identity. He was immediately pursued and shot.16 That the wolf rather than Pryor ended up dead related an important allegory of canine-human encounters in the West. The most dangerous predator in the Rockies proved to be Homo sapiens rather than Cams lupus. While Lewis and Clark described wolves as "shepherds" of the buffalo (after their habit of trailing the herds), the large canines were customarily seen as the enemies rather than the guardians of game species.17 The explorers themselves stressed the 'ravages' of wolves along the Yellowstone River. Comments regarding wanton depredations and voracious lupine appetites proved customary fare in Western chronicles. However, trappers, explorers and prospectors travelling through Yellowstone exerted their own toll on resident fauna. Historical accounts abound with references to hunting excursions and tallies of animals killed. Captain Raynolds, who led an expedition to Yellowstone in 1859-60, pertinently noted that his party was "living upon the fat of the land."18 Prospector Walter DeLacy related "[A]s usual, some of the men went out to hunt, and others to prospect."19 Travellers expediently overlooked their own proclivities for killing, and arraigned Canis lupus. Human fixation with predation as a grisly and ferocious act ensured that wolves became scapegoats for the decline of herbivores in the region. Anxiety over plummeting ungulate populations coupled with sympathy for the 'victims' of lupine attack provided salient justifications for lynching local wolves. This was justice, Western style. While many westerly travellers valued species for their meat, skins, or sporting value, Osborne Russell proved an exception. The Maine trapper who frequented Yellowstone's beaver ponds in the early 1800s regarded animals as more than simple "biological dollars."20 Russell betrayed a romantic appreciation of the wild, evident in his pertinent description of the ineffable qualities of the Yellowstone Valley: There is something in the wild romantic scenery of this valley which I cannot, nor will I, attempt to describe but the impressions made upon my mind while gazing from a high eminence on the surrounding landscape one evening as the sun was gently gliding behind the western mountain and casting its gigantic shadows across the vale were such as time can never efface from my memory.21

The trapper recognized wolves as part of the wilderness charm of the Yellowstone region. He mentioned Ccinis lupus several times in his

18

CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

journal, giving details on pups, pelage and size. Russell's prodigious knowledge of the biological and behavioural characteristics of wolves was gleaned over years traversing the Western wilds. Russell's detailed rendition of lupine biology nevertheless proved unusual. Many nineteenth-century diarists related tales of wolves based on human imagination rather than what the creatures actually did. Those 'discovering' Yellowstone were influenced by perceptions of wolves in their own mental landscape as much as their actual encounters with wild canines. The howl of the wolf exerted a powerful and emotive influence on Yellowstone's voyagers. Not only did it alert nineteenth-century travellers to lupine presence, but howling also acquired a multitude of interpretations despite human deafness to real wolf messages. Failing to surmount the language barrier, sapient listeners instead translated wolf harmonies according to their own mental dictates.22 Camped at Calfee Creek during 1869, explorer David Folsom connected the presence of wolves to the solitude and remoteness of Yellowstone's mountains. Folsom associated lupine vocalizations with his own isolation: "As darkness approaches, the voice of the night breaks in upon the pervading stillness; the wolf scents us afar and the mournful cadence of his howl adds to our sense of solitude."23 While in canine society, howling typically accompanied tail wagging and excitement, humans in Yellowstone interpreted wolf howls in their own emotional terms as signs of melancholy. What to wolves denoted a communicative call became a vocal display of sorrow to human ears. Lupine affirmations struck trapper James Willard Schultz as "something indescribably sad ... something that even made the most lighthearted and careless of men pause and listen. Many persons could not bear the sound; yet to the true lover of nature it had a peculiar—if perhaps undefinable—charm."24 To men like Schultz, comfortable in wild land, the howl of the wolf appeared a familiar, wonderful sound. Others, ill at ease in the 'uncivilized' environment, interpreted lupine oratory in less favourable terms. Yellowstone became a place of dark nightmares for some travellers, and the wolf played a central role in its horror. Separated from the Washburn expedition in 1870, Truman Everts experienced "Thirty-seven Days of Peril" alone in the Yellowstone wilds. Everts regarded the "prolonged, dismal howl" of the wolf as an alien, chilling sound.25 The howling of wolves was further identified with a nocturnal landscape. In the stillness of night, lupine voices carried farther. Travellers paid more

19

WOLF MOUNTAINS

attention to the baying packs in the evening than during the day when the light allowed them to explore new trails, take in the beauty of divine scenery, and engage in hunting pursuits. The oratory of Canis lupus assumed a more threatening air amongst the spectral foliage. Fears of untamed nature and lurking beasts were amplified in the twilight shadows of Yellowstone. Perceptions of wolves coloured opinion far more than the activities of resident lupines. Timorous travellers conjured visions of Canis lupus as an extant threat. While experienced trappers such as Osborne Russell recognized that wolves "are not ferocious towards man and will run at the sight of him," those less schooled in woodlore and wilderness survival skills cast resident carnivores as malevolent beasts.26 For traveller C. C. Clawson, the presence of wolves near his camp at West Thumb signalled sinister intentions: "A band of hungry wolves sat upon a point some distance away and howled and yelled a most heart-rending war song, that seemed to terrify even our dog, who was a wolf-hunter by profession."27 To Clawson, the presence of wolves exposed human vulnerability in nature. A. Bart Henderson portrayed Canis lupus in similarly baleful terms, alleging that, one evening in 1870, his camp was "attacked by wolves."28 Significantly, the wolves had not come for human flesh, but for the large quantities of raw meat that the trapper had cached nearby. As the nineteenth century progressed, and increasing numbers of Euro-Americans encroached on the Yellowstone region, wolves were hounded from traditional territories. Animals often found themselves within the sights of the hunter's gun. Many were killed for their 'crimes,' such as the unfortunate wolf who stole a taste of Sergeant Pryor. Others were slaughtered for sport. "The most interesting event of the day was the shooting of a wolf by Bell, after dark from the battlements of the forest," noted renowned bird artist John James Audubon during a visit to Montana in the 1830s.29 Such accounts portrayed an age when, on seeing wolves, it seemed human nature to reach for a gun. When the fur trade shifted its focus from beaver to bison in the 1850s, a further threat to wolves appeared in the guise of the 'wolfer.' Cognizant that wolves were attracted to bovine carcasses, ex-buffalo hunters, prospectors and drifters of all sorts laced corpses with poison, eager to make a fast buck for every canine they despatched. Just as it was Western lore to wield a rifle at the sight of Canis lupus, it proved customary not to pass a bison corpse without adding a dose of strychnine. For some, it appeared a lucrative activity, netting between two and three thousand dollars for a good winter's work.30 A photograph

20

CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

A collection of buffalo, elk, deer, mountain sheep and wolf skulls and bones near Fort Sanders, Albany County, Wyoming. The photograph was taken by William Henry Jackson during the Hayden Survey, 1870 (National Archives, photo no. 57-HS-348).

of wolf skins stacked outside Bottlers Ranch, just north of present-day Yellowstone Park, offered a poignant illustration of the wolfer's enterprising commitment to profit.31 In the early 1870s, Montanan Harry J. Norton happened on "two sour-looking timber wolves" 21

WOLF MOUNTAINS

roaming Madison Canyon. Norton remembered that the pair "scampered affrightedly away at our approach."32

The Changing Nature of Yellowstone National Park The hearing of a wolf is keen beyond belief.... A bird's cry can be interpreted, a movement in the softest vegetation can be read like a book, even the stomach rumblings of a ruminant can be used like radar. Nothing escapes this sense, not even silence itself.33 ROGER CARAS, The Custer Wolf (1966)

Wolves knew the sights and sounds of Yellowstone intimately. Through instinct and experience, wolves were "keyed" to this world.34 Their existences were intertwined with other forces at work in the environment, the lives of animals that they preyed on, the vegetation that they moved across, and the ground itself in which they excavated dens. That wolves were an integral part of Yellowstone's landscape was evident in the frequent references to them by nineteenth-century explorers. However, when Yellowstone National Park was set aside, "from sale, occupancy and settlement" on March 1,1872, its meaning and importance derived from different symbols.35 The strange curiosities that trappers had boasted of, and which had been lampooned as the products of eccentrics who had been in the mountains too long, became the essential images of Yellowstone as a national park.36 Concern over the spoliation of'natural curiosities' such as Old Faithful, Mammoth Hot Springs and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone led to Yellowstone's protection from private acquisition. It was monumental scenery rather than the sentient world of wolves that celebrators rendered of value. Imbued with an appreciation of the sublime and grand in nature, the elevated plateau formerly known as 'Colter's Hell' became a place of divine inspiration.37 March 1872 was also a special time for Yellowstone's wolves, but lupine assessments of importance were based on nature's cyclical calendar. With the arrival of spring, winter snows had melted from the valleys, rivers rushed fresh with melt-water and the stark branches of trees were adorned with sprouting greenery. Balmy breezes signalled a time of abundance. From the wolf's perspective, this time was significant not because Yellowstone's life was beginning as a national park, but that in Yellowstone, life was beginning anew. Resident packs knew places such

22

CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

as the Lower Geyser Basin and Mammoth Hot Springs—locations immortalized as symbols of the new park in human eyes. They knew that elk and bison congregated near the springs in winter to feed on exposed grasses. Although they sometimes offered the opportunity of a meal, wolves probably failed to see why humans valued these regions so highly compared to the rest of the landscape. The undulating grasslands of the Lamar Valley and its pine forests were more significant in their world. At such locales, wolves found food and shelter, rested and played. These expanses of terrain so important to Canis lupus were regarded as 'worthless lands' by human standards.38 In their efforts to establish a national park, whether as belief or tactic, proponents had argued that the wider Yellowstone area was unsuitable for agriculture, mineral extraction or settlement.39 The inclusion of such 'worthless' areas within the national park simply reflected concern for as yet undiscovered geothermal wonders. People and wolves held fundamentally different perceptions of what had significance in Yellowstone. Moreover, emphasis on the monetary value of natural lands did not bode well for resident canines. Although the protection of monumental scenery did not incur financial forfeiture, tolerating a species that ignored the boundaries of private property and preyed on desirable herbivores proved more difficult. While the protection of wild land in Yellowstone rested on its 'worthlessness,' wildlife provisions were guided by 'usefulness.' The Yellowstone Act provided against the "wanton destruction of the fish and game found within said park, and against their capture or destruction for the purposes of merchandise or profit."40 Guardianship only extended to species esteemed by American society, namely those seen as aesthetically pleasing or those valued by sportsmen. Nonetheless, the preservation of a comparatively large tract of wild land at least encompassed a significant swathe of wolf habitat. Although wolves had no legal protection, at least they had room to roam. Park Operation and Perceptions of the Wolf The job of interpreting the Yellowstone Act fell to Minnesotan Nathaniel P. Langford, who became Superintendent of America's first national park in May 1872.41 While Congress exhibited remarkable foresight in preserving Yellowstone, the government had no plans to expend funds on the new preserve. No rules or further instructions were provided, and five years elapsed before federal appropriations arrived. In his

23

WOLF MOUNTAINS

inaugural report to the Secretary of Interior, Superintendent Langford predicted that Yellowstone "was likely speedily to become an object of general interest."42 Early tourists nonetheless showed scant regard for the inviolate sanctity of Yellowstone's wonders, plugging Old Faithful with rubbish, taking 'pot shots' at park wildlife, and taking away 'souvenirs' from mineral deposits. The first reference to wolves from the Yellowstone National Park administration was made in the 1877 Annual Report by Langford's successor, Superintendent Philetius Norris. With regard to the killing of ungulates in the park, he wrote: Comparatively few of them were slain for food, but mostly for their pelts and tongues, often run down on snowshoes and tomahawked when their carcasses were least valuable, and merely strychnine poisoned for wolf or wolverine bait, the amount of most wholesome, nutritious and delicious food thus wantonly destroyed is simply incalculable.43 The poisoning of wolves in Yellowstone only warranted attention as a waste of valuable game meat. By contrast, Norris expressed disgust and outrage at the destruction of grazing animals in the park. Thousands of elk, bison, antelope, and bighorn sheep had been slaughtered by hide hunters and poachers who ignored Yellowstone's protected status. The decimation of resident ungulates by human hunters had similarly troubled Langford, who recommended that "the wild game of all kinds with which the park abounds should be protected by law ... and all hunting, trapping, and fishing within its boundaries, should be prohibited under severe penalties."44 Exceptions were nonetheless made for "purposes of recreation by visitors and tourists and by use by actual residents of the park." Grazing herds existed to satisfy the culinary and recreational requirements of visitors and staff, a timely reminder not only that the park was there to serve people, but also to serve them meals. In 1875, geologist Theodore Comstock detailed his own vision of wildlife preservation in Yellowstone. His version of sanctuary hinted towards more inclusive protection, proposing "the preservation from extinction of at least the characteristic mammals and birds of the West."45 Few Americans shared such a view. Articulations by Langford and Norris of a national park exclusively for grazing species more accurately reflected prevalent attitudes towards wildlife. The Superintendent's Annual Report

24

CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

for 1880 presented a stark reminder of how carnivores and herbivores were perceived very differently. In a section entitled "Animals of the Park," Norris described elk as "one of the largest, and most beautiful, interesting, and valuable of those that inhabit this continent," whereas wolves were deemed "large" and "ferocious," and coyotes as "sneaking" and "snarling."46 This division reflected popular conceptions of ungulates, be they elk, deer or bison, as passive 'innocents' as opposed to 'blood-thirsty killers' such as wolves and coyotes. This "biological morality" guided official policy towards wolves in Yellowstone.47 Pack hunting was not viewed as normal behaviour, but instead interpreted as the "wanton destruction" which the Yellowstone Act so deplored. With local herbivore populations teetering on the brink of extinction, resource managers interpreted acts of wolf predation as salient threats to park integrity. Managers disapproved of valuable animals serving the nutritional requirements of resident packs. The wolf was regarded as a destroyer of'good' animals hence (the pertinently titled) 'gamekeeper' Harry Yount patrolled the park protecting "inoffensive and harmless" herbivores by shooting native predators.48 Wildlife was clearly divided into two categories, placid grass-eaters and rapacious carnivores, animals to be saved and animals to be destroyed. Conservationists and humanitarians similarly regarded wolves as guilty and savage due to their depredations on species highly prized by humankind. Prominent conservationists such as William Hornaday and Theodore Roosevelt described Canis lupus zs a "black hearted criminal" and "the beast of waste and desolation."49 Hatred of predators even pervaded traditional national park histories.50 In the first real attempt at wildlife preservation in Yellowstone, Secretary of Interior H. M. Teller banned all hunting in 1883. However, the legislation brought no respite for canines. The order prohibited "absolutely the killing wounding or capturing" of resident animals, but the provision remained far from inclusive. Only species specifically listed in the clause received guardianship.51 Those singled out for protection reflected the growing influence of sportsmen and their desire to preserve Yellowstone as a refuge for grazers and birds. Prominent sportsmanconservationist George Grinnell noted the importance of the park as a "breeding ground for big game which will furnish sport for hundreds of hunters."52 In essence, the project sought to protect 'game' from market hunters in order to ensure abundant quarry in nearby sporting reserves. The killing of listed species was "prohibited absolutely," and that included predation by wolves.

25

WOLF MOUNTAINS

Evidence from both contemporary accounts and more recent scientific projections suggested that Yellowstone could have supported a population of up to one hundred and fifty wolves in the early 1870s.53 On a visit to Yellowstone in 1875, Grinnell noted that the grey wolf "still exists in considerable numbers wherever the buffalo are abundant."54 However, just a few years later, wolves were rarely seen. "Once exceedingly numerous in all portions of the Park ... the value of their hides and their easy slaughter with strychnine-poisoned carcasses of animals have nearly led to their extermination," related Superintendent Norris in 1880.55 While Canis lupus had not been mentioned in the Yellowstone Act, the principles subscribed to by early park authorities severely affected lupine fortunes. As Grinnell noted, the animals were "always killed whenever the opportunity offers."56 The persecution of park canines indicated a profound conflict between Yellowstone's natural laws and its human-crafted governing legislation. The 1872 Act prescribed the preservation of "all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities, or wonders within said park, and their retention in a natural condition," but this was not without qualification.57 Human priorities dictated the appropriate landscape scene in Yellowstone regardless of ecological systems. In contrast to acclaimed western artist George Catlin's conception in 1832 of "a nation's Park containing man and beast," Yellowstone was a park primarily for the two-leggeds, and white EuroAmericans at that.58 Legislation designated the area as "a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people"—the value of Yellowstone couched in terms of human recreation.59 Wolves were also criminalized outside park borders. Settlers moved into surrounding lands during the 1870s, replacing the bison of the plains with cattle and sheep. Montana authorities introduced a territorial wolf bounty of one dollar in 1884, while Yellowstone County offered an additional reward of two dollars per wolf. A correspondent for the sporting magazine Forest and Stream reported how such incentives brought "a young fellow named Martin, with not much on his hands except idle time" a "[T]otal profit, $118.50 and lots of fun" for a week killing wolves in Yellowstone County.60 Native carnivores were fenced, poisoned and shot out of the new landscape being constructed in the once wild West.

26

CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

Old Sights in New Rifles Legislation in 1883 allowed the Secretary of the Interior to call in the U.S. Cavalry to oversee Yellowstone, if required. Prompted by continuing concerns about the despoliation of the park, especially the killing of game and unchecked fires, Captain Moses Harris and his troops rode into Mammoth Hot Springs in 1886. Army administrators initially appeared to reject the values and perceptions that had previously conditioned wolf policy in Yellowstone. While agreeing that predators signified 'undesirable' animals, Captain Harris refused to grant the use of firearms or traps against them. He argued that the use of guns by humans was tantamount to the unleashing of a predator with far greater destructive impact than those already roaming the park: But while it is true that there are some noxious animals that are not worthy of protection, chief among which is the skunk, or polecat, yet I am convinced that at the present time more injury would result to the game from the use of firearms or traps in the Park than from any ravages which may be feared by carnivorous animals.61

Harris was right. The 'ravages' of the few wolves left in Yellowstone presented little threat to the huge herds of grazing animals whose numbers had rebounded in the sanctuary of Yellowstone. However, the respite for park canines proved short-lived. In 1889, Captain Frazier Boutelle (Harris's successor) warned that "the carnivora of the Park have, in common with other animals, increased until, I believe, something should be done for their extermination."62 Officials betrayed consuming fears of resurgent packs, despite the actual scarcity of wolves in Yellowstone. In 1891, Colonel George Anderson related an incident involving animals captured for transfer to the National Zoological Gardens, Washington, D.C. The enclosure holding bear cubs, foxes, elk, antelope and blacktailed deer was broken into by a carnivorous animal and all specimens were killed.63 Although a bizarre tale, the moral was one that park managers wholeheartedly subscribed to, namely that of the predator as an opportunistic and rapacious destroyer of game. Motivated by concern for ungulates, and prompted by the capture of Edgar Howell literally red-handed with bison carcasses, the Lacey Act (1894) provided the first penalties for killing wildlife in Yellowstone. Offenders faced a one-thousand-dollar fine or two years in prison.

27

WOLF MOUNTAINS

Legislation prohibited "all hunting, or the killing, wounding, or capturing of any bird or wild animal, except dangerous animals."64 The Army duly defined Canis lupus as an injurious species, and continued in the tradition of excluding wolves from preservation. A systematic predator control campaign began in the winter of 1895 -6. The program initially targeted coyotes which, according to Superintendent Samuel Young, had become "numerous and bold." Killing activities were expanded to include mountain lions and wolves the following year.65 Poisoning measures against resident carnivores began in 1898. Only animals seen as useful, aesthetically pleasing or amusing deserved their place in the 'outdoor zoo' of Yellowstone. The aim was not to preserve natural conditions but propagate an idyllic scene for consumption by nature-hungry tourists. In 1902, Superintendent John Pitcher noted the popularity of grazing animals, as well as the "great source of interest" people expressed when seeing bears feeding at garbage stations.66 By contrast, wardens, scouts and "certain good shots among the soldiers" were ordered to shoot predators "whenever the opportunity is offered."67 The policy of wolf destruction in Yellowstone was highly influenced by the attitudes and desires of powerful regional interest groups. Western livestock interests from the early 1900s considered federal public lands to be core breeding grounds for wild canines. Not only were wolves reproached for cattle losses, but they also became convenient scapegoats for the plethora of hardships faced by Western settlers. The image of Canis lupusbec&me associated with the substantial difficulties of ranching and pioneering in the West, the wolf emerging as a symbol of nature's threat to a prosperous frontier economy. In 1907, Vernon Bailey, Field Naturalist of the Bureau of Biological Survey (BBS), stressed the "enormous losses suffered by stockmen on western cattle ranges and the destruction of game on forest reserves, game reserves and national parks" by predatory animals.68 Park managers were keen to appease their neighbours, and shared similar views on the value of carnivores. Authorities in Yellowstone therefore advocated the slaughter of park wolves because they were a "pest to the stockmen of the surrounding country."69 The impact of the army campaign was lessened only by the size of the surviving wolf population. Animals left in Yellowstone, as elsewhere in the West, learned to avoid humans and the suspicious "man-smell" left on poisoned carcasses.70 Warden records at Soda Butte, Fountain, Lake and Upper Basin stations between 1886 and 1911 list intermittent sightings. In a letter to William Hornaday in 1912, Superintendent Lloyd Brett described a park entirely devoid of lupine presence:

28

CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

[Warden] McBride has been in the Park for many years, and is not convinced that there have ever been any gray wolves here. Statements have been made that they have been seen, but none have ever been killed or captured inside of the Park though several were killed on the Upper Gallatin River but a few miles outside in the state of Montana, last Spring.71

Brett's denial of wolves in Yellowstone contrasted with the apocalyptic warnings of resurgent lupine hordes offered by his predecessors. Though both Boutelle and Pitcher had reported alarming increases in predators, their fears were misplaced. The fictitious canine deluge was far removed from the remnant population eking out an existence in the more remote sections of Yellowstone National Park. Lupine Recovery and Cavalry Counterattack Just two years after his disavowal of canine presence, Superintendent Brett voiced concern over increasing numbers of wolves in Yellowstone. In 1914, he noted that, "gray wolves have made their appearance in the park in considerable numbers, having been seen traveling in packs of 10 or less." A year later, he repeated, "gray wolves are increasing."72 In contrast to previous scares, Brett's portrayal of lupine revivification was not an imaginary supposition. From 1912 onwards, records indicated a noticeable increase in pack activity. Warden Milton Skinner related that, "in 1912, I saw four [wolves] near Lamar Valley. After that, signs of their presence increased and I believed they were coming in faster."73 Two years later, Skinner estimated a park population of sixty animals.74 The success in restoring ungulate numbers had provided an abundant prey base for remaining wolf packs. The cavalry responded to lupine reinforcements with brutal countermeasures. Agents from the Bureau of Biological Survey were invited to Yellowstone to extinguish the canine threat. Between 1914 and 1916, Vernon Bailey worked in the preserve, instructing army scouts how to track down and kill the animals that wreaked havoc.75 Commitment to wolf extermination was clearly evident in October 1915, when, on the advice of the BBS, two special rangers were employed at a salary of nine hundred dollars a year specifically to destroy predators in Yellowstone. The systematic anti-predator measures proved a harrowing time for resident canines, with packs constantly harassed by park rangers and BBS

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agents. Despite their cautious demeanour, wolves found fewer and fewer places to hide from the zealous predator control officers. Arnold detailed several wolves killed in the park during winter 1914-5, while special rangers Donald Stevenson and Cruse Black shot and trapped 83 coyotes, 12 wolves and 4 mountain lions by the end of 1916. The cavalry charge against Yellowstone's wolves tallied at least forty-five lupine victims.76 Recounting one such assault in March 1916, Vernon Bailey wrote: One [den] found by Stevenson and Black on the rough slope near Hellroaring Creek on March 26, watched for some days in an effort to shoot the old wolves, which finally became suspicious and carried the pups away to another location farther up the side of the mountain. The den was described as composed of four or five large burrows dug into the open hillside and had evidently been used for several years.77 The pack was so uncomfortable being watched by humans that they moved from their long established home to seek refuge elsewhere. Their instincts to do so were right. Records by Bailey, Black and Stevenson commonly referred to digging out wolf dens and the removal of pups. Captured young were duly killed or used as bait to lure parent animals within rifle range. On April 16, 1916, Bailey described finding a family of wolves in a natural cave. After kidnapping seven pups from the cave, Bailey observed: The old wolves were very shy and kept well out of sight while the den was being watched but were frequently heard howling and answering each other from different points and the old male was several times seen guarding the den from a point high above.78 This was probably the same family encountered on March 26. In 1889, Captain Boutelle had recommended a policy of extermination towards park wolves. The native carnivore had been recast in the role of illegal alien.79 By 1915, the genocide was virtually complete.80

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CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

The Wolf's Last Stand in Yellowstone The Service thus established shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments., and reservations ... which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.81 NATIONAL PARK SERVICE ACT, 1916

In 1916, Congress created a federal agency to administer the disparate collection of national parks and national monuments in the United States. The National Park Service (NPS) was the second government department in the world specifically mandated to oversee protected reserves, following the Canadian Parks Branch in 1911. The establishment of the NPS has often been hailed as a watershed in the history of American conservation. However, the legislative tenets of the National Park Service Act betrayed notable continuities with past acts. The preservation of scenery remained top priority, followed by natural and historic objects, with "wild life" in third place. Although the 'wild life' clause proved more inclusive than the 'fish and game' of the Yellowstone Act, the new era brought institutionalized harassment rather than agency protection for predators. Policy towards canines was guided by a supplemental clause allowing the Secretary of the Interior to "provide in his discretion for the destruction of such animals and of such plant life as may be detrimental to the use of any of said parks, monuments or reservations."82 This ruling served to exclude wolves from preservation by virtue of their hunting habits. The first director of the NPS, Stephen Mather, articulated the agency's wildlife principles thus: "The national parks and monuments play a very important part in the conservation of wild life, for in them all animals, with the exception of predatory ones, find safe refuge and complete protection and live unhampered in natural environment."83

Priorities of Preservation and Extermination When the National Park Service assumed control of Yellowstone, officials embarked on an ambitious campaign to secure popularity for the preserve under their tutelage. Road construction, railroad promotion, publicity

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and tourism were all judged as essential ways of securing patronage. Having made his fortune selling borax, Stephen Mather proved an expert at advertising the U.S. national parks. Lavish publications including the National Parks Portfolio (1917) marketed reserves as resplendent national landmarks and recreational paradises.84 Federal officials believed that the fledgling park system needed all the support it could muster, and thus seemed reluctant to antagonize powerful interest groups. Canis lupus was a casualty of appeasing regional and sporting lobbies. Roger Toll, Superintendent of Yellowstone from 1929 until his death in 1936, warned that predators reduced the quantity of game animals for human hunters, leaving the park with "no support whatsoever from the sportsmen's associations of the adjoining states."85 In such a climate, the Park Service saw it as a necessity to listen to the howls of people rather than wolves, and that invariably led to predator control.86 The year before the formation of the NFS, the BBS had been given its strongest mandate to wage war on Western predators. It too gained agency status, a new name for its predator control unit, Predator Animal and Rodent Control (PARC), as well as federal funds of a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars to destroy "wolves, coyotes and other animals injurious to agriculture and husbandry."87 Congress had simultaneously sanctioned predator control and validated park preservation. Both the NPS and PARC subscribed to the principle of protecting animals valued and used by people. Both agencies liaised in the goal to remove wolves from Western lands, viewing their eradicatory measures as mutually dependent. Mather warned that, if the Yellowstone ranger "didn't kill off his 200 to 300 coyotes a year, it might result in their being the developing ground for coyotes and wolves spreading out over the country and cattle or sheep men getting much greater losses than they ordinarily would."88 The notion of Yellowstone as a centre for lupine resistance formed the bedrock for a federal alliance against Canis lupus. In co-operation with the NPS, PARC control agents penetrated Yellowstone's borders, inspired by admonitions of fast increasing hordes of voracious animals that possessed the ability to commit extraordinary damage. Back in 1891, Superintendent Anderson had noted: "It is useless to try to convey to the eastern mind the number of elk in the park... .One can simply say there are thousands of them. The country at times looks like an over-stocked cattle range at roundup time."89 Anderson's reference to cattle range described a world closer to the wild nature of Yellowstone than first appeared. By the late 1910s, Yellowstone authorities had

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CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Tellowstone National Park

successfully nurtured abundant herds of elk and bison. Wolves posed little danger to these burgeoning populations, and yet perceptions of Canis lupus as a deleterious hunter persisted. "Coyotes and wolves: these animals have done much damage to other game, and for that reason much pains have been taken to hunt them down and trap them" related the 1918 Annual Report.90 Paradoxically, it was wolves rather than ungulates that were scarce in Yellowstone. In contrast to the fervent campaigns of the 1870s to preserve the last remaining bison and stem the decline of elk populations, lupine rarity failed to elicit commensurate perceptions of worthiness. Rather, officials continued to view predator control as a necessity to defend other, more plentiful species. Erasing Lupine Presence Official policy in Yellowstone demanded the extinction of Cants lupus, eradication viewed as a perfectly acceptable principle for natural reservations to follow. Expert trackers, along with PARC agent W. Clemons and famous mountain lion hunter Steve Elkins, were drafted into Yellowstone in 1918 to assist in locating lupines. Rangers were further allowed to keep the pelts of their victims, bringing profit as well as principle to the trade. Wardens proved consistently diligent in pursuing their prey. The Superintendent's Annual Report for 1920 noted: "Two rangers gave all their attention from Jan 1st to May 31st to hunting and trapping the carnivores, and other rangers aided whenever possible."91 The tireless efforts of PARC hunter Donald Stevenson, park scout Court Dewing and ranger Henry Anderson were repeatedly referred to in monthly bulletins. The hunters excavated wolf dens, and used guns, traps and strychnine bait to vanquish canines. The April 1922 monthly report noted that, "poison was used extensively" in Yellowstone.92 Wolves represented objects to be sought out, reported as numerical kills and submitted for bounty payment. Reports by park staff in the late 1910s and early 1920s provide a poignant record of final lupine manoeuvres in America's first national park. Dispatched to Specimen Ridge and Hellroaring Creek in April 1918, Stevenson and Dewing followed rumours "of many more wolves." The April 1920 Bulletin detailed how:

Anderson and Dewing continued their efforts of trying tog too exterminate coyotes, wolves and mountain lions. During the monthmonth they succeeded in killing one male wolf, an extremely large one,

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WOLF MOUNTAINS

and located and dug out one den of wolves and killed 11 pups. The mother escaped.93

The following year, wolves were active within Yellowstone's northern area, but they were under surveillance. The March 1921 report noted that, "several dens have been located and are being watched."94 By April 1922, Anderson had discovered a den during reconnaissance in the Blacktail and Hellroaring districts. He killed the mother wolf, and brought her ten pups back to Mammoth Hot Springs. A photograph taken at Park Headquarters showed Chief Ranger Sam Woodring playing with the captured puppies. The young animals proved an "object of great affection" for visitors.95 Montana wolf hunter, Elbert Bowman, similarly remarked on the appeal of wolf pups as "plump, friendly, little things that nuzzle you and whine little, pleased whines." While able to appreciate the youthful innocence of lupines, to Bowman, adult wolves were "as cruel as man himself after they are grown."96 The extent of human brutality proved all too apparent in the case of the captured litter in Yellowstone. The ten pups were soon destroyed. In August 1922, Anderson discovered one of the last wolf refuges in Yellowstone, on the Mirror Plateau. "Ranger Anderson found numerous signs in this region and due to its inaccessibility and the fact that there is a large amount of game making its summer range near this point, there is no reason why the wolves should not find this an ideal summer home," related the warden bulletin.97 The ranger remained in the area "in an attempt to exterminate as many of these predatory animals as possible." Even the most inaccessible areas of the park were meticulously searched for wolf sign. The "cleaning out" of Yellowstone's last wolf den, at Tower Falls, occurred during April 1923. The understated brevity of the attending report belied the significance of this event.98 Not without a bitter sense of irony, the five pups, who would prove to be the last born in Yellowstone for many decades, were taken from their den and brought to Mammoth for exhibition in a cage during the summer. Meanwhile, a photograph of two dead animals beside a bison carcass at Soda Butte Creek in 1926 immortalized the last wolves killed in Yellowstone's official predator control program. Historians have claimed that Park Service control imperatives represented little more than "mopping up operations."99 Wolves were already scarce when the agency assumed responsibility for the preserves in 1916. However, such a judgment overlooked the fanatical zeal displayed by wardens in the search for park predators. In Yellowstone,

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CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

Wolf pups captured during predator control activities in Yellowstone National Park, 1922 (National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park).

35

WOLF MOUNTAINS 2,968 coyotes were taken between 1918 and 1935.100 Between 1914 and 1926,136 wolves were killed, 80 of them puppies.101 The impact of the NFS campaign proved terminal. Yellowstone no longer had a sustainable wolf population by 1926. Following the convention of naming features in Yellowstone for the "beasts, birds, fishes, trees, flowers and minerals found within the park or adjacent country," 'Wolf Lake' was so entitled in 1921.102 Ironically, the residents commemorated in this identification would soon become absent. Wolves were the victims of national park policy. An internal report written in the 1930s noted that "up to about 1930 a great majority of people, including National Park Service officials, took it for granted that complete protection of wildlife involved elimination or drastic control of all predators."103 Despite the oxymoronic nature of such policy to the authors of this report, and to later generations, for early managers there was no paradox. In their mindset, the national park provided what people wanted to see. Administrators were charged with facilitating that experience by improving on nature. The killing of wolves rested comfortably with the feeding of ungulates, the introduction of exotic species, bear shows, fish stocking, and even the roundup of Yellowstone bison for a starring role in The Thundering Herd (1924). Wolves in Yellowstone remained at the mercy of a world view that prized animals for their nutritional, sporting or visual appeal.

From Dissenting Opinion to Park Policy Does not the wolf also deserve a place in the Yellowstone park?104 EDMUND HELLER, 1925

While wolves were making their last stand in Yellowstone during the 1920s, Park Service personnel and wildlife experts were engaged in impassioned debates concerning the importance of native carnivores in the American preserves. In 1928, biologist Harold Bryant noted that, "in all my experience in biological work I have never seen the time when there was so much controversy about any particular subject as there has been about predatory animals."105 America's first national park had always been at the forefront of policymaking, and the predator issue proved no exception. Personnel were highly involved in the dispute over the worth of carnivorous animals. Horace Albright, who served as Superintendent of Yellowstone from

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CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

1919 until 1929, urged: "We have had people to kill coyotes because we know the antelope won't survive unless we do."106 He was abetted by Director Mather, who stressed that the cruel hunting methods of the coyote "makes a pretty bitter feeling" towards the animal in Yellowstone. Albright's successor in Yellowstone, Roger Toll, espoused similar sentiments: "Everyone has always assumed, whether rightly or wrongly, that the elk and deer and the antelope were the type of animal the park was for." He agreed that, "a herd of antelope is more valuable than a herd of coyotes."107 Men such as Mather and Albright were products of the vision and priorities of the early parks, and continued to form their opinions of wolves in terms of more valuable grazing animals. Toll heralded from a new era, and worked tirelessly to secure protection for pelicans (birds previously considered vermin), but nonetheless struggled to accept carnivorous mammals.108 Others in Yellowstone portrayed the wolf in a benign light. Naturalist Milton Skinner emerged as an outspoken critic of control policy. At the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists in 1924, Skinner stressed: "It has not been appreciated that we need these predatory and forbearing animals alive." He derided the Yellowstone administration for protecting "big game" at the expense of other animals when "the right course is to protect all wild life."109 To Toll's assessment that a "herd of coyotes" denoted a species of little value, Skinner offered a heartfelt rejoinder: "A wolf or coyote is as important as a deer ... it is a fact that all are equal in value." Another prominent naturalist, Edmund Heller, queried: "Who would not give a year of his life to see a wild wolf or a whole pack of wolves trailing down an elk or a deer?"110 To Heller and Skinner, the predatory instincts of Canis lupus deserved respect, not revulsion. The hunt comprised an important part of the natural system that had been wrongly suppressed. Skinner deemed the wolf an "exceedingly interesting" species that should be preserved for "scientific, educational and recreational interest."111 In contrast to earlier years when parklands were judged inappropriate places for lupines, Skinner declared the wild terrain of Yellowstone, with its "colony of wildlife," a "most logical" place to preserve Canis lupus, especially "with natural conditions outside the parks rapidly disappearing."112 Skinner believed that regional dictates should have no bearing on park policy. He further urged that nature should be maintained in a "nearly original wild state" in Yellowstone, that no species should be exterminated, "for once destroyed we cannot bring it back."113 Heller agreed that "their voice should be heard," and suggested that one or two

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WOLF MOUNTAINS

elk a month represented a small price to pay in order to listen to the "demonic howl" of a wolf resonating across the hills and valleys.114 The absence of Canis lupus took away the wild mystique of the mountain wonderland, and even demeaned the lives of remaining species. "Protected like cattle, the elk become like cattle," Heller mused.115 His visualization of a Yellowstone without wolves was an altogether tame one. Canis Lupus Redeemed In the early 1920s, Albright countered the few dissenting voices in the Park Service with unequivocal pronouncements on lupine worthlessness. "It is evident that the work of controlling these animals must be vigorously prosecuted by the most effective means available whether or not this meets with the approval of certain game conservationists," noted the Superintendent.116 However, mounting pressures from eminent scientific organizations forced the Park Service to reconsider its stance. Criticism from the American Society of Mammalogists, together with anti-control resolutions from over one hundred groups (including the Boone and Crockett Club and the New York Zoological Society), highlighted the need for a shift in policy. Between 1925 and 1933, "wholesale" predator control was gradually discontinued in the national parks. In 1928, the steel trap was withdrawn from usage and the use of poison was terminated in 1931. From 1931, control was only implemented in special cases, and, in 1933, predators were designated as "special charges of the parks." In 1933, revised park policy stated: "No native predator shall be destroyed on account of its normal utilization of any other park animal, excepting if that animal is in immediate danger of extermination, and then only if the predator is not itself a vanishing form."117 The rights of wolves, in common with other species, were redefined in terms of scarcity rather than eating habits. In his capacity as Park Service Director, Albright acknowledged that, "the question naturally arises as to whether there is any place where they [carnivores] may be expected to survive and be available for scientific study in the future."118 Canis lupus was no longer deemed a criminal in nature. Acts of predation became normal utilization rather than the acts of a fierce killer. The wolf at last became a deserving resident of U.S. national parks. The National Park Service quoted sections of the 1872 Yellowstone Act and the 1916 Organic Act in publishing a revised policy towards carnivorous animals. Significantly, the agency grounded its justifications

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CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

for saving wolves in the same acts that had previously damned Canis lupus, suggesting the ambiguity of original founding tenets. The reappraisal was both rooted in formative principles, and a reaction against past interpretation. Albright related that, "every policy is developed in an attempt to meet the purposes for which the parks were formed."119 According to biologist George Wright, the early park period denoted an era in which "a livestock concept of wildlife administration prevailed." However, Wright excused the attitudes exhibited by his predecessors. Although a vociferous opponent of predator control in the 1930s, Wright accepted that past exigencies had demanded a different policy: "Buffalo, elk, and antelope, were so close to extinction that any action to save them was justifiable."120 Instead, official pronouncements of the 1930s emphasized legislative tenets demanding the preservation of national parks in an unimpaired condition. Secretary of the Interior Ray L. Wilbur articulated federal principles thus: "In wildlife conservation, the preservation of the primitive rather than the development of any artificial ideal should be sought."121 Joseph Dixon juxtaposed proudly held principles of democratic human access with predator rehabilitation: "We do not inquire as to whether they [park visitors] are Jews or Catholics or Protestants, if they obey the rules they are welcome." Dixon perceived predator control activities as "not in accordance with the aims and ideals for national parks."122 Despite being allowed a "real place in nature" and attaining value as ecological agents, there were no wolves to fulfill their newly found purpose. With so few predators left in Yellowstone, the revised policy had little impact.123 Science, the Wolf and the Balance of Nature The NFS explained its policy shift with recourse to the rise of ecological science. The mistakes of the past came down to a "basic reason" of "mass thinking" against predators based on "our natural psychological reaction to the killing of an ungulate by a carnivore."124 Mammalogist Adolph Murie indicated only one course of action in the predator control debate—"to learn the facts."125 This predilection for science both involved an admission of the limits of human understanding and a desire to improve knowledge. Science denoted a method of learning, an ideology, and a management goal. It further served as a weapon to answer regional interests still clamouring for predator control. The discipline of animal ecology proved instrumental in the revision of predator policy. The 1939 "Discussion of Service Policy"

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WOLF MOUNTAINS

acknowledged the role of wildlife experts in bringing the NFS to "reliance upon impartial scientific data rather than ancestral prejudice."126 By the 1930s, advances in the field of ecology, combined with practical examples of the disastrous results of intervention (notably the mass starvation of mule deer on the Kaibab Plateau in the 1920s following years of rigorous predator control), had given credence to such tenets.127 Field Naturalist Carl Russell wrote that the national parks should strive to achieve "some semblance of biological balance."128 In the same year, he mailed enclosures by ecologists such as Paul Errington and P. A. Taverner to Yellowstone's Superintendent. Ecological mandates underpinned new Service policy. Wolves were recast as essential agents who contributed to the healthy evolution of prey species. Predator policy remained tied to the ungulate issue, but ecological science had reversed the 'useful' roles. Nature emerged as a complex and interdependent community where human interventions yielded unanticipated, sometimes catastrophic, results. Harold Bryant noted: "I have often wondered where there could be any real logic in continually trying to pick out one thing and say this eats this and we will eliminate this and have this left."129 However, the concept of a 'balance of nature' was not new to the Park Service. It had long been a part of the agency's vocabulary of preservation.130 Officials consistently subscribed to the notion of keeping the preserves 'natural,' but this had always been open to interpretation. When applied to the wolf, 'natural balance' had proved to be little more than a rhetorical force. At the Annual Meeting of Superintendents in 1922, delegates had agreed that predator control was justified, while stipulating, "that the natural balance of wild life is not upset."131 Although the 1923 Superintendent's Conference resolved that "in the control of predatory animals no species should be completely exterminated," policy in Yellowstone remained one of eradication.132 Despite an agency ban on the steel trap in 1928, such devices were used in Yellowstone until 1931 for the purpose of "holding down" coyotes that preyed on "more desirable wild life."133 Individual superintendents interpreted national resolutions with some licence, and perceived principles of natural balance as rhetorical ideas rather than policy guides in their dealings with resident canines. That science was viewed as an objective basis for professional wildlife decisions reflected a common standard of society. Science was perceived as credible, reliable, and, above all, rational. When Bureau of Biological Survey agent Edward Goldman criticized arguments against predator control in the 1920s as 'emotional' it reflected the power of rationalism as a tool of truth.134 That both sides of the predator debate used science

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CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

as their most powerful weapon also indicated its subjectivity. Science proved open to interpretation. It justified protecting wolves, but also justified killing them. Goldman's slur against emotional reaction reflected an established divide. Controversy over the proper roles of science and sentiment in informing human attitudes to wolves enjoyed a lengthy heritage. Arguments in the late nineteenth century between naturalist John Burroughs and the so-called 'Nature Fakers,' William Long and Ernest Thompson Seton, revolved around a similar dichotomy. Burroughs criticized Long and Seton for their overreliance on sentiment in writing natural history. Interestingly, it was the perceived 'fakers' who articulated positive attitudes towards wolves. Seton's canines were social, intelligent, and family-oriented rather than cruel game killers.135 That Burroughs castigated such conclusions as 'unscientific' revealed the role of value judgments in formulating supposedly rational viewpoints. Although ecology played an important role in illustrating the natural role and value of predators, sentiment proved far from a negative force in revising human attitudes towards Canis lupus. While opponents of control in Yellowstone such as Skinner and Heller talked about the scientific value of wolves, they also based their admiration on romantic tenets and wilderness appreciation. The Prodigal Predator Although Park Service policy by the early 1930s recognized predators as valid residents of national parks, the issue proved far from settled. The 1920s and early 1930s witnessed a remarkable flourishing of ecological ideas, but many park staff proved reluctant to discard their entrenched views of canines as wanton killers. In 1932, Harold Bryant noted: "I happen to be so radical as to think that everything has a certain place in nature."136 Bryant's conception of his own views as extreme, even within the context of his profession, reflected the fact that a more benign attitude to predators was still an innovative proposition. Ecology as a discipline was germinating, the complex interactions between predator and prey far from understood. Supervisor of Fish Research David Madsen related his exasperation at the convoluted issues of wolf protection. While agreeing that "the balance of nature ... is a fine sounding phrase," Madsen drew attention to ambiguities within official thinking: In one breath we say that it is a good thing to have large predators present in the park to control what would otherwise be an over

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WOLF MOUNTAINS

supply of our large mammals; and in the next breath we state that the large predators ... are not a factor in reducing the antelope in Yellowstone park.137

Madsen expressed sympathy for those non-biologists who struggled to grasp the finer points of revised predator policy. While some found ecological principles hard to grasp, or at the very least, confusing, others continued to judge lupine value using more traditional tenets. The architects of a progressive predator policy faced numerous assaults from those who failed to share their views. The Montana Woolgrowers Association, Montana Fish and Game Commission, state representatives and even park staff articulated calls for renewed control. Although publicly supportive of the revised policy, Horace Albright retained a personal aversion to wolves and coyotes. While resigned to the role of national parks as sanctuaries for carnivores, the Director urged, "when it gets to a point that they prey upon a more useful species, then they are to be controlled."138 Superintendents in Yellowstone proved similarly reluctant to relinquish command of predator-prey dynamics. In 1935, Roger Toll recommended the employment of two men whose "primary duty" would be predator control, and in 1937, Edmund Rogers advocated coyote control to protect white-tailed deer.139 The opposition of Yellowstone's staff to change was noted by biologist Adolph Murie. Accepting that, "scientific organizations in the country and the biologists are uniformly behind the policies of the Service," Murie also noted that pressure for renewed control "has been greatest, at least in Yellowstone, from the park personnel itself."140 Murie interpreted the strength of opposition as evidence of inadequate ecological knowledge. Meanwhile, Madsen did not believe that "the personnel of the park would advocate the control of coyotes if they were convinced that such control was not necessary."141 Tensions remained over predator policy between federal experts and local officials. National administrators continued to answer calls for control in Yellowstone by insisting that such measures were unjustified. In 1937, officials hoped to settle the issue with recourse to science, and commissioned Adolph Murie to undertake a study of coyotes in Yellowstone. The revised predator policy was "a flexible one designed to meet changing circumstances," which authorized control when obligated by "a thorough examination and appraisal of the facts."142 However, after studying Yellowstone's coyotes for two years, and examining five

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CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

thousand scats, Murie concluded that, "No emergency has been found to exist." The canine tricksters had not adversely affected game species or made marauding raids onto surrounding lands.143 These conclusions represented milestones in scientific research and afforded powerful justifications for protecting carnivores. The Wildlife Division published Murie's report as part of its Fauna of the National Parks series. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes countered angry ranchers by asserting that it was the job of "individuals" rather than the national park to "protect their domestic animals."144 However, Yellowstone found it harder to escape its regional context in practice than in principle. While predatory species were relatively safe inside the preserve by the end of the 1930s, other federal agencies continued to poison right up to Yellowstone's boundaries. PARC activities continued just outside the park.

Lupine Ghosts in Yellowstone? For more than ten years the big timber wolf and the mountain lion have been more or less a myth in Yellowstone park.145 MARGUERITE ARNOLD, 1937

After the cessation of predator control, the most visible presence of wolves in Yellowstone existed not in its wildest and remotest regions, but in the Albright Visitor Center. The taxidermic museum pieces, mounted in a display case, offered a stark reminder of early park priorities. The two wolves had been killed as part of anti-predator measures in 1922. While the stuffed canines commemorated Yellowstone's former status as a place of wolves, a few of their living brethren continued to seek their fortunes in the park. Scattered signs of lupine presence— pawprints in soft mud, occasional howls and fleeting sightings of the grey ghosts—were reported during the 1930s.146 Twenty-nine sightings of large canids were recorded in the ten years after anti-wolf measures had been rescinded. Another fifty-five animals were observed between 1937 and 1957.147 Most sightings involved single animals or pairs, and usually occurred in the north of the park. A couple of packs may have eked out an existence in remote regions until the mid-1930s, but, after that, lone wolves only frequented the park occasionally. In 1937, ranger-naturalist Marguerite Arnold offered a colourful account of scampering lupines in Yellowstone. Employed as a guide at Mammoth Hot Springs in 1921, Arnold became only the second woman

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WOLF MOUNTAINS to work for the Park Service in Yellowstone.148 Hiking at Tower Creek, she observed two "huge black fellows loping easily along a trail." Arnold couched the value of Canis lupus in terms of rarity value. While "the most destructive of predators," wolves "have become so scarce in this section of the country that for a number of years both have been protected in our greatest National Park," she noted. Arnold perceived wolf rehabilitation as a reflection of the changing role of national parks in protecting all vanishing species rather than selected ones. Arnold agreed that coyotes were destructive to game and recalled "thrilling" tales told by her husband of pursuing predators in Yellowstone. Nevertheless, Arnold regarded her encounter with Canis lupus as a seminal experience, "one of the red letter days of my life." For Arnold, the rarity of wolves in Yellowstone lent them a mythic quality and a new worthiness: "It will be many a day ere an adventure comes to me that will eclipse this twilight meeting with the big wolves."149 Rancher Leo Cottenoir encountered a wolf in 1943 while working as a shepherd on the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming. Rekindling frontier mythology of wolves as bestial killers, the rancher noted: "it went through my mind, I'd read stories about wolves attacking people, or something like that." Cottenoir cast the large carnivores as profligate vermin, surmising that, "if there was one, there would be more of them." He instinctively perceived the animal as a threat, believing that "he was endangering my sheep herd." Although the rancher failed to see the significance of his actions at the time, his lupine rendezvous proved crucial. With rifle raised, Cottenoir killed the last wolf in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (until the 1990s). Musing on the event in later years, Cottenoir noted: "It was kind of sad to think that he was the only one that I'd ever seen and I'd killed him."150

Crying Wolf in Yellowstone Sporadic sightings of wolves continued during the 1960s. Forty-two observations were reported between 1957 and 1966.151 In December 1967, seasonal ranger Marshall Gates filmed a home movie of a large black canine animal in the Lamar Valley, fuelling speculation that wolves were once again roaming Yellowstone. Supervisory biologist Glen Cole investigated the apparent comeback of Canis lupus. Cole compiled an inventory of wolf observations, collecting two hundred and two sightings between 1969 and 1971. The biologist catalogued more reports in two years than had been tendered in the previous four decades. Cole

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CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

concluded that ten to fifteen animals lived in Yellowstone National Park during the early 1970s.152 In Cole's estimation, the rise in wolf sightings since the late 1960s was not due to the sudden and dramatic return of Canis lupus. The biologist instead argued that a remnant lupine population had lived in the Yellowstone backcountry for forty years. Cole attributed the dearth of wolf sightings before 1969 to human error rather than canine absence, claiming that reports logged by visitors had been "buried in park files or not officially recorded."153 However, Cole's hypothesis remained questionable. It was highly unlikely that enough animals persisted in Yellowstone to maintain a stable and successful breeding population. Biologist John Craighead trekked extensively in the park during the 1950s and 1960s, but never spotted any signs of Canis lupus. Others posited that buoyant canine fortunes in the late 1960s resulted from interbreeding, asserting that a lone wolf had paired with resident coyotes. It was also suggested that animals had migrated south from Canada, taking advantage of the relaxation in provincial predator control programs after 1966.154 Intrepid canines had attempted the arduous trek along the backbone of the Rocky Mountains in previous years. In 1941, a solitary Canadian wolf had been killed near Three Forks, Montana, just sixty miles from Yellowstone. Although a feasible distance for lupine rovers to travel, the expedition south entailed four hundred miles of rugged mountain terrain. The route involved dangerous forays into the territory of Homo sapiens, where ranchers and hunters responded to their incursions with bullets and poisoned bait. It was some gauntlet to run for Canis lupus. Some commentators questioned whether wolves were the agents of their own revival. At the 1975 meeting of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, biologists L. David Mech and Robert Rausch presented a paper on the status of the wolf in the United States before the Wolf Specialist Committee. They drew attention to the sightings and tracks in Yellowstone National Park, and concluded that lupine activity was increasing. Rather than seeing the recolonization as a triumph of lupine agency, they instead highlighted "persistent rumors that the Yellowstone wolves are imported from Canada and released."155 Allegations that the NPS had masterminded an illicit reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone during the 1960s were fuelled by anonymous staff who claimed to have seen wolf transit cases marked with Alaskan decals in the park. Nature writer Peter Steinhart advanced the secret release scenario in A Company of Wolves (1996). Steinhart's supposition

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was predicated on anecdotal accounts, such as that by Wyoming Governor Stanley Hathaway, who claimed that Yellowstone's Superintendent Jack Anderson had confided the secret to him during a visit to the park: "Yeah, we put them in a few years ago. We brought them from Alaska to see what would happen."156 Alston Chase was another advocate of the covert reintroduction theory. He suggested that the NFS conjured up the scheme in order to solve problems of elk overpopulation. By restoring a predator-prey balance, he argued, the park fulfilled its mandate to preserve the area in an unsullied and original state. Chase contended that the reintroduction had to be carried out clandestinely because officials had long since claimed a continued presence of wolves in the park in order to promote an illusion of natural conditions.157 Whether or not wolves were secretly returned to Yellowstone furnished an intriguing conspiracy theory, but a more important issue concerned the fate of the lupine survivors. Between 1975 and 1977, John Weaver travelled twenty-seven hundred kilometres in Yellowstone, and failed to see one wolf. Bait stations armed with motion capture cameras did not capture any fleeting lupine images. Tapes of wolf howls resonating across the undulating hills of Yellowstone only received one possible canine reply. Although lone animals had visited the region sporadically since the 1930s, Weaver concluded that the park failed to support a self-sustaining wolf population.158 Renewed lupine presence in Yellowstone appeared remarkably transient, the apparent demise of wolf fortunes in the mid-1970s as rapid as their ascension in the previous decade. If a nascent pack existed, its members probably succumbed to bullets or poisoned bait when roaming outside park boundaries.159 The plethora of sightings recorded by Cole in the 1960s perhaps reflected burgeoning public interest in Canis lupus rather than a renewed paw-print in the park. The increase in reports indicated that people wanted to see wild predators in Yellowstone, and were eager to assume that any large canid, whether a coyote or a feral dog, could be a wolf. Weaver scrutinized records of wolf sightings since the 1930s, and only deemed 109 out of 531 observations to be "probable."160 The number of actual wolves in Yellowstone was substantially less than the mass hallucination of canines that observers believed they had seen. Visions of Yellowstone overflowing with lupine vigour proved as mythic as the 'hordes' of wolves that early park managers had fretted over. People desperately wanted to see wolves in Yellowstone, and they were quite prepared to use their imaginations.

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The Wolf Returns to Yellowstone There still remain, even in the United States, some areas of considerable size in which we feel that both the red and. gray species, in their respective habitats, may be allowed to continue their existence with little molestation.161 STANLEY YOUNG & EDWARD GOLDMAN, 1944

Where are these areas? Probably every reasonable ecologist will agree that some of them should lie in the larger national parks and wilderness areas; for instance, the Yellowstone and its adjacent national forests.162 ALDO LEOPOLD, 1944

By 1944, Goldman, Young and Leopold agreed that the wolf had a right to exist in North America. The three ex-predator control agents reappraised their opinions of Canis lupus, and judged Yellowstone National Park an exemplary place for the species to live.163 In 1963, a Special Advisory Board on Wildlife Management, chaired by Aldo's son, A. Starker Leopold, decreed that national parks should be vignettes of primitive America. The Board recommended that "biotic associations within each park be maintained, or where necessary recreated, as nearly as possible in the condition that prevailed when the area was first visited by the white man."164 In 1973, the U.S. Endangered Species Act not only designated the Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf as an endangered form, but also mandated the restoration of native species extirpated by man. Montana also enacted its own endangered species legislation the same year, protecting the wolf under state law. These documents formed the judicial basis for returning wolves to Yellowstone. The Park Service claimed that a remnant population continued to exist in Yellowstone through the mid-1970s, but hopes that the canine community would recover of its own accord had faded. In 1978, John Weaver concluded that no viable lupine population survived in the park. In Weaver's estimation, the NPS could either do nothing (a policy followed since 1927, and one that had consistently failed to sustain wolves), or they could return packs artificially. He proposed reintroduction. The NPS concurred. Wolf Recovery Plans were drawn up and released in 1980, and then revised in 1987. Yellowstone

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was recommended as one recovery site, along with locations in Glacier National Park and the River of No Return Wilderness, Idaho. Yellowstone comprised only one part of a wider project for wolf recovery in the Northern Rocky Mountains, but arguments over the place of Canis lupus in America's first national park dominated discussion.

Debating the Wolf Science and sentiment joined forces to promote wolves for Yellowstone. Science identified Canis lupus as the 'missing link' in the park's otherwise pristine biota. NFS Director William B. Mott remarked that wolves "would add a great deal to the natural values ... and balance the ecosystem."165 That the pre-eminent predator had been removed belied Yellowstone's conservation heritage. Canis lupus was the only faunal species absent from the national park that had dwelt there in 1872. Allied to the ecological rationale was the romantic one, the wolf as an icon of the wilderness and the West, an untamed spirit mercilessly persecuted in the cause of conquest. In 1900, progress was measured in a dearth of wolves and a superfluity of cattle. By 1990, this American West seemed incomplete. Whereas 'wild' had been derided, now it was revered. Cattle were deemed 'stupid,' even deer declared 'tame.' Canis lupus, meanwhile, represented the top predator, and principal symbol, of a bygone, resplendent wild landscape. It was this 'West' that Americans wanted to visit in Yellowstone.166 The reintroduction scheme was commonly aligned with Yellowstone's history. Whereas the natural and national principles of the Yellowstone Act had conflicted in the late 1800s, the two combined a century later to champion the canine cause. Both the 1872 and the 1916 acts were cited as evidence that the historical purpose of the national park—to maintain natural conditions—necessitated reintroduction. The Draft Environmental Assessment Report (1975) noted that "a departure from natural conditions now exists in the park ... such conditions were caused by an ill-advised control program from 1916-26."167 The restoration project represented the past coming full circle, the enlightened antithesis to past extermination. The National Park Service explained how the wolf was officially regarded as an "extraneous villain in the Yellowstone drama, now the same animal is seen as an essential player in the cast of a complete ecosystem."168 Those who had redefined the place of the wolf in the West were matched by others who clung to older symbols. At local meetings,

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CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

officials invariably heard the proudly spoken words 'my granddaddy killed the last wolf in Yellowstone.'169 And while there were not enough 'last wolves' to verify such tales, it proved that in Western ranching society, family pride, tradition and ideas of progress still nurtured wolf eradication as both necessary and laudable. That some saw wolves as 'worthless vermin' was evident in allusions to cockroaches, insects customarily derided by humanity.170 During a public hearing in Helena, Montana, an opponent testified that: "I consider the wolf to be a hazardous waste." Another remarked: "In the early 1900s, the ranchers and rural people found that they could not live with wolves and they were removed. It is no different now."171 Their arguments recounted fears echoing back to Yellowstone's past; the threat of the park as a 'breeding ground' for wolves which would kill stock, game and even humans. Exponents regurgitated the pioneer myths of old, using hoary tales of slavering wolves to arouse fears. Troy Mader of the Abundant Wildlife Society cited the twenty-five-thousand-dollar depredations on domestic stock of the legendary Custer Wolf as hard evidence of the destructiveness of wild lupines, while Senator Conrad Burns of Montana warned of a dead child within a year.172 To them, Yellowstone denoted a place for people not wolves; the West a place for herds not packs. Opponents saw the federal government as dressed in wolf's clothing. Reintroduction embodied the stranglehold of federal power over Western states. Ron Marlenee warned that, "environmental activists are willing to throw Montanans to the wolves ... [reintroduction] will give the environmentalists the tool they need to stop or appeal power lines, timber sales, road building, hunting seasons, oil and gas exploration, grazing."173 Critics cast themselves in the role of endangered species and victimized minorities. On listening to a talk by Renee Askins, leader of the proreintroduction Wolf Fund, one rancher remarked that locals "feel like the Jews would listening to an affable Nazi talk about Auschwitz."174 Considering the massacre and torture of wolves in the West, it was an inappropriate comparison. Faced with rising antagonism from Western groups, the National Park Service relied on fact-based education and compromise to appease intransigent local interests. In the early 1990s, the NFS produced a four-volume series of reports entitled Wolves for Tellowstone? in order to assuage the concerns of anxious citizens. The mammoth study chronicled the historic presence of Canis lupus, projected the impact of reintroduction on other species, documented public attitudes towards the wolf and offered predictions concerning cattle depredations and

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tourist revenue.175 Ecologists urged that, even at full recovery levels (ten breeding pairs for three years), wolves would only affect fifteen to twenty-five per cent of Yellowstone's elk.176 Park Service reliance on scientific evidence harked back to the wrangles over predator control in the 1930s. In both instances, the NFS set out to prove itself as a credible source of information. Just as in the past, the agency was forced to surmount regional concerns in order to effect policy success. Faced with the prospect that, if wolves were granted full protection under the Endangered Species Act, ranchers would adopt the conventional Western response of'shoot, shovel and shut-up,' federal authorities adopted a conciliatory tone. The Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) constructed a scenario providing for flexible management. 177 Compromise indisputably made the reintroduction more palatable to local interests. Offending animals caught preying on cattle and sheep were subject to management controls—either relocated, placed in captivity or, in the last resort, killed. Affected ranchers received compensation from environmental group Defenders of Wildlife for any losses.178 In October 1991, Congress appropriated funds for the USFWS to conduct an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on returning wolves to Yellowstone and Idaho. One hundred and sixty thousand public comments were collected during the consultation process, the largest for any federal project in American history.179 When the EIS was published in 1994, it recommended reintroduction.180 Rules governing the "Establishment of a Nonessential Experimental Population of Gray Wolves in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana" were promulgated in the Federal Register on November 22,1994. After twenty years of bureaucratic wrangling, the restoration project finally began. The protracted nature of the reintroduction process testified to the continuing controversy over wolves. It took longer to discuss bringing wolves back to Yellowstone than it did to extirpate them.

Wolf Stories The historic return of the wolf to Yellowstone began in winter 1994, in Canada. Wolves living east of Jasper National Park, Alberta, were chosen due to their genetic similarity to Yellowstone's subspecies. Their world of grassland, firs, pine and spruce proved similar to the landscape of northwest Wyoming. Sustained by elk, moose, and deer, Albertan wolves also possessed the right dietary preferences. The capture was to be facilitated

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CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, together with provincial wildlife authorities in Canada. The project was entitled 'Operation Wolfstock.'181 As the Albertan wolf ranged through the cold, snowy foothills of the Rockies, he failed to notice the suspicious disturbance in the snow. The deception was complete as the line of the neck snare leapt out from the brush that had carefully concealed it and the animal was caught. Instinctively, the other pack members bolted. However, the Canadian trapper who patrolled his trapline did not kill the ensnared lupine, but brought him to a place where he was fitted with a radio collar. The wolf was then released. The trapper received two thousand dollars (Canadian) from U.S. federal officials for the live wolf, ten times the reward typically offered for a canine pelt. Rejoining his pack, perhaps surprised by the experience, the wolf remained unaware of his new task. As a collared 'Judas Wolf he would lead the human crew of 'Operation Wolfstock' to his fellow pack-mates. Sixteen animals from other packs in the region were similarly captured and fitted with radio collars. In subsequent weeks, biologists monitored the packs from the air, assessing the calibre of the various groups in order to decide on suitable candidates for transport to Yellowstone and Idaho.182 In January 1995, the next stage of the restoration project commenced. The machinations of the reintroduction process proved stressful for human agents, but the trauma was more acute for enlisted lupines. They had no way of knowing the place to which they were going, or the importance of their journey. In the cold forests of Alberta in January 1995, helicopters buzzed overhead, following the radio-telemetry signal emitted by the 'Judas wolves.' Once the packs had been sighted, shooters armed with immobilizing guns attempted to dart the fleeing animals. Wildlife officials leaned out of the helicopter, in temperatures as low as minus forty degrees, angling for the best shot. The animals galloped frenetically for forest cover, hoping to escape the airborne threat. Instinctive fear of humans had allowed these animals to survive in a region where it was a capital offence to be caught loping across private property. The wolves had learned to run for their lives at the sight of people. Operation Wolfstock captured a total of thirty-three wolves from the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. Fourteen animals were destined for Yellowstone, the rest for Idaho.183 Following capture, the immobilized wolves were transported from the foothills to nearby Switzer Park for 'processing.' The interned lupines were given detailed physical examinations, receiving blood tests and inoculations. Their coats were dusted for parasites. Ear-tags and transponders identified each individual.

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The animals were then placed in aluminum transit boxes for a short plane journey to Edmonton and subsequent flight to Great Falls, Montana. Awaiting trucks ferried the canine entourage to Yellowstone Park. When the wolf convoy passed through the Roosevelt Arch into Yellowstone National Park, the road was lined with proud park officials, flag-waving children, and camera-wielding journalists. The arrival of the motorcade prompted scenes reminiscent of a presidential visit, in terms of ceremony, euphoria and high security. The Canadian immigrants were taken to three acclimation pens in the Lamar Valley where they were penned for eight weeks. The 'soft release' strategy represented an attempt to familiarize wolves with their new surroundings. Officials feared that, if released immediately, the packs would trek back to Canada, or be killed en route. The establishment of wolf pens in the Lamar Valley signified a histrionic and poignant event. Archaeological findings in the Lamar Cave had proved the ancient existence of wolves in Yellowstone, while the last wolf to be killed in the national park control program had been vanquished in nearby Soda Butte Creek. Federal officials alleviated stress on the captive packs by minimizing human contact with the enclosures. Security guards watched the pens in case of intrusions, while patrolling lupines paced the perimeter fence from the inside. Contact was limited to bringing in meals of road-killed elk twice a week. The three packs behaved differently. The Crystal Creek Pack calmed down the quickest, while the Rose Creek Pack proved the most confident, the alpha male circling park officials when they delivered elk meat. Wolf#13, an old male from the Soda Butte Pack, was the only animal to utilize the shelters placed inside the pens. Despite their arduous journey, the wolves adapted swiftly to the fresh terrain. Within a short time, they seemed quite comfortable. Animals played with bones and teased alighting ravens. A week after placement in the pens, the packs began howling again. Biologists failed to anticipate the willingness of captured lupines to join in a canine chorus. One security guard described the wolf howl as "a truly incredible sound—not eerie or evil sounding— but with such forlonging [sic] sadness ... to be hearing this sound to such a backdrop of moon and stars—alone."184 Lupine vocalizations remained associated with images of solitude in Yellowstone. But, in contrast to early explorers, the silent wilderness represented an appealing place for many late twentieth-century Americans. Much to the surprise of federal officials, two of the packs also bred in their enclosures. Despite copious research and exhaustive restoration projections, actual canine behaviour confounded Yellowstone's wolf experts.

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CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

Wolf being released into acclimation pen in Yellowstone, 1996 (NFS photo).

Every week the Park Service conducted a media tour of the pens, providing detailed updates on lupine status. Apparently it was not only humans who were curious about Yellowstone's new residents. Other species made tentative investigations of the robust enclosure and its confined canids. A red fox ventured into the Soda Butte pen, and was promptly chased down. The death of the hapless fox signified the first recorded instance of wolf predation in Yellowstone for over half a century. Elk and bison bedded down adjacent to the fence. These ungulates had never seen a wolf before and were seemingly unconcerned by the recent arrivals. Perhaps the eight-foot high chain-link fence between them and the pack afforded a sense of security. Tracks in the earth revealed that coyotes had also circled the pens, sizing up their larger cousins. In response to the howling of wolves, Yellowstone's coyotes also became more vociferous, orating their territorial claims to park terrain. When the doors of the pens were opened and the wolves had the chance to run free in Yellowstone, they continued to perplex federal officials. Cameras and lasers were poised to record the historic exit, but, after twenty-four hours, the Crystal Creek Pack stayed put. One local reporter accused the pack of being "welfare wolves" feeding off government handouts.185 Biologists suggested that the animals may have associated the entrance to the enclosure with humans, and therefore

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regarded the door with caution. A hole was subsequently cut in the perimeter fence to furnish an alternative escape route. Three days later, the Crystal Creek Pack ventured into virgin territory. Biologist Doug Smith observed the wolves a mile from the pen the following day. Their behaviour inferred a sense of "recent liberation." According to Smith, "the wolves stood on some of the promontories and looked around, they were cavorting, playing, and checking things out."186 When the doors were opened for the Rose Creek and Soda Butte packs they also proved initially reticent to seize their newly found freedom. When the animals eventually scampered outside, they resumed customary lupine activities. The bold alpha male of the Rose Creek Pack, Wolf#10, announced his emancipation by howling at biologists from a nearby ridge. Within half a mile of leaving their pen, the Soda Butte Pack killed an elk calf. At the outset, the three packs remained near their enclosures. Each group then abruptly travelled up to eighty kilometres out of the park. Officials feared that the roving canines were embarking on an overland trek back to Canada. A cartoon in the Billings Gazette suggested that the wolves were sprinting over the mountains, heading north to their old stomping grounds with a resounding cry of "Yeehah (ay!)," their howls of joy marked with an Albertan colloquialism.187 After checking territorial options elsewhere, the Soda Butte and Crystal Creek packs nevertheless returned to Yellowstone. The fortunes of the Rose Creek Pack showed that to be an intelligent course of action. In February 1995, Wolf#10 was illegally killed by unemployed carpenter Chad McKittrick in a gully near Red Lodge, Montana.188 However, in a more positive display of human intervention, USFWS officials wisely moved alpha female Wolf#9 and her orphaned pups from their den on private land back to the sanctuary of Yellowstone. Michael Milstein suggested that if the Canadian wolves had been shown a travel brochure for Yellowstone they would have accepted the long-haul flight in order to resettle in the preserved paradise.189 In Canada, wolves were liable to be shot, trapped or poisoned, whereas in the United States they earned rights as endangered species. Even though the wolves were designated as an 'experimental non-essential population'—hence they could be killed for preying on livestock—at least they were afforded protection. As Wolf#10 showed, traditional hostility remained on either side of the forty-ninth parallel, but when McKittrick was caught, he received a $10,000 fine and six-month jail sentence rather than the bounty reward and gold watch of years past. Despite fears that they would move back to Canada, or onto surrounding

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CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

ranches, the wolves remained on average only twenty-two kilometres from their release sites. The lupine expatriates chose to reside in Yellowstone, ranging mostly in the Lamar and Pelican valleys. They evidently recognized the area as safe. "There is a sense that they've learned that people here aren't going to shoot them," surmised John Varley, Director of the Yellowstone Center for Resources.190 The wolves were undoubtedly cognitive of the amount of prey in Yellowstone, and perhaps more importantly, of the absence of any competing packs. 'America's Serengeti,' replete with fattened herds of grazing animals, appeared a heavenly buffet to Canadian lupines used to eking their meals from the wolf-wise ungulates of Alberta and British Columbia. These wolves had eaten Yellowstone elk their whole lives, as the national parks of Banff and Jasper had been stocked with grazers from northwest Wyoming in the 1910s. Yellowstone provided the same menu, but in greater quantities. The breeding success of the new arrivals perhaps best reflected their opinions of Yellowstone. In the first year, two packs produced litters. In spring 1997, twelve females from the established nine packs nurtured pups.191 Three packs had multiple litters, a phenomenon highly unusual in wolf society. The wolves proved far more efficient agents of reintroduction than biologists anticipated. The Yellowstone program was so successful that only two transplants of wolves were needed, fourteen animals from Alberta in 1995, and a further seventeen lupines from British Columbia in 1996. Original projections had envisaged a further transport in order to create a sustainable population. By the end of 1997, nearly one hundred lupines roamed Yellowstone.192 That the program was under budget and ahead of schedule reflected the painstaking work by officials, and the vigour of returning lupines. Dedicated humans and resilient wolves could work for common aims. The American public wanted the large predators in Yellowstone, while returning canines evidently favoured national park terrain.

Human Meaning and the Yellowstone Wolf The Yellowstone reintroduction reflected the ecological and cultural value that the American public had come to place on Canis lupus. However, the animal they portrayed proved more symbolic than real. The concept of Yellowstone 'out of balance' denied nature any agency since 1872, as if all natural dynamics were moribund after Superintendent Langford arrived, or that time had been frozen in 1926 when the last

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wolf was killed. This was a fallacy. Yellowstone was an environment in constant flux, from the coyotes that grew larger and began hunting in packs in the absence of their larger cousins, to the fires of 1988 that burned and thus renewed park vegetation. Restoring the wolf, a keystone predator, undoubtedly impacted on the entire ecosystem, but Yellowstone had not been 'dead.' Tributes to Canis lupus as an ecological saviour delivering the preserve from the scourge of abundant elk only served to exaggerate the wolPs (albeit renowned) predatory appetite.193 Lupine experience in Yellowstone similarly belied the wolfs reputation as a romantic creature of the wild. The packs proved far more visible than the reclusive backcountry symbols they purported to represent.194 As Wayne Brewster noted: "When you have a wolf pack in an area, they howl, people hear them, they leave tracks all over the place ... you see their kills ... always a difficult concept for people to understand, because they think of wolves as this secretive wilderness species."195 In 1995, an estimated four thousand visitors witnessed the Rose Creek and Crystal Creek packs playing and hunting across the Lamar River.196 The cultural importance of Canis lupus extended far beyond lupine biological characteristics. Reintroduction revealed as much about human mentalities as canine ways. The Yellowstone restoration was lauded as a radical act in the history of human behaviour towards the natural world. The NFS extolled the scheme as evidence of a positive desire to coexist with other creatures. "Ultimately wolf restoration shows that we respect the existence of other life forms, even when that may not be easy," read the Return of the Wolf (1996) handout. 197 "It's an important philosophical point to remember that Yellowstone National Park will always be a wolf sanctuary. We will not do anything to wolves in the park. They are free to live as they want," vowed Doug Smith.198 By admitting the depths of depravity to which humans had sunk in their treatment of wolves, Americans showed that they had changed. Racked with 'pioneer guilt,' Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt (a Westerner himself) apologized that "our ancestors came to the New World prepared only to conquer."199 The return of Canis lupus signified a tale of timely homecoming, reintroduction the joyous ending to a tragic history.200 While the Park Service subscribed to a lupocentric approach, the wolf was still forced to fit into human parameters outside the boundaries of Yellowstone. Canis lupus was accepted as a part of the national park landscape, but there were always opinions disputing lupine rights in surrounding locales. Many people cast the large predators in a 'role' rather than seeing them for their intrinsic worth. It cost $342,764 in

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CHAPTER ONE • Wolves in Tellowstone National Park

bounty payments to eradicate wolves from Montana, and an estimated $6,757,750 to restore them to Yellowstone.201 The value of the species changed, but they were often judged in terms of the dollar. Homo sapiens seemed far from reaching the lofty peaks of thinking like a wolf, let alone a mountain.

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Waterton/Glacier International Peace Park, Montana, (map courtesy of the U.S. National Park Service)

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2

Wolves in Glacier National Park The Demise of Chief Wolf Wolves and Coyotes are very wise, their wisdom having been given to them by Napi (Old Man).1 SIKSIKAKOAN, Blackfeet (1910)

WiiLE LUPINE IMPRESSIONS of places in Glacier are hard to

race (not to mention translate), generations of Native \mericans have observed and interpreted wolf paw-prints in the region.2 Prehistoric hunters who pursued bison across montane valleys spied packs bounding through pine forests. The Kootenay, who ventured into the mountains to fish and gather berries, identified the North Fork of the Flathead River as Wolftail River. Perhaps the tribe watched wolves chasing grazing herds across the meadows, or thought the meandering waters of the rivuline course akin to the fluid flicking of lupine tails. Other Kootenay landmarks in Glacier included Wolfhead Mountain and Wolf Finger Creek.3 In naming natural features after Canis lupus^ Native Americans celebrated their canine brethren just as they immortalized their chiefs and heroes. The Blackfeet, who moved to the northern plains from ancestral lands in eastern Canada during the 1700s, imprinted the mountain landscape with a powerful lupine presence. The Piegan named the Little Rockies 'Wolf Mountains.'4 Glacier's rugged defiles were revered in Blackfeet religion as sacred places where profound earth spirits despatched important lessons to human and faunal citizens.5 Traditional stories told of encounters in Glacier between wolves and the Creator (also known as Napi or Old Man). The tale Old Man and the Wolves recalled Napi's meeting with a group of wild canines in a forest near Cutbank. Feeling forlorn wandering alone, Napi implored the pack to "let me be a wolf with you." Father

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wolf obliged, using "gray medicine" to transform Napi into a 'wolfman.' Following his metamorphosis, Old Man learned hunting techniques from two young wolves named Long Body and Heavy Body. Napi found the pack to be mutually supportive and honourable, a community akin to the human tribe. However, one evening as he dined with the pack, Old Man was struck in the eye by a bone splinter. In a fit of foolish rage, Napi responded by killing Long Body, thereby upsetting his canine cohorts, who "all the rest of that day, and all through the night... howled and howled." Their howling was such an emotive sound that "Old Man thought that he would go mad from the mournfulness of it all." Despite his reckless behaviour, Old Man was forgiven and allowed to remain with the lupine family. On a subsequent hunting trip, Napi urged Heavy Body not to leap over any streams, otherwise "death in some form will get you." Heavy Body dismissed such concerns and jumped into a pond in pursuit of a moose, only to be killed by a water bear. The tale ended with Old Man requiting the death of Heavy Body by killing the bear, and, returning to the role of Creator, filling a hollow in the ground with oil from the vanquished ursine. Numerous animals rolled in the oil, leading Napi to conclude: "I have done some good. I have avenged the death of my wolf partner and have made fat many of my younger brothers!"6 The tale of Old Man and the Wolves illustrated the place of Cams lupus within the Blackfeet worldview. Napi was both man and wolf, wise and foolish, accepted in the community of animals and humans. Spiritual and material forces created the world in which the Blackfeet existed and Makuyi (the wolf) was an integral part of that landscape. Piegan Chief Brings-Down-the-Sun mused, "[B]y nature I am like the wolf, for I love to roam over the prairies and among the mountains."7 The Blackfeet even followed lupine trails after death, generations of souls journeying along the Wolf Trail (the Milky Way) to the Spirit World. Wolves represented sacred medicine animals with prodigious magical powers. Father wolf transformed Napi into a wolf-man using powerful "gray medicine." Native hunters hoped that they could attain similar prowess to Long Body and Heavy Body by donning canine skins. Howling was regarded as an empowering symbol of tribal comradeship. According to Brings-Down-the-Sun, loquacious canines imparted wisdom to listening braves, and were "able to read the future and give us warning of what will happen."8 Native Americans regarded the ability to 'become' a wolf as a cherished gift, an eminently more positive portrayal of canines than the werewolf depicted in European myth.

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CHAPTER Two • Wolves in Glacier National Park

Like their Creator, the Blackfeet respected wolves, but "gray medicine" did not preclude them from killing their lupine brethren. Locals used wolf furs for blankets and clothes, employed lupine totems in religious festivals, and sought pelts for economic exchange. Spiritual codes governed killing practices, hunters believing that disrespected wolf spirits might exact powerful retribution. A Blackfeet maxim stated that "the gun that shoots at a wolf or coyote will never again shoot straight," the assertion being that powerful canine magic would prevail over human technology.9 Piegan faith in the superior strength of lupine forces over lead and gunpowder contrasted with Buffalo Bill's eulogy to the unstoppable bullet as tamer of the West.10 Unfortunately, nineteenthcentury contests for power in Glacier brought more rifles than "gray medicine" could counter. Euro-American Travellers White pioneers did not feel the spiritual presence of Makuyim the Glacier region as the Blackfeet had done. Euro-Americans instead seemed captivated by the spirit of adventure. Some were motivated by dreams of exploration, religious conversion or patriotism. Others imagined progress and opportunity in more corporeal forms: pelts, railroad tracks, copper and gold—the sacred, yet very material, dollar. Arriving in the 1780s, the first white man to visit the Glacier area was probably David Thompson, a British explorer employed by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). The powerful fur corporation had earned a reputation as a prolific exploiter of the western interior, its long-standing presence in the region prompting an alternative translation of the HBC acronym: 'Here Before Christ.'11 French trappers working for the Northwest Company (NWC) competed with HBC agents for pelts throughout the Great Plains and Pacific Northwest during the 1700s. Until the 1800s, the Upper Missouri area, including Glacier, represented contested territory. Spanish, French and English protagonists attempted to forge trading links with indigenous peoples. Nonetheless, the area remained largely unexplored until 1803 when the United States purchased 828,000 square miles of Louisiana from France, inspiring American traders and trappers to venture west seeking their own fortunes. On the return leg of their transcontinental voyage, the Lewis and Clark Expedition journeyed towards the looming escarpments of the Northern Rockies. The expeditioners frequently encountered roving lupines. On July 8, 1806, Lewis described a "great number" of wolves

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along Shishequaw Creek. Later that day, on the banks of the Medicine River, the explorer shot a "large and remarkably white wolf." When the travellers reached the headwaters of the Marias River, about thirty miles southeast of Glacier, large canines were again observed. The 'voyageurs' may not have attributed supernatural powers to the wolves they encountered, but their journals exuded a powerful sense of the region as a place replete with spirited lupines. Lewis and his compatriots fled the area following a skirmish with the Piegan, whom they labelled "vicious and profligate rovers."12 French-Canadian trapper Hugh Monroe developed a decidedly more cordial relationship with the Blackfeet. Monroe visited Glacier under the employment of the HBC in 1815. At first working as an interpreter at the nearby Mountain Fort trading post, Monroe then spent two years travelling with the Piegan. He married a Native woman, and rode on Blackfeet raiding parties. The Piegan named Monroe Ma-kwi'-i-po-waksin, or 'Rising Wolf,' immortalizing his memory by naming one of Glacier's eastern peaks 'Rising Wolf Mountain.'13 Once more the region was identified with the wolf, albeit one of the two-legged variety. Monroe's favourite "mountain resort" in Glacier was St. Mary's Lake, due to the "great numbers of moose" and "fur animals" found there. Despite his lupine title, Monroe betrayed few qualms about killing his four-legged brethren. With the use of an "oblong, pyramidal log pen" he regularly trapped canines along the shores of the lake. Meat placed inside the stockade tempted unsuspecting animals to jump down into the pen.14 Rising Wolf boasted catching several hundred animals each winter using this technique. After killing the canines, Monroe skinned the carcasses and threw their remains into the river. Monroe sold the pelts to Fort Benton trading post every spring, netting around five dollars for each wolf killed. Although American fur interests expanded into the Northern Rockies during the 1820s and 1830s, the scale of Monroe's operation against Canis lupus proved exceptional. Only a few intrepid trappers ventured to the Glacier region. The uncharted and inhospitable mountains, combined with the fearsome reputation of the Blackfeet, dissuaded many fortune seekers. Those who penetrated the area came in search of rodent rather than lupine quarries. Trapping beaver represented a far more lucrative enterprise, given the fashion for hats decorated with the animal's silken pelage on the streets of London, New York and Paris. Wolves in Glacier found themselves at the mercy of invading forces from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. American claims on the

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region were asserted with vigour, and, in 1848, lands west of the Continental Divide were incorporated into Oregon Territory. Whereas travel writer Robert Scharff described the period between 1850 and 1900 as Glacier's "age of discovery," park historian C. W. Buchholtz labelled the era as "basically one of human greed."15 In 1894, pioneer Charlie Howe claimed that, "a man can find anything he wants in this region," but such fortune-seeking sentiments offered meagre prospects for local wildlife.16 Official surveyors and railroad agents mapped Glacier's mountains, seeking passes across the Continental Divide for overland trails and railroad tracks. Prospectors, hunters, homesteaders and ranchers made their mark on the landscape. As humans expanded their range, the lupine frontier receded. Like his compatriots in Yellowstone, Makuyi faced a direct threat from the wolfer. Trapper Joseph Henry Taylor listed the Judith, Milk and Musselshell Rivers east of Glacier as some of the most popular Western wolfing grounds.17 In the Eagle Creek region, wolfers 'Jack' and 'Ben' took nine hundred wolves in one season.18 Kootenai Brown, who worked one hundred miles from Glacier in the 1860s, boasted how "[I]t was a common thing to get 20 wolves with one poisoned carcass and I've known where 50 to 80 have been poisoned at one time."19 The use of poison baits by the nascent livestock industry threatened Glacier's packs. From the 1870s until the 1890s, ranchers came to the area, making use of government 'free land' and capitalizing on demand for meat from booming mine towns and railroad camps. Eager to forge a prosperous life on the range, cattlemen vigorously prosecuted a war against local canines. Frontier settlers exhibited tangible concerns that wolves might prey on struggling herds. Although unable to control variables such as weather or market prices, ranchers could assert control over the landscape, and their destiny, by removing faunal impediments. J. W. Proctor boasted how he laid a trail of poison bait thirty miles long in order to kill "straggler" wolves from Canada in 1886. Although the baits were buried by a heavy snowfall, Proctor managed to catch enough 'varmints' "to pay his expenses and leave a handsome margin besides."20 The cattleman emerged victorious. When Lewis and Clark travelled through the West in the early 1800s they described a landscape abounding with life. The lowland grasses offered nutritious and accessible forage for grazing animals, which in turn provided food for wolves. On one stretch of the Marias River, Lewis spied bison, antelope, wolves, beaver, geese, ravens, pigeons, hawks, doves, larks and sparrows.21 Had the Corps of Discovery retraced

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their route a century later, they would have spotted fewer animals and far more people. By the end of the nineteenth century, the plains served as prime habitat for Homo sapiens. Wolves were forced to seek refuge in more secluded climes. Morning Eagle, a respected Piegan Medicine Man, lamented the disappearance ofMa-kuyifrom the prairies: "In these late days, the old gods—Chief Wolf, Chief Bear and others—no longer come and talk with us in person." Morning Eagle nonetheless believed that animal spirits still roamed a remote sanctuary "which the white men have not yet found and desecrated."22 Glacier's mountains failed to provide such a refuge for Chief Wolf. While relatively small by Western standards, the Glacier region experienced its own boom in the late 1800s, marshalled by the Great Northern Railroad, with settlements at Belton and Apgar, and a copper mine at Altyn. Canis lupus rarely roamed mountain haunts by 1900.23 Trapper James Willard Schultz regretted the passing of the old days, of the land of wild wolves and the "still wilder redmen."24

The Establishment of Glacier Park A great benefit would result to Montana if this section could be set aside as a National Park.25 LIEUTENANT JOHN VAN ORSDALE (1883)

John Van Orsdale aired his plans for a national park in Glacier in the pages of the Fort Benton Press, extolling the region as an area of outstanding alpine wonder. The Lieutenant's assertion that Glacier's scenery "surpasses anything in Montana or adjacent territories" inferred a challenge to the monumental landscape of America's first national park, four hundred miles to the south. While Orsdale claimed that Glacier's rugged countenance was unparalleled in the West, the Yellowstone example undoubtedly figured highly in the minds of early park campaigners. George Grinnell travelled a direct route through Montana in the 1880s, becoming captivated by the beauty and wildness of Glacier just as he had been in Yellowstone. Long before Orsdale articulated his designs for a national park in the Northern Rockies, the area had been set aside as a different kind of reserve. In 1855, the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains were granted to the Blackfeet as part of a reservation stretching from the Canadian border south to the Musselshell River and west to the Sweetgrass Hills.

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However, in 1888, the Blackfeet relinquished the bulk of their eastern territory to white settlers, following the decimation of tribal society by smallpox, famine and poverty. Seven years later, the Piegan sold a small strip of land on the western border of their diminished reservation to the U.S. government in return for $1,500,000 and 'user rights.' Congress duly incorporated the ceded strip into the Lewis and Clark National Forest, a reserve that had been established in 1891 to protect timberlands on the slopes of the Rockies. However, the protection afforded by forest reserve status did not go far enough for conservationists. Grinnell emerged as a prominent campaigner for "a national reservation or park" in northwest Montana.26 Louis Hill, President of the Great Northern Railway, also became an ardent promoter of the Glacier Park cause. A tourist playground adjacent to Great Northern railway tracks appealed to Hill's good business sense. In 1908, Senator Thomas Carter of Montana introduced a national park bill to Congress. After several revisions, Glacier National Park was established on May 11, 1910.27 The Glacier Park Act, Wildlife and Wolves Compared with the furore over plans to dam Yosemite National Park's Hetch Hetchy Valley in the early 1900s, Glacier's Bill enjoyed a relatively smooth passage through Congress.28 Buchholtz claimed that "the argument for preserving its scenery, the glaciers it contained and its wildlife seemed to convince everyone, including the congressmen, of its need for park status."29 Nevertheless, preservationist urges were not the only influence on the bill's propitious course. Glacier had proved unsuitable land for agricultural or grazing use, while its 'worthlessness' for resource extraction had been severely tested by gold prospectors, copper miners and oil workers for the best part of half a century. In the 1700s, explorer Jonathan Carver had described Glacier as a land of "Shining Mountains," after the "infinite number of crystal stones, with which they are covered ... and which, when the sun shines upon them, sparkle so as to be seen at a very great distance."30 Carver's optimistic vision of valuable jewels turned out to be glaciers on closer inspection. While the mountains failed to yield mineral wealth, park promoters regarded the land of rock and ice as a veritable tourist goldmine. Advocates argued that, with effective marketing, the fourteen hundred square miles of stunning peaks, lakes and glaciers would lure Americans away from vacationing in Europe or Canada.31 Promotion of Glacier as the 'Great

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American Alps' reflected both nationalistic fervour and pursuit of the green-backed dollar. One representative appealed to Congress's sense of patriotic duty, or at least neighbourly competition, by pointing out that Canada had just established a national park in Waterton Lakes.32 The tenets of the Glacier Park Act reflected the marriage of preservationist and recreational intentions. The preserve was designated as "a public ground or pleasure ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people of the United States." The act called for the "preservation of the park in a state of nature," but development of Glacier as a leisured paradise remained paramount. Numerous amendments to the final bill allowed reclamation projects, sustained yield forestry, settlement, mining and railroad access to the park.33 Such projects usually affected lower elevations, valleys and meadows used by wolves as travel routes. Construction of facilities, mineral extraction, logging and grazing encroached on canine habitat. Focus on human wants in the new preserve compromised the territorial needs of Glacier's lupines. Primary justification for preserving Glacier may have focused on the worth of its scenic features and value as human playground, but the park was also established as a wildlife sanctuary. Forest rangers Frank Herrig and Frank Liebig had patrolled the reserve since 1900, defending ungulates from poachers. Herrig was rarely seen without his trusty Russian wolfhound. In lobbying for park status, Senator Carter demanded greater wildlife protection in Glacier.34 George Grinnell similarly enthused over establishing Glacier as a faunal refuge. While national parks were conceived as sanctuaries for people wishing to escape the rigours of urban life, they were also seen as places of shelter for nonhuman species. According to popular travel writer, Mary Roberts Rinehart, the preserves brought "rest to their human visitors" and gave "life to uncounted numbers of wild creatures."35 The Outlook magazine celebrated Glacier's resplendent wildlife, and hoped that the area would "become in time an important game refuge."36 Efforts to preserve Glacier as a sanctuary for grazing animals did not bode well for resident predators. Conservationists balked at the idea of protected species ending up as food for wolves. Rules and regulations issued in December 1910 prohibited the "hunting or killing, wounding or capturing any bird or wild animal," but also provided for the despatching of "dangerous animals when necessary to prevent them from destroying life or inflicting injury."37 Such 'crimes' seemed hard to avoid for Glacier's meat-eaters. Following precedent set in Yellowstone, wolves were excluded from protection in Glacier National Park.

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Wolf Policy in the Early Park Get off the track at Belton Station [West Glacier], and in a few minutes you will find yourself in the midst of what you are sure to say is the best care-killing scenery on the continent.... The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal.38 JOHN MUIR, Our National Parks (1901)

The trip to Glacier on the Great Northern Railroad's (GNR) 'Empire Builder' line may well have provided visitors with the experience of a lifetime, but for local wolves, the national park brought no such fond memories, and certainly no promises of immortality. Unlike Muir's legendary regard for his fellow creatures, Glacier's park managers did not hold the wolf in a position of respect.39 While tourists indulged in 'care-killing' pursuits, such as traversing the mountains by horseback, marvelling at the park's eponymous features, or being entertained at the GNR's chain of suitably rustic hotels, officials strove to create a bucolic park landscape devoid of canine presence. From a lupine perspective, spending time in the national park proved mortally dangerous rather than life enhancing. In his first annual report, Superintendent William Logan drew attention to the "indigenous game" with which Glacier abounded.40 A six-man ranger force patrolled the park from the fall of 1910 onwards, charged with the protection of ungulates. Officials saw three major threats to their protective mandate: local poachers, the Blackfeet, and predatory animals. Initially, the activities of human hunters were judged of primary concern. Local hunters and trappers paid scant attention to Glacier's protected status, claiming that their Montana hunting permits granted them licence to kill inside the park. The Blackfeet also defended their right to hunt in the area based on the 1895 treaty guaranteeing 'user rights' in the eastern range. By contrast, the pursuits of Canis lupus appeared far less serious. Only three or four packs roamed Glacier's remote northern reaches in the early 1910s.41 However, officials in Glacier did not ignore wild canines for long. Just two years after the park's establishment, Superintendent Henry Hutchings urged that predators "should be killed off."42 Whereas human offenders were dissuaded from using the park by legal recourse and efficient patrols,

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the treatment of four-legged forms proved more severe. Rangers were authorized to kill species "depredating upon the game in the reservation" and permits were granted to settlers for the trapping of predatory animals.43 As in Yellowstone, anxieties over the vigour of resident herds fostered antipathy towards Canis lupus m Glacier National Park. Authorities in Glacier explored the most effective means of killing local packs. Superintendent Brett of Yellowstone provided Hutchings with information on successful precedents used in northwest Wyoming, as well as instructions on how to set poison and traps.44 Hutchings warned the Secretary of the Interior that vigilant rangers alone could not remove the predatory threat from Glacier and recommended the institution of a bounty and the employment of a special hunter.45 Officials in Washington agreed that hunters should be employed if warden duties deemed it "not practicable for them to devote any portion of their time to the killing of these animals."46 According to Hutchings, the hiring of an elite anti-wolf hunter represented the "only way in which these predatory animals may be diminished and eventually exterminated."47 Over the next few years, locals such as Ora Reeves, E. J. Brown, Walter Johns, and C. B. Gleason were duly employed.48 'Special ranger hunters worked in the park each winter to hunt coyotes, mountain lions and wolves until the late 1920s.49 In Glacier, as in Yellowstone, the natural law of predator and prey was rewritten according to an agenda of faunal apartheid (apartness), with moral imperatives ranking animal races according to their dietary habits.50 Humans also felt the influence of the separatist park vision. Glacier was designed as a retreat for wealthy Euro-American tourists rather than resident Indian tribes. Officials strove to create an idyllic, selectively natural, scene. While Glacier was advertised as the Piegan's ancestral home—attendant braves greeted the visiting 'white man' at Belton station, hotel entrances were adorned with murals of Native history, and ceremonial dances were even performed on park lawns—traditional indigenous uses of the region remained prohibited. The Blackfeet were confined to a reservation 'homeland' further east and precluded from making hunting forays into mountain climes. When he saw Rocky Mountain goat and bighorn sheep among Glacier's mountains in 1915, Tail-Feathers-Coming-Over-the-Hill exclaimed: "But we may not kill them! ... There they are! Our meat, but the whites have taken them from us, even as they have taken everything else that is ours!"51 The live performances of Native Americans, just like the stuffed wolves in Yellowstone's Albright Visitor Center, served as symbolic celebrations

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Hunter posing with wolf or coyote pelts. The animals were killed by Dr. Roderick Houston of Be/ton, Montana on the border of Glacier National Park (unknown photographer, Glacier National Park Archives).

of a primitive 'Wild West.' That killing of wolves was an acceptable activity, and contrived Indian scenes were welcome sights, showed just how dominant the white man's image of the American West had become in the early twentieth century. The process of landscape appropriation was further evident in the renaming of regional landmarks in Glacier Park. Camped amidst the mountains in the mid-1910s, trapper James Willard Schultz and a few friends queried the names given to Glacier's features by whites. When told by Schultz that a nearby lofty peak bore the label 'Mount Rockwell' on a recent map of the region, Yellow Wolf retorted: Is it so? Not satisfied with taking our mountains, the whites even take away the ancient names we give them! They shall not do it! You tell them so! That mountain yonder is Rising Bull Mountain, and by that name it must ever be called! Rising Bull was one of our great chiefs: what more fitting than that the mountain should always bear his name?52

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While the "pyramidal mountain of great height and grandeur" remained the same, various observers interpreted its inner meanings quite differently.53 Glacier Park signified a contested landscape, a place where the desires and traditions of the Blackfeet Nation and the EuroAmerican nation collided.54

Biological Warfare In 1913, Superintendent James Galen announced his intention to mount a new offensive in the campaign against the carnivore. While his predecessor, Robert Chapman, reported that, "animals destructive of game life are not large in number," Galen painted a picture of Glacier "overrun" with coyotes.55 Scenes of predatory animals running riot in the park reflected Galen's overactive imagination rather than Glacier's natural canvas. The Superintendent regarded the predator issue with the utmost gravity, and planned to use biological warfare to exterminate the canine threat. In October 1913, Galen explained his plan to State Veterinarian W. J. Butler: "I am desirous of inoculating, with mange, some coyotes to turn loose here in the park, with the idea that I may eventually kill off all the coyotes in the park in this manner."56 Galen gained inspiration for his scheme from a program enacted by the Montana legislature. In 1905, state authorities authorized a campaign to rid the state of wolves and coyotes by infecting populations with sarcoptic mange.57 The state veterinarian had been instructed to obtain wild canines and infect them with mange-mites, before releasing them into the wild to spread the affliction to their compatriots. Animals with the condition gradually lost their hair and usually died of exposure during the winter. Perhaps the natural occurrence of mange in some canines made the program more acceptable, though its exterminatory intentions, not to mention the slow deaths of infested animals, suggested that authorities in Montana were not plagued by moral qualms. Precedents for Galen's plan could also be found across the North American continent. Since 1492, a multitude of spores, microbes and diseases had proved worthy, if inadvertent, biological allies in the European conquest of the Americas.58 While smallpox had decimated Native American communities, Galen envisaged using skin-mites to destroy lupine society. The insidious act of poisoning ungulate carcasses in order to kill unsuspecting canine diners had long been regarded as an efficient means of despatching predators, and an accomplished art to boot. The journey from chemical to biological method proved an easy transition.

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Galen's request met with enthusiastic support from Butler, who reported that the Board of Sheep Commissioners at Helena had mangy coyotes in captivity and would gladly give them to the park free of charge.59 Such benevolence was rooted in self-interest, after all, cattle and sheep farmers on Glacier's eastern borders had waged their own battle against predators since the 1870s. Two mangy coyotes were dutifully transported to Glacier in November 1913. Significantly, the referring telegram contained a guarded warning: "Place the coyotes as far away from habitation as you can."60 The cautionary advice reflected nascent concern over the appropriateness of the ongoing Montana scheme. A number of critics, largely within the federal government, articulated concerns over the communicability of mange to other species. Anxieties over possible threats to "food-producing animals," and therefore human health, were heightened after an outbreak of mange amongst cattle in 1908.61 Galen assured that "I would not commence the infection of coyotes ... if I might be jeopardizing the deer or elk in any way or any of the domestic animals owned by residents of the park," yet he continued to advocate the project. 62 However, officials in Washington refused to sanction the program, not because of untold effects, but due to doubts voiced by the Department of Agriculture over the efficacy of faunal biological warfare.63 Administrators axed the state program in 1916 because of its failure to secure substantial results. Evidently, nature had provided wolves and coyotes with counter-defences. The tight social unit of the pack, together with the territorial nature of lupine society, prevented infected animals from transmitting the disease to large numbers of canines. That wolves usually mated for life also limited the communicability of the disease, as both animals usually succumbed before they could pass on their affliction to others. Predators survived Galen's plan, but they remained far from secure in Glacier. Denied the chance to enlist the mange-mite in the park's wolf war, Galen turned instead to a time-honoured method of control, strychnine.64 After 1914, traps and poison were used throughout the preserve. Park records also listed carnivorous species killed by settlers during the mid-1910s, suggesting that authorities only cursorily applied the 1912 ban on permit hunting.65 Such measures nonetheless had limited effects on resident wolves due to the rarity of the species within the park. Official correspondence pertaining to control activities only occasionally referred to wolves and mountain lions. A report written in 1912 even claimed that no wolves existed "within the park limits."66 Scattered sightings were recorded in subsequent years. Between 1914

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and 1917, animals were observed east of the Continental Divide, in the northwest corner of the park known as the North Fork, and in the northern Belly River drainage. Tracks were discovered near the railroad at St. Mary, and two wolves were killed on Flattop Mountain in 1916 to 1917.67 Perhaps a few animals moved into Glacier from the wilder Canadian north, or sought some semblance of sanctuary from the persecutions of ranchers on the eastern plains. Alternatively, Glacier may have shielded a remnant population of lupines who learned to avoid baits, traps and guns. In 1915, Schultz commented on the tameness of grazing animals within Glacier National Park: "The bighorn and the Rocky Mountain goats no longer flee from parties traversing the mountain trails, and the deer and elk and moose have become almost as fearless."68 While ungulates ranged close to Glacier's visitors, it was in the interests of wolves to retain their fear of humans, and remain in the remote reaches of the preserve. Federal Allies and the 'Grey Peril' In 1918, Acting Secretary of the Interior Alexander Vogelsang raised concerns over the "alarming increase" of predators in Western national parks.69 The ingrained hatred that many humans felt for the wolf only required the sightings of a few animals to rekindle images of wanton depredations. It seemed that the wolf constituted an ever-present danger for officials anxious to protect resident ungulates and local livestock populations. The same year, Field Naturalist of the Bureau of Biological Survey (BBS), Vernon Bailey, fresh from his lupine witch-hunt in Yellowstone, journeyed to Glacier National Park to pass judgment on the predator situation there. Bailey concluded that the 'hell-hound' also had devilish designs on Glacier's game paradise: "As the valley's settle up, more vigorous hunting and trapping is likely to crowd the wolves back into the park at any time."70 Notably, Bailey was not concerned about existing populations, even admitting that, "in 1895 they seemed no more numerous than at the present time."71 In contrast to his estimation of Yellowstone as a 'breeding ground for wolves,' Bailey perceived that Glacier itself did not harbour a significant lupine population. Instead, the park appeared under siege from prairie refugees seeking amnesty and sustenance in the mountains. Judging by the large number of wolves that the BBS had already killed on Western lands, Bailey's portrayal of outlying areas abounding with wild canines represented a preaching tool rather than an accurate assessment of lupine populations.

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Bailey assured anxious federal employees that there was still time to secure Glacier's salvation: "[Wolf] abundance can be controlled and their presence in the park practically eliminated before many years."72 The National Park Service (NFS) proved easy converts to such a crusade. Director Horace Albright recommended that expert BBS hunters visit Glacier to "co-operate with the NFS in killing predatory animals."73 In August 1918, BBS Biological Assistant S. J. Goldman and three BBS hunters arrived in Glacier. Their presence inaugurated the first phase of what Superintendent Walter Payne referred to as the "campaign of extermination."74 BBS staff spent a month in the park, drilling hunters on how to fight Glacier's wolf war.75 By early September, locals "had been thoroughly instructed in the proper methods of hunting and trapping, and the work was turned over to them."76 Hunters Wise and Craig were subsequently stationed at Logging Creek and Anaconda Creek. The BBS crisis training yielded immediate results. In their first month, Wise and Craig killed twenty coyotes and one wolf during patrols of Glacier's western borderlands.77 As in Yellowstone, federal liaison between the NPS and the BBS brought increased persecution for Glacier's packs. The Western witch hunt against Canis lupus proved as infectious, and as deadly, as its human variety had been in Salem over two hundred years earlier. In his Annual Report for 1918, Superintendent Walter Payne conjured a vision of Glacier as embattled game haven, "surrounded by hundreds of miles of infested territory." Defeating Glacier's wolves appeared one small battle in a much larger campaign. Payne's report stressed the need for vigilance, as "predatory animals are more or less migratory, a small area is quickly restocked when work is relaxed." Officials conveyed an image of Glacier besieged by regular lupine reinforcements. Payne identified two 'infested' areas from which canine commanders mounted their park invasion. Of primary concern was the adjacent Blackfeet Reservation, which Payne deemed a "breeding ground for coyotes." North of the international border represented a further problem area, with wolves "ranging across from the Canadian side."78 Predatory animals—although natural residents of the region—were regarded as pests, their presence often compared to that of disease or plague. Such conceptions reflected the depth of societal antipathy towards carnivorous species at that time, as well as standing in stark contrast to superlatives used to describe burgeoning ungulate populations. Park Service anxieties about wolves had grown to epic proportions. The 'grey peril' represented a destructive force that threatened the fabric of Glacier's faunal society. Predatory animals were cast in the role of

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revolutionaries, whose seditious dogma was displayed in their hunting exercises. Payne perceived the problem to be of such magnitude that extermination would take "years, not months."79 Albright urged that every ranger should take up arms and "devote himself to the hunting of predatory animals ... [and] engage in the extermination of the carnivorous species."80 Officials believed that the gravity of the canine threat justified extreme measures. Albright surmised that the situation in Glacier had "reached the stage where it is almost more important that predatory animals be killed than that hunters be prevented from coming across the boundary." 81 Local hunters became mercenaries for hire, past misdemeanours put to one side in order to neutralize the lupine danger. In 1924, ex-BBS hunter Chance Beebe was employed to "go after the coyotes and wolves, when they are having their young" despite an earlier dispute with Glacier's authorities for illegally killing ungulates.82 Embellished visions of patrolling canine animals spawned fear. They also raised the spectre of material opportunity. All skins in Glacier were turned in to park authorities, and, with seemingly abundant predator populations, staff expected to net substantial returns from their parttime fur trade. Albright wrote to Payne in 1918 expressing the Service's interest in developing revenue for official coffers from the sale of pelts, and hence expected rangers to "hunt for predator species throughout the winter."83 Prejudice and dollar incentive proved a lethal combination. Both fears of lupine legions and projected profits from their deaths proved misplaced.84 Glacier's managers had suggested a park under siege, with a well-orchestrated eradication campaign amassing mammoth wolf fatalities. The actual tally of wolf victims only confirmed the scale of their delusions. Only fourteen wolves were shot or trapped between 1910 and 1920.85 The numbers and activities of real wolves both inside and outside Glacier's borders bore no resemblance to the images of marching platoons claiming territory for Cunts lupus. The idea that several wolves and a few dozen coyotes could wrest control of the park from humans presented a distinctly far-fetched, not to mention paranoid, portrayal of canine agency. Predators were attributed powers that seemed to rival the supernatural endowments of Blackfeet myth. However, the combined efforts of the NPS and BBS brought centuries of wolf presence within the Glacier region to an abrupt end. The few packs left in the northern reaches of the park were exterminated. A1926 circular to Glacier's ranger stations highlighted the "duty" of the ranger to kill "all the coyotes, wolves and mountain lions he can," but even the most vigilant of Glacier's "ranger-hunters" found it hard to find any of the creatures left

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to eliminate.86 After the 1920s, only limited and sporadic lupine activity occurred within the park. In 1930, wolves killed just one deer in Glacier compared to the thirty-five who lost their lives on railroad tracks.87 These figures demonstrated the pivotal role assumed by humans in the national park. Wolves had been displaced as top predators in Glacier's ecosystem. On first glance, compared to the hundred and thirty-six wolves killed by Yellowstone's rangers between 1914 and 1926, Glacier's crusade against Canis lupus appeared less bloodthirsty. However, available statistics only provided a partial record of wolf victims.88 Many killings went unreported, as many animals were shot or trapped in adjacent private lands or further afield in Canada. The smaller pile of carcasses in Glacier reflected differences in lupine numbers and terrestrial dynamics. Glacier's high mountainous environment had never supported as many wolves as the Yellowstone region, and populations were already scarce on the park's establishment. Ranger-hunters in Yellowstone were able to reach most areas of the preserve using the Grand Circular Loop Road, whereas Glacier's largely roadless northern district proved much harder to penetrate. Neither place, however, offered respite for Canis lupus. Staff in Glacier proved as committed to wolf extermination as their colleagues to the south. The anti-predator programs exercised by managers in the two national parks appeared remarkably similar. Images of lupine multitudes slaughtering elk and cattle in their wake pervaded administrative thinking. The mindset that conjured visions of a 'grey peril' fuelled a calculated, yet feverish, campaign for eradication. Carnage in Glacier, as in Yellowstone, was limited only by lupine scarcity. Park managers never faced large canine armies. Glacier's war against the wolf was more akin to the wearing down of a few guerrillas holed up in the mountains.

Changing Opinions in Glacier Do you think it desirable to have any predatory animal control methods continued in the Park, or would you favor nature retaining its own balance for a couple of years at least to test the situation out?89 ACTING DIRECTOR ARNO CAMMERER to Superintendent Chas Rraebel, November 6, 1924.

Dissenting opinion over the removal of predators from Glacier's grand design was expressed for the first time during the 1920s. Charles (Chas)

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Kraebel, Superintendent of Glacier between 1924 and 1937, articulated many of the sentiments that later became the basis for a revised policy towards predators. Kraebel confessed to Cammerer that he was "reluctant to authorize the complete extermination of any species whatever." He retained favouritism towards "desirable big game," but admitted that his predecessors had "usually greatly exaggerated" both predator numbers and their destructive ability. Instead, science represented the most reliable policy guide: "First, to maintain constant observation of the predatory animals of every description, and second, to exercise control measures only for limited periods when this seems to be necessary."90 Notably, Kraebel extended rarity value to predatory forms, which he believed should be protected in "great museums of primitive natural conditions."91 The mountain lion, while of no "public value," denoted an important scientific and biological 'resource.'92 Consequently, "special efforts to destroy" lions were terminated in Glacier in the mid-1920s.93 Despite his fresh insight, Kraebel espoused notable qualifications. Carnivore protection remained conditional, and Kraebel regarded abundant predatory species with disdain. Coyotes remained "destructive pests" against whom "constant warfare should be waged."94 Kraebel agreed with conservationist Aldo Leopold that "it would be undefensible, for instance, to let lions decimate an unproductive herd of rare animals such as the Yellowstone antelope or the Yellowstone sheep."95 While recognizing that "there is a danger in too much protection of our wild life against its natural enemies," the Superintendent advocated a "regulated control carefully adjusted to conditions."96 Significantly, Kraebel never commented on the place of wolves in Glacier's predator hierarchy. Transmitting Revised Policy In 1931, the Park Service redefined the status of predatory animals from unwanted 'pests' to 'special charges.' However, revised principles were not always implemented in Glacier. In February 1932, NFS Assistant Director Harold Bryant wrote to Superintendent Eivind Scoyen regarding bad publicity in a European newspaper about the trapping of a marten in Glacier. Bryant reminded Scoyen "that a resolution was passed by the superintendents a number of years ago providing against trapping operations."97 According to Director Cammerer, the revised Service policy proved "flexible enough to take care of local situations ... yet we hope it is a positive and constructive statement."98 General principles and local fears nonetheless proved hard to reconcile. Like their counterparts in

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Yellowstone, Glacier's staff retained ambiguous attitudes towards carnivores. The 1930s proved a transitional period for many. During his tenure in Glacier from 1931 until 1938, Superintendent Scoyen experienced such an evolution. The Superintendent's past predilection for control was well known to his superiors in Washington." During the winter of 1931-2, he authorized the control of coyotes that learned to stake out feed yards where deer congregated.100 Nevertheless, at the 1936 Superintendent's Conference, Scoyen made a stirring speech on the dangers of interfering in nature's complexity: Park records contain many instances where interference on our part with natural conditions has produced anything but desirable results... .For years we relentlessly hunted down certain species of predatory animals ... soon we were feeding our excess population of what would have been their prey.101

The paradox of killing coyotes and feeding overpopulated deer herds had become painfully evident. Past experience served to convince Scoyen of the beneficial role of predators. In 1937, he staunchly defended the revised policy. After the six-year moratorium on control, Scoyen confidently reported: "The total destruction of the species upon which they prey, which opponents of this policy prophesied would occur within a few years, seems as far away as ever."102 Scoyen may have ordered an end to all control activities in June 1932, but legacies of past years remained. One such item was Bailey's Wild Animals of Glacier National Park (1916). In a 1935 letter to the Director, the Superintendent expressed consternation that books (such as Bailey's) which advocated the extermination of predators remained available for purchase in Glacier. He suggested inserting an official disclaimer into offending publications—ironic considering the widespread acclaim Bailey had received for his conclusions in years past.103 H. E. Anthony, Curator of the American Museum of Natural History, applauded Scoyen's action, remarking that Bailey's tenets were not representative of "true conservation." Furthermore, he expressed regret over the "tacit endorsement of over-control still to be found in bulletins and articles distributed to the public in the park."104 The NFS proved increasingly conscious of its image and the need to educate public and employees alike. In the past, the agency's predator armoury had included guns, poison, and traps. During the 1930s, officials were stockpiling weapons of a different variety. Hoping that the pen would indeed prove

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mightier than the sword, officials were sent "ammunition" which justified the protection of carnivores in order to counter attacks from livestock interests.105 Articles by ecologists such as W. J. Hamilton's "The Value of Predatory Mammals" and Paul Errington's "What is the Meaning of Predation?" were distributed to Glacier's ranger force. These authors argued that habitat rather than predators played a greater role in determining ungulate numbers. Using an eloquent analogy, Errington described how predators merely lapped up the "leakage" from an "overflowing reservoir" of prey species.106 Wardens were instructed to read the materials and sign a booklet to that effect. In 1938, additional copies of an article by zoologist Albert Reese entitled "The Destruction of Vermin" were ordered.107 The popularity of Reese's text among park staff illustrated the change in official attitudes towards wolves. According to Reese, condemning carnivores as 'pests' was both self-interested and inaccurate: "The term 'vermin' is applied chiefly by sportsmen and dealers in sportsmen's supplies, to those animals, without regard to their beauty, interest or value, which are supposed to be harmful to the few species that the sportsmen wants to kill."108 Such comments furnished a damning indictment of past faunal prejudice in Glacier. Welcoming Wolves On July 15, 1933, Glacier's spectacular 'Going to the Sun Road' was finally opened to traffic following fourteen years of construction. The fifty-mile tarmac trail across the Continental Divide was extolled as a lofty symbol of human mastery over natural adversity and acclaimed as a pinnacle of engineering prowess. Road workers had braved avalanches and rock falls to forge the route. Elsewhere in Glacier, managers had constructed their own park scene. The original landscape blueprints had excluded wolves. However, by the time the highway opened, ideas of a 'complete' preserve had been somewhat redefined. Canis lupushad become an important symbol of Glacier's role as wildlife sanctuary. According to wildlife census records of the early 1930s, there were no wolves left in Glacier to benefit from the change in Park Service attitudes.109 However, as the decade progressed, wild lupines were sighted again in Glacier National Park. In 1934, Chief Ranger Best reported that, "several of the road crew saw four big timber wolves watching some mule deer near the bridge at the foot of Upper St. Mary Lake." Apparently "the men stopped their truck for several minutes to watch the wolves." Perhaps cognizant of

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the non-threatening nature of staff employees, the wolves "paid no attention to either the car or its occupants."110 The encounter provoked excitement at Park Headquarters and was recounted in detail for the Superintendent's April Report. Curiosity about Glacier's wolves stretched far beyond park boundaries. The newly formed Wildlife Division of the National Park Service expressed particular enthusiasm for Glacier's predators. In correspondence with the Superintendent, Ben Thompson urged that, "any information relative to wolves is of interest to us, particularly since the wolf is so nearly gone."111 The following year, the reappearance of wolves on the western slopes prompted a vivacious response from park staff. "I think we can make a definite statement now that a wolf is ranging in Glacier National Park and adjacent areas at the north end of the North Fork," the Superintendent relayed with pride. Scoyen detailed multiple sightings of a single animal in the Kishnehn region. In January 1934, a wolf was observed by dude rancher Matt Brill and by a park ranger at Polebridge. A few months later, a telephone engineer spotted another lupine animal in the same region.112 Correspondence between biologists and staff resonated with excitement at the prospect of renewed lupine presence in the North Fork. Dimensions of a paw print were sent to H. Anthony at the American Museum of Natural History, Joseph Grinnell at the Museum of Vertebrate Biology, and the Superintendent of Mount McKinley National Park for verification. All parties confirmed that the 3.25 by 4.5-inch tracks were indeed left by Canis lupus. George Wright wrote to Glacier's authorities bearing the good news in May 1935: "We can consider ourselves fortunate indeed, if this important predator does again establish itself in Glacier National Park."113

The Rise and Fall of Wolf Fortunes in Glacier Destructive as the animal may be under some circumstances,

I hope that it will be possible to keep on a few of them in the national parks.114114

H.E.ANTHONY (1935)

Wolves appeared to take advantage of the Park Service's policy of detente, ranging in the park during the late 1930s and 1940s. Most animals were observed using travel routes along Glacier's western slopes. Sightings, tracks and kills were seen in the North Fork of the Flathead

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WOLF MOUNTAINS River by rangers, locals and railwaymen.115 The North Fork, with its remote forests and plentiful grazing animals, provided an ideal environment for returning lupines. In 1943-4, census records estimated a population of twelve animals.116 Wolves occasionally made forays into adjoining territory. In 1947, a warden found the remains of a deer kill on the western edge of Lake Macdonald.117 By 1948, an estimated sixteen to nineteen wolves lived in the northwest of Glacier.118 However, not everyone around the park welcomed the wolPs return. Animals seeking a life in Glacier trod arduous trails. Many hazards lurked across invisible boundaries. The regional dimension remained an important factor in the fate of Glacier's packs. While their predecessors had seen the sanctity of the national park under threat from surrounding areas 'infested' with predators, park managers now faced the difficulty of protecting Glacier's wolves from outside forces. As soon as wolf populations began to rebound, locals responded with cries of indignation. North Fork resident Madge Cooper recalled an encounter with wolves in a 1948 letter to Superintendent Emmert: About 10:30am, Thursday February 5th a pack of about twelve of these wolves paused in the treeless slot of a high knowl just across the river from our ranch long enough to hurl barks and howls of defiance across the ranch to a pack of ciouties [ sic] out on the highway whose stattis [sic] was a close second to the voice of the wolves.

Cooper regarded her new lupine neighbours as akin to an invading army of illegal immigrants, "large black northern Canadian wolves" who were "crossing the International Boundaryline and entering the U.S.A." Ranch hands had apparently tried to do their 'patriotic duty' but had been unable to "get a shot" at the animals. Cooper expressed her desire for a bounty on the "huge gray wolves" who were so "dangerous ... to meet up with" that "people just don't go about on foot any more without guns and knives on them." Cooper last saw the pack "vanishing to the South-east and apparently entering Glacier National Park."119 Park officials did not share Cooper's paranoia. The Acting Superintendent firmly replied, "Glacier National Park would take no action on wolves so long as only an occasional animal is in evidence and so long as they did not endanger the existence of any other species of animal in the park."120 Far from being man-eaters, the few wolves residing in the preserve had no noticeable impact on ungulate numbers. Cooper did, however, receive a more understanding response from C. F. Kearns,

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Inspector of the British Columbia Game Department. Kearns agreed that her concerns were legitimate and sympathized with the treatment she received from Glacier's officials. He commiserated that his department experienced similar problems with the Canadian Parks Service, who "have a policy of not bothering with the predators at all. They claim they need a certain number of them to balance their game population." Kearns added that his agency issued a rejoinder by "continually hunting cougars, etc. just outside of our national parks."121 Corresponding conflicts were brewing south of the border between the NFS and the Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). In response to fears expressed by vocal locals, the USFWS began placing 'Compound 1080' poison bait stations along the North Fork in 1948. Developed during World War II, the extremely toxic 'Compound 1080' was well suited for use in the long-standing war against lupine enemies in the West. Three out of four poison stations were placed within half a mile of the western border of Glacier National Park. Whereas the NPS had perceived that Copper was indeed 'crying wolf,' her distress call received an altogether different reception from the Fish and Wildlife Service, who placed a 1080 set "in the area where a pack of twelve to fifteen wolves had been seen in 1948. "122 Despite the proximity of the baits, Glacier's authorities were not consulted. Park Service Regional Director Lawrence Merriam wrote to his superiors in February 1949 asking for the matter to be taken up with the USFWS. He raised objections to the project based on concerns for "the safety of the few wolves that winter in the western part of the park."123 Whereas federal agencies had joined forces against Glacier's predators in 1918, now the NPS stood on the side of the wolf. While earlier managers had routinely accepted Bailey's portrayal of wolves as habitual stock killers, park staff in the 1940s doubted such conclusions. Merriam debunked claims of excessive predation: "due to the abundance of deer in this portion of Glacier, it is hardly believable that park carnivores are preying on domestic stock."124 Despite the vociferous opposition of both the NPS and the Forest Service, the poisoning campaign operated for three winters. Wolves encountered a barrage of deadly threats as soon as they ranged outside Glacier Park. As well as poison baits, roving animals faced bullets and traps from antagonistic settlers. At least thirteen wolves were shot or trapped in the North Fork between 1948 and 1956.125 In one incident at the McFarland Ranch on May 26,1950, a pack was observed worrying a calf. A group of ranch hands tried to scare the animals away using a jeep, but failed. Consequently, McFarland called the Polebridge Ranger

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Station. Ranger Stimson drove to the ranch, and, after unsuccessful attempts to drive the wolves away he shot the pack leader, a large black female wolf. Although appearing to confirm local worries over stockkilling wolves, the McFarland incident instead reflected the hardships faced by lupines. When the female wolf was examined, she was found to be malnourished, mangy and poisoned. Her compatriots were despatched by government-paid trappers the following day.126 The head of the McFarland wolf may have been enshrined for posterity at Glacier Park Headquarters, but the continued presence of live wolves in the park proved less secure. An estimated eight wolves roamed in Glacier during the early 1950s.127 The Mammals of Glacier National Park (1955) described the region as a "hold-out" for remaining lupines in the 'Lower 48,' but there was a limit to powers of canine resilience. By 1957, wolf presence was minimal in Glacier.128 From the late 1950s until the early 1970s, wolf reports in the preserve were infrequent and transitory. Occasional sightings of lone wolves or pairs were reported, but no pack activity or breeding was documented. A few animals travelled through the North Fork using streams and old trails. They avoided well-trodden paths and roads that smelled of human danger. Judicious reasons existed for lupine caution. Research conducted by Glacier naturalist Francis Singer revealed that forty-three percent of people who saw wolves in the North Fork between 1910 and 1975 attempted to kill them.129 Considering that three-quarters of Singer's study area lay within national park boundaries, these figures betrayed consistently hostile intentions towards Canis lupus. One of the few canines accepted in the region was 'Jimmy,' a semi-tame coyote who frequently resided near the Many Glacier Hotel in the early 1950s, a wise choice given the unfriendly welcome to coyotes elsewhere in the state.130

Wolves Resettle in Glacier He told me that the spirits of all the dead wolves had traveled to some far-off mountains. There they would wait until the time was right to return and walk again on the earth.131 JOSEPH MARSHALL, Lakota (1995)

Joseph Marshall recalled that he had first heard the story of the Wolf Spirits from his grandfather, Isaac Bear Looks Behind, in the early 1950s.

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At that time, wolves had indeed returned to Glacier in small numbers from mountain retreats in Canada, but people were not ready to accept them. However, the 1970s seemed to offer a safer time for wolves to revisit Glacier. The decade brought federal and state endangered species status, prompting research and public interest in Glacier's wolves just as it had done in Yellowstone. In 1972, the Wolf Ecology Project (WEP) was established at the University of Montana to monitor canine activity in northern Montana. Wolf sightings in Glacier underwent a marked increase in the mid1970s, indicating that roving lupines from Canada had indeed decided to frequent the region.132 Relaxation in control measures in Alberta and British Columbia during the 1960s made the southerly trip less dangerous. The rise in reported sightings further indicated changing human attitudes. As researcher Mark Kaley noted: "people are more aware of the plight of the wolf and are therefore reporting observations ... due to the popularity of the wolf issue people are more likely to label an unidentified animal as a 'wolf.'"133 In 1974, naturalist Francis Singer concluded that Glacier harboured a resident population of between five and ten wolves.134 Staff in Glacier discussed how to protect and nurture the nascent lupine population in the preserve. In contrast to the interventionist imperatives of previous years, the Park Service adopted a policy based on information gathering. Authorities supported and assisted in the monitoring work of the WEP. Officials stressed the protective purposes of the national park, where wolves were "afforded the same degree of protection as other wildlife."135 Glacier was promoted as a canine refuge and a 'focal point' of recovery plans for Montana. The relative security of the park supplied vital sanctuary for returning wolves. Recolonizing animals were sustained by an abundance of prey species, while the proximity of the preserve to Canada (the international boundary comprised the northern border of the preserve) made it an ideal place to nurture wolves dispersing from packs further north. The advantages afforded by park life nonetheless proved insufficient. While wolves spent time in Glacier during the spring and fall, they never became a resident population. Animals used the area primarily as a travel corridor, ranging through the park to reach other locations. Given such movements, human activities outside Glacier's boundaries proved crucial to wolf survival. Aware that people presented the greatest risk to wild canines in the region, park officials implored hunters not to shoot wolves and voiced concern about habitat disturbance from oil, coal and gas development nearby.136

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In 1975, Supervisory Park Biologist Cliff Martinka issued a "Plan to Protect and Preserve Northern Rocky Mountain Wolves in Glacier National Park." His proposal had two objectives, "the protection and preservation of the existing population of wolves" and the "restoration of a more natural and secure population of wolves in the park." Martinka connected the lupine issue with broader park policies. The biologist believed that an active management project was vital if wolves were to resettle the North Fork. Decades of fire suppression policy had degraded habitat that historically supported prey species such as moose and beaver. In order to re-establish a healthy ecosystem where the wolf could thrive, Martinka pointed out that natural fire regimes and mountain caribou both had to be restored to Glacier.137 The absence of Canis lupus represented just one example of how past management actions had altered the park environment. The eradication of predators from the U.S. preserves proved a poignant symbol of the destructive role humans played by circumscribing ecological processes. The return of the wolf again raised questions over the role of NPS stewardship. In areas supposed to represent natural conditions, should managers refrain from interference or act to reverse the 'unnatural' legacies of misguided policymakers? Dilemmas of apposite intervention in the North Fork revealed the pitfalls faced by natural resource managers in defining the 'naturalness' of park landscapes. Martinka called for the Glacier administration to "develop a contingency plan to reintroduce wolves into their native habitats should protective efforts fail."138 Lupine fortunes throughout the 1970s confirmed Martinka's fears. Results published by the WEP in 1978 estimated that Glacier only supported five to eight wolves.139 Breeding occurred in 1972, 1974 and 1975, but no sustainable packs emerged. Glacier Park remained the preserve of solitary lupines. The 1979 Park Management Plan concluded that: "it is also probable that there are no resident groups within the park."140 Noting the "little chance for natural recovery," Martinka called for immediate reintroduction plans.141 Glacier's management expressed notable reservations. Superintendent Philip Iversen advised that authorities should wait for the park to be repopulated naturally by dispersing Canadian wolves. A reintroduction programme would be "costly and time consuming," no working plan existed to deal with livestock conflicts, and public support remained minimal. Iversen noted that "it is very difficult to capture an entire, functional hunting and social pack of wolves, and perhaps even harder to keep them where you set them out."142 Glacier's 1980 Management

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Plan reiterated that reintroduction would prove too controversial amongst local landowners, required extensive research and was likely to result in "at least some" wolf deaths.143 That Martinka's project was seen as an unrealistic enterprise testified to the unprecedented nature of the subsequent Yellowstone program. It further highlighted the mammoth bureaucratic, financial, and public barriers that the Yellowstone scheme had to surmount in order to succeed. Restoration by Lupine Agency In 1979, the Wolf Ecology Project began placing radio collars on individual wolves in order to track their movements. Using radiotelemetry, the WEP hoped to learn more about the ecology of the small and secretive lupine population that used the area. Not only unprecedented in the Glacier region, it was also the first time a wolf radio-tracking program had been implemented west of the Mississippi. During April 1979, researcher Joe Smith trapped and radio-collared a female wolf in the North Fork, about ten miles north of Glacier National Park. The lone female, tagged Wolf#114, was more commonly referred to as Kishinena. According to Kootenay legend, Kishnehn was an orphan adopted by the tribe who later turned his back on them. 'Kishnehn Creek' commemorated the area where he was hunted down and killed by the Kootenay. Kishinena earned her title after being captured by wolf researchers in the same streamlet, although her fate proved somewhat happier than that of her namesake. Translated from the Native American, the name meant 'outcast,' and wolf Kishinena was also alone, a disperser from her pack living further north near Banff National Park.144 She ranged a territory thirty miles in length. Most of her time was spent in British Columbia, predominantly travelling along valley bottoms, although she did make one trip into Glacier National Park.145 Based at an abandoned homestead settlement named 'Moose City' deep in the North Fork, wolf biologist Diane Boyd traced Kishinena's movements. After Wolf#114's radio collar failed in June 1980, tracks indicated that she remained within the same region. Diane Boyd did the same; doing odd jobs, fire-watching and selling sketches when funding for the WEP expired in 1981. After three years of research by the WEP, Kishinena remained the only wolf using the Glacier area. Boyd's persistence was rewarded. The following year, a large, black, three-toed male wolf was spotted in the region, and, in March 1982, ranger Jerry De Santo found tracks of a pair of wolves within Glacier

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National Park. One wolf left a three-toed paw print, and the other animal was Kishinena. The trail left by the wolves led north into Canada. Hopes that the pair would breed were answered in June 1982, when a den was discovered near the international border in British Columbia. Its proximity to Glacier was significant; the den was only ten kilometres north of the park's boundary (previously Glacier's closest wolf den site had been in Alberta, approximately one hundred kilometres further away). Unfortunately, on June 18,1982, the three-toed male was caught in a grizzly snare twelve kilometres north of Glacier. He subsequently died from his injuries, leaving Kishinena to raise their seven pups alone. Once the pups were mature, the pack moved south into the border area and used Glacier National Park for part of the year.146 With abundant prey, and no competing wolves, the preserve denoted prime dispersal territory. Biologists labelled Kishinena and her pups the 'Magic Pack' after their ability to vanish from one location, only to miraculously appear elsewhere. They were special for another reason. As WEP coordinator Robert Ream surmised, "at no time in recent history has the potential for wolf recovery in the Northern Rocky Mountains been greater."147 The history of the Magic Pack over the next two years illustrated the dynamic nature of wolf society. The canine reclamation of Glacier was shaped by the personalities of individual animals. Wolf#401, or Sage, was the first pup to leave the Magic Pack and explore the region on his own. The first to 'adopt U.S. citizenship,' Sage spent most of his time south of the international border.148 However, his movements were by no means confined to one area. During one month in 1985, Sage travelled from the Whitefish Range to the west of Glacier, through the park to Logan Pass, across the Continental Divide, north to Waterton Lakes, and on to the headwaters of the North Fork.149 His range spanned two thousand square miles, leading the local Hungry Horse News to romanticize Sage as "a wanderer, and a loner" in a 1986 full-page article devoted to the canine traveller.150 Sage became something of a lupine celebrity. "He's kind of a hero-wolf... and quite a character, to be real anthropomorphic," enthused Diane Boyd.151 As Sage toured the region, his siblings from the original Magic Pack also moved into new territory. In May 1985, the alpha female, Wolf#8550, or Phyllis, was radio-collared along with three pups found at her den site. After spending the summer in British Columbia, the thirteen-strong pack shifted range southwards following the illegal shooting of one of the adult wolves. The members of the Magic Pack were unaware of the multitude of human jurisdictions and wildlife laws

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that overlay their territory, but adjusted their movements according to human activity. Increased logging in the packs' northern territory was an important influence on their movement south. The national park was undoubtedly a safer place to use as home range. In November 1985, the group established a new territory that stretched forty kilometres into Glacier, based around Camas Creek in the North Fork. Although four wolves disappeared after travelling north in March 1986, the remaining members of the pack stayed in Glacier. The following month, Phyllis denned in a spruce forest off Sullivan's Meadow. The five pups born in the "forested knoll" represented the first documented wolf litter to be born in the continental United States in fifty years.152 In 1975, nature writer Douglas Chadwick had described the North Fork as "a land of encircling mountains, dark spruce-meadow forests, and soft long snows. It's the sort of place that makes you think of wolves."153 A decade later, the Magic Pack discovered their affinity with the North Fork of the Flathead River, the meandering rivuline route that the Kootenay had named Wolftail River. While the wolves from the Magic Pack were making their home in Glacier, Sage also decided that the region was a good place to raise pups. The lament of the Hungry Horse News that "if there is one thing missing from Sage's life, it is a mate" had a happy ending.154 Sage settled down with a black female wolf, denning just north of the park in the Wigwam drainage. Biologists named the new lupine family the Wigwam Pack. Official and Public Responses The Park Service welcomed the return of the wolf. Canis lupus was the only native species that remained absent from the fauna! landscape of Glacier. The lack of wolves had exposed a shortcoming in the Park Service's seventy-year record of protecting wildlife. The presence of a den in Glacier was lauded as an event of national and international importance. Superintendent H. Gilbert Lusk termed it "one of the more significant ecological events to occur during recent decades in Glacier national park."155 To Martinka, the return of the wild canines signified a historic landmark that eclipsed all other events: "In reviewing the history of the park I think this is the biggest thing that has happened here since the creation of the park itself."156 The biologist gave all credit to the wolves, recalling how he "didn't think Mother Nature could handle it."157 After the birth of pups in the park, Glacier assumed a "leadership role" in statewide wolf recovery efforts. 'Wolves' leapt from the low

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WOLF MOUNTAINS twenties to number six in management plan priority ratings.158 While such a shift reflected the new significance of lupine matters for park authorities, official response proved somewhat restrained in practice. Policy remained based around gathering information, together with protecting the wolves from human disruption. Administrators imposed closures on den areas, prohibiting access to nearby trails and dirt tracks, to ensure that wolves were not disturbed. The scale of Yellowstone's comprehensive management and monitoring program nonetheless dwarfed Glacier's reaction to returning wolves. The extensive resources in Yellowstone allocated to wolf work reflected the high human involvement in facilitating lupine recovery in northwest Wyoming. Transplant was artificial and therefore necessitated extensive planning. Schematics for the study and supervision of reintroduced packs had been designed as part of the restoration program. In contrast, authorities in Glacier witnessed a natural repopularion. The response from park staff appeared reactive and largely unplanned. Just one year before the den was discovered, Martinka questioned the "somewhat obscure priority assigned to wolf research and management."159 During the lupine recolonization, Glacier's management advocated 'leaving nature to it,' adopting the principle that, while the pack deserved protection, wolves should be allowed to shape their own future. Non-interventionist tenets, together with limitations on funding, generally left the lupines to themselves. In 1986, the WEP was granted a permit to trap and radio collar wolves within Glacier. Superintendent Lusk regarded this as an essential way of obtaining information on the fledgling populations in order to manage them effectively.160 Nevertheless, some staff harboured reservations about this level of intrusion. Although the leghold trap was employed for the pursuit of greater knowledge, it also appeared a reminder of past interventions in Glacier. Worries were articulated over the pursuit of science for its own sake rather than for the animal's welfare. Jerry De Santo was quoted in the local press complaining that, "I think nowadays, biologists think they can't get anything done on a wild animal unless they use radio-telemetry. I can't believe that's true... .Undoubtedly you're going to find out more about the wolves but at what expense?"161 In an article for the Hungry Horse News^ Frank Evans discussed the efforts of wolf researchers in Glacier, or, in his words, the three people on the government's payroll observing one "critter" using "research jewellry (a radio collar)." While Evans belittled both biologists, and the 'critters' they studied, he also suggested that wolves deserved some

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seclusion: "We humans resent the invasion of our privacy but seemingly won't be satisfied until we can electronically and surreptitiously record the heartbeat, pulse rate, stomach rumblings and defecations of every creature that breathes."162 To Evans, humans and wolves both had a right to freedom from outside interference. As well as questioning the proper role of wildlife research, concerns over intrusion inferred deeper contentions over the power of knowledge as a tool to judge and control individual expression. However, the theme of intrusion was more often applied in anthropocentric terms. Letters to the press concentrated on restrictions upon human lives and access rather than espousing the cause of lupine rights. Evans regarded both wolf and Westerner as victim, but other commentators offered the image of'federal agents in wolves clothing.' Kalispell's Daily Inter Lake expressed ambiguous sentiments over Glacier's wolves. The paper declared: "No-one is passing out cigars yet, but a wolf appears to have given birth in Glacier National Park, the first there in fifty years." While "understandable," the editorial emphasized the "vaguely disturbing" actions of park authorities in closing the Kintla road. Officials closed the track in order to prevent disturbance at the nearby den site, thereby delaying the fishing season at Kintla Lake. Even the Park Service's tentative protection of their new lupine charges prompted protests from some locals. Returning wolves found themselves in the midst of a human battle over federal-state power in the West. To the Inter Lake, the closure represented "the ongoing conflict over the use of public resources."163 Employing a military analogy, the paper blamed the wolves for the situation in Glacier, describing how they had "forced" the road closures and were now enforcing a "blockade."164 The wolf's return had also given a greater enemy, the U.S. government, "another reason ... to exclude individuals" from using public land.165 While the NPS viewed wolf restoration as a rightful rectification of the policy decisions of the early 1900s, the Inter Lake harked back in clamouring for the destruction of Cams lupus. Land had been placed off limits for a "resource" which was "on the public enemies list just seventy-six years ago when Glacier became a national park."166 A letter printed in the Hungry Horse News expressed similar sentiments: "Get this wolf closure nonsense stopped dead."167 Wolves had denned in the park for the first time in half a century or more, but some locals thought it more of a watershed that "Glacier officially entered a new era last week with its first wolf-caused closure."168

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While researcher Mike Fairchild applauded the way in which "old attitudes are dying as people learn more about the predator," traditional prejudice continued to colour popular perceptions of wolves in Glacier.169 Public concerns were primarily raised over lupine eating habits. Longstanding fears were revitalized as opinions clashed over the relationship between wolves and ungulates in the North Fork. Dale Bryant wrote to the Missoulian asking, "why do these anti-hunting and anti-gun crackpots and nuts want to bring wolves back? It took us years to get rid of them. That is why we have more wild game today."170 North Fork neighbours Lee Downes and Tom Ladenburg falsely claimed that the Magic Pack had caused a seventy-five percent decline in game by mid-1986.171 Anxieties also resurfaced about attacks on livestock. Kenneth Turner pondered: "How can it be right to sentence the thousands of fawns, calves, lambs, colts and even adult creatures to a horrible death of being torn apart by wolves just to satisfy the misguided whims of so-called nature lovers?"172 Turner evidently overlooked the customary fate of farm animals and game at the hands of ranchers and hunters. Rancher Tom Mader warned that wolves will "be all over," eating their victims "alive." Mader imagined that stockmen faced the death of their industry at the jaws of returning wolves.173 For him, the return of the wolf did not represent progress, but reneged on the West's proud history. Bertha Pilgeram similarly viewed the wolf's return with a sense of myth and history, recalling the "blood-red snow of a wolf attack" which she had witnessed on the way to school seventy years earlier. She continued to have nightmares about wolves.174 Pilgeram's 'wolf-attack' had been on a cow, but others predicted the death of dogs, cats and even children at the 'vicious fangs' of Cctnis lupus.175 Such views reflected the traditions of the 'Old West,' and expressed beliefs that could easily have been found in the pages of local papers in the 1880s. A century later, an eighty-pound canine still proved inseparable from the larger, and more ferocious, beast of human imagination. Anti-wolf sentiments prompted lively debate in the letter pages of the local press. Many wrote in to exonerate Canis lupus. Locals countered Pilgeram's portrayal by presenting wolves as victims, and humans as profligate destroyers. Frank Lawless asserted: "Man is the greatest predator on earth ... the grizzly bear and wolves were here eons before man came along."176 Others couched lupine pursuits in a positive light, stressing how wolves would restore Glacier's ecological balance. Ronda James reflected how predators kept "the deer, elk and moose population strong and disease free," while hunter Dick Garvey remarked that he

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would "just as soon see a wolf get my deer than a truck or a car."177 Rebuking notions of a region teeming with murderous canines, Ralph Waldt issued a timely reminder that "one growing pack is no legitimate cause for concern."178 Despite the vocal rantings of a few frantic individuals, the reappearance of wolves in the North Fork generally passed without major controversy. John Fredericks of the North Fork Preservation Society noted that there was a feeling of tolerance towards the new arrivals.179 Montana magazine remarked that Glacier's new lupine celebrities had "more magazine covers than Cindy Crawford," although the natural repopulation of Glacier never attracted the same fame as the Yellowstone restoration.180 The gradual movement of wolves into the area was a natural process; there was no 'program' to block or people to blame. Some claimed that Glacier was never 'wolf country,' but most people greeted their lupine neighbours with curiosity. Human acceptance of Glacier's canine citizens nevertheless featured notable caveats. At a meeting of North Fork residents in 1986, one resident summed up the prevalent view: "I think the majority of people accept wolves' presence here, as long as there are no major problems with pets or livestock, and as long as populations of deer don't drop down."181 While individuals were generally supportive of wolf recovery, as soon as possible restrictions on human access or hunting rights were raised then support dropped dramatically.182 Attitudes towards lupine restoration also varied geographically. There had been a gradual acknowledgment over past decades among interested parties that wolves deserved to exist in national parks. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, wolves from surrounding areas were relocated to Glacier, and one individual from Tennessee released his pet canines in the preserve.183 Even Bob Gilbert of the Montana Woolgrowers Association "had no objection to wolves being reintroduced into the national parks."184 Glacier had been reappraised as a suitable lupine landscape. However, locals were less prepared to make allowances for roving canines in ranching country. What was deemed acceptable in Glacier was not necessarily the case elsewhere. Such distinctions posed problems for packs in the northern Rockies. Glacier itself was not large enough to support a sustainable lupine population, only the North Fork was classified as top priority habitat for recovery.185 The survival of Glacier's wolves depended on the ability of the surrounding human community to accept their presence outside park boundaries as well as inside them.

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Wolf Battles in Glacier Prior to the completion of Going to the Sun Highway in 1933, travel between the east and west sides of Glacier National Park proved an arduous, and at times, impossible task. The Rocky Mountains represented a formidable barrier slicing the park down the middle. Even with the construction of numerous trails and a tarmac road across the Continental Divide, heavy winter snowfalls cut off the eastern and western areas from each other. Rocky Mountain topography ensured that the preserve appeared very much two-sided. While wolves did not need tarmac roads to cross the mountains, their fortunes in the park proved distinctly different either side of the Divide. Much of Glacier National Park's wolf history was confined to its remote northwest corner, an isolated section of the preserve only accessible by a gravel road. The North Fork supported an abundance of wild prey. Across park boundaries, the area was home to only a small number of humans and even fewer cattle. Relative lack of conflict with human priorities allowed the wolf to return to the North Fork. Old and new residents had space, and time, to learn to coexist. However, it was a different story in the East. Occasional sightings of wolves were reported in the northeast of Glacier during the 1970s, from St. Mary Lake north to Waterton Lakes National Park. In autumn 1985, two WEP students working in the Lewis and Clark National Forest discovered tracks in the Badger-TwoMedicine area.186 By 1987, a pack of seven wolves ranged on Glacier's eastern slopes. However, when they expanded their range eastwards, the wolves found themselves in 'livestock country.' In May 1987, two wolves were apprehended killing a cow on the Blackfeet Reservation near St. Mary. During the next few months, the members of the pack were subjected to several trapping operations and relocations. After further depredations, federal Animal Damage Control (ADC) agents brought in helicopters in order to locate the wolves, with the aim of capturing or killing the adults and placing the pups in captivity. The ADC's handling of the situation resulted in the death of four animals and the capture of two others.187 Ranchers were satisfied that the offending canines had been 'removed,' but the brutal manoeuvres of ADC officials prompted public outrage. One New York schoolteacher wrote how her pupils had "read with dismay the demise of the pack that made their home with the Blackfoot Indians in their reservation. We feel that if anyone can understand the plight of a hunted species the

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Indians, with their history can."188 Human priorities on lands east of Glacier precluded the wolf from returning to past haunts. As they reclaimed terrain on Glacier's western slopes, wolf packs underwent their own battles, both with humans and with each other. In late 1986, one female wolf who had been radio-collared as a pup (Wolf#8551) left the Magic Pack and travelled alone. She was not located until the following July, when authorities in British Columbia reported that she had been killed by a landowner near the Peace River. Her remarkable eight-hundred-and-forty-kilometre journey had been ended, in the words of the Edmonton Journal, "with a bullet."189 The fate of Wolf#8551 illustrated the difficulties faced by Glacier's wolves. Once roaming lupines traversed the international boundary, residents of Alberta and British Columbia were allowed to shoot them without question. Wolf society in the North Fork also experienced changes. During 1987, social disruption within the Magic Pack resulted in the fragmentation of the group. In January, Phyllis, who had made history by denning in Glacier the previous year, was displaced as alpha female. She left the pack and travelled alone for three months. Later that year, other wolves deserted the Magic Pack and journeyed north. Following familiar scents, they reunited with Phyllis to form the Sage Creek Pack. Meanwhile, the remnant members of the Magic Pack ranged further south and were renamed the Camas Pack. The original Magic Pack had split into two distinct wolf groups, who divided territory in Glacier between them. The 1987 WEP Annual Report concluded that it would be interesting to see how the two packs interacted with one another.190 However, human schemes denied the Camas and the Sage Creek packs any opportunity of interaction. During September 1987, in response to fears over declining ungulate numbers, the British Columbia Wildlife Department embarked on a controversial wolf hunt in the North Fork. The decision to conduct a hunt represented an abrupt break from the policy of the previous twenty years. Since the 1960s, relaxation in provincial control programs had facilitated the return of the wolf to Glacier. The renewal of the hunt threatened to kill off wolf recovery in the western United States altogether. The WEP and the NPS managed to persuade Canadian officials to end the hunt in October 1987 rather than the following February, but Glacier's lupines were still severely affected. The entire Sage Creek Pack was decimated; only one adult and four pups remained, and a member of the Wigwam Pack was also killed.191 Although Glacier's existing wolves increased their numbers by

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forty-seven percent in 1988, the hunt had ruthlessly curtailed wolf manoeuvres.192 Following the demise of the Sage Creek Pack, the Camas Pack moved north, leaving Montana "with little more than reported sightings of several lone wolves."193 Opponents of the hunt mobilized to defend the few wolves in the Glacier region by upholding lupine rights to live in the North Fork. The planned hunt and subsequent killing of the Sage Creek Pack prompted six thousand letters of protest to the British Columbia Government.194 Richard Spotts argued that the plan betrayed a "callous and cavalier attitude to wildlife management."195 The decision to conduct another wolf-cull in the Wigwam drainage in 1988 prompted further criticism, especially after another two members of the Wigwam Pack were killed. According to Tim Nardini, "B.C. was slapping every American in the face by encouraging the killing of these wolves."196 In 1948, Madge Cooper had called for the killing of wild canines migrating south from Canada. Forty years later, some U.S. citizens not only granted them green cards but campaigned for their rights north of the border. The hunts in British Columbia illustrated the pitfalls of species protection across human boundaries. Wolves ranged across the international border and as they travelled into their northern territory they ceased to be endangered species and became 'hunted pests.' Acting on the influence of hunting groups, authorities in British Columbia interpreted their role as providing stock for humans. Differing priorities determined which species were valued and which remained 'worthless.' Rarity had conferred some scarcity value on wolves in the United States, but, in Canada, where they existed in number, the species still experienced habitual persecution. Just as the sanctuary offered by Glacier National Park was not large enough to protect returning wolves, the status conferred by the U.S. Endangered Species Act proved similarly inadequate. Considering the reasons for the wolf's absence from the continental United States, authorities expressed reluctance to order Canadians around. Wolf recovery in the U.S.A. proved to be at the mercy of events further north. The coordinator of the British Columbia hunts, Ray De Marchi, attempted to justify the wolf cull because his agency had "lost part of our control in these two areas [North Fork and Wigwam]."197 United States wildlife agencies and conservationists, not to mention the wolves themselves, had lost a lot more. Wolves survived in Glacier despite these trials. By 1989, forty-seven canines from three packs used the region.198 Nevertheless, their survival was continuously tested. Human persecution, inter-pack rivalry and

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natural forces produced a changeable, and at times tragic experience for Glacier's packs. After travelling into Canada, the Camas Pack wisely moved back into the safety of the park during 1989. Although the wolves denned in Glacier, all of their litter died, possibly from canine parvovirus or distemper. In the Old Man and the Wolves fable, 'Long Body' had been laid to rest by his companions, and the Camas Pack did the same. Researchers discovered the dead pups buried in shallow graves near the den.199 Such actions had never been documented in wolf society, or, indeed, outside of human society. The burial of the pups indicated the strong emotional bonds within the pack and suggested that the animal community proved more similar to our own than many would credit. All three packs faced additional hardships in the next few years. The Wigwam Pack, which ranged mostly in Canada, mysteriously disappeared during 1989, probably poisoned or killed north of the border.200 The Camas Pack split into two separate groups after the alpha female and her daughter both had litters in the same season.201 A third pack, the Headwaters, which used the North Camas area, was virtually wiped out by a combination offerees. Five animals were illegally poisoned in Alberta in August 1991, while a sixth pack member was killed in an avalanche, and three others disappeared. Only one adult female remained to raise the litter of two pups.202 Glacier's wolves nonetheless proved resilient pioneers. During 1991, a fourth wolf group, the Spruce Creek Pack, emerged from the pairing of a dispersing female from the Camas and a lone male, possibly a survivor from the Wigwam Pack.203 By 1994, wolf activity in Glacier was at its highest than at any point since the 1930s. Nonetheless, three years later, only one pack remained inside the park. Such changes were prompted by shifts in pack ranges. The Northern Rockies represented contested territory for wolves, just as it had done for France, Britain, and the United States in the early 1800s. During the 1990s, packs challenged each other for home territory in Glacier. Conflict was spurred by a prey shortage that left the North and South Camas packs competing for limited sources of food. During 1996, the South Camas Pack (the more established group), moved north and physically displaced their northern siblings. On two or three occasions there were serious confrontations, during which animals killed rival pack members. The remnants of the North Camas Pack subsequently retreated north, setting up new range in Canada. By 1997, Glacier was home to between ten and fifteen wolves.204 The struggle to gain a paw-hold in ancestral territory had proved an arduous one, and, after two decades, was far from assured.205

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Wolves and Glacier National Park In 1985, Martinka predicted that the return of the wolf to Glacier would comprise an event of "major ecological and sociological significance."206 The re-establishment of wolves in the Glacier region undoubtedly had repercussions for other species. Coyotes had dominated the ecosystem in the absence of their larger relations, but found themselves confined to the fringes of wolf territory when their lupine cousins resettled the area. Wolves challenged their competitors, and even killed mountain lions in contests over prey. A pack of seventeen or eighteen wolves was also observed attacking a grizzly bear. The bear appeared startled by the actions of the new residents, and sought sanctuary in the nearest tree. While lupines were perhaps perceived as intruders competing for food and territory, other species nonetheless benefited from their renewed presence. Grizzlies found that discarded wolf-kills provided easy and abundant sources of food. The availability of carcasses during winter months even led some bears to forgo their annual hibernation. Relations between lupines and other faunal residents of the North Fork reflected the fluidity of ecological systems. The reappearance of wolves changed the region, but other species adapted to take advantage of new opportunities as well as facing new conflicts. Wolves also adjusted their behaviour. In Canada, the packs subsisted on a diet of moose, whereas in the North Fork they switched to hunt more abundant white-tailed and mule deer. A 1994 edition of Montana magazine portrayed lupine antics in the North Fork as a wild tale of "a bloodier existence, a violent world of turf wars, maulings, thieving, and perhaps even child snatchings."207 Such images played on old motifs of the wolf as killer, but were intended to create excitement rather than alarm. This was nature 'red in tooth and claw,' but viewed as a "last fierce paradise."208 Roamed by wolves, bears, and mountain lion, three predators scarce elsewhere in the continental United States, Glacier Park enshrined an alluring wilderness landscape. However, hikers rarely spotted packs tearing through lodgepole pines in pursuit of fleeing herds, despite Montana's salubrious advertisement. In contrast to the wide sweep of Yellowstone's Lamar Valley, Glacier's densely forested terrain made wolf viewing much more difficult. The lack of roads in the northwest of the park, combined with pack territories spanning over three hundred square miles, also contributed to lupine elusiveness. The limited visibility of wolves in Glacier's material landscape was analogous to their wider exposure beyond the park. While the return of wolves to Yellowstone proved a

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very public and symbolic event, Glacier's wolves remained out of the limelight. Whereas wolves became icons for Yellowstone, Glacier did not become identified as a 'wolf park.' Naturalist Jay Pogue noted that charismatic megafauna such as wolves proved an attraction for visitors, with more people coming to his interpretative talks about the wild canines than his other presentations on geology and rodents. However, he also pointed out that many visitors failed to realize that Glacier had wolves, and once told, assumed that they had been artificially introduced.209 Diane Boyd asserted that such anonymity benefited the lupine population.210 Glacier's packs were afforded a degree of privacy, and were not forced to deal with the car-jams and camera-wielding crowds that their compatriots faced in Yellowstone. Nonetheless, public interest also had advantages, the symbolic value of wolves in Yellowstone attracted important popular interest in their progress. If Yellowstone was the place where wolves made their highly publicized return to the American West, Glacier was where they quietly stole across the border. Their gradual return to the park presented a quietly dramatic story, for wolf society, human culture, and the park ecosystem itself. As biologist Steve Gniadek noted, Glacier's wolf tale has been "a really compelling story of what wildlife can do on their own."211 The natural repopulation of the park made a powerful statement about lupine agency. Humans nonetheless retained a pivotal influence over wolf survival in Glacier. The Latin name for the Rocky Mountain Wolf, Canis lupus irremotus, translated as "the wolf that keeps showing up."212 Although Glacier's history showed that to be true, human attitudes and actions went a long way to determining whether packs were allowed to remain in the new terrain they chose to inhabit. Between 1980 and 1992, all fourteen deaths of adult wolves near Glacier National Park were caused by people.213 Canis lupushzd been accepted as an important member of the national park community by staff and public alike. But the sanctuary offered by the national park only provided a temporary retreat. Glacier may have been an attractive enough remnant of primitive America to ensure its preservation in 1910, but wolves needed more than mountain scenery to ensure their protection. Nature could sustain itself, but, in practice, constructive human interventions seemed imperative in order to protect wolves from destructive impacts outside the preserve. Glacier National Park stood at the intersection of wolf boundaries, with lupine fortunes customarily tied to canine movements in Canada. The trails of wolf history followed the contours of the Rocky Mountains north, to the next lupine sanctuaries, Banff and Jasper national parks.

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Banff National Park, Alberta, (map courtesy of Parks Canada)

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3

Wolves in Banff National Park From 'Wolf Country' to the 'Whoop-Up Trail' Wolves have been a, part of Banff as far back as history has been recorded.1 Crag and Canyon, December 4, 1978

I

N JULY 1945, zoologist Ian McTaggart Cowan discovered a fossilized tooth lying in loose gravel near the middle of the Castleguard Icefield.2 The dental relic indicated an ancient canine presence in Banff's landscape. Thousands of years earlier, the sabred fang had adorned the mouth of a dire wolf, the ancient relative of the grey wolf. Lupine animals roamed the valleys of the Central Rockies long before the First Nations honoured them in story or European explorers recorded canine howls in dog-eared journals. In commemoration of the region's illustrious lupine history, the Crag and Canyon, Banff's local newspaper, labelled the area "Wolf Country." Banff as 'Wolf Country' imparted the notion of a mountainous landscape claimed by wolves prior to any Euro-Canadian land purchases. Images of continual lupine presence, meanwhile, suggested a natural system frozen in verdant perpetuity, a wilderness scene impervious to change. However, this idyllic picture of a haven where populations endured in interminable balance ignored the dynamic of transformation that resounded in Banff's wolf history. Just as the tracks left by the dire wolf in the glacial ice were covered by the next snow fall, the trail of wolf history in Banff proves hard to follow, and, on occasion, even disappears. Wolves and First Nations

An ancient Native culture known as the 'Old Ones' frequented the Central Rockies ten thousand years ago. In subsequent millennia, the

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Tona Xa, and their descendants, the Kootenay, camped and hunted in the Red Deer and Bow River valleys. Native peoples may have travelled through Banff since antiquity, but the region never became densely populated by aboriginal groups. The harshness of the terrain presented a natural obstacle to permanent settlement, while the inhospitable and rocky landscape offered limited hunting opportunities.3 Even after the Blackfeet moved onto the western plains during the 1700s, the Rocky Mountains retained their secluded character. The Piegan Blackfeet spent most of their time in the grasslands along the Bow River, making only occasional hunting excursions into the mountains. The Central Rockies became a buffer zone between the Piegan and their enemies living west of the Continental Divide. Tribal politics, allied with geography, maintained Banff's status as isolated territory.4 The cursory nature of human presence within the mountains proved beneficial for other species roaming Banff's alpine slopes and montane valleys. Relatively low levels of aboriginal hunting allowed fauna to thrive, creating a "wildlife reservoir" in the Central Rockies.5 The region's status as a safe haven for animals pre-empted the legal definition of a national park. Geological forces created natural mountainous barriers and valley refuges for native wildlife. Banff's rocky terrain nonetheless supported a lower lupine population than adjacent areas. Minimal competition with human hunters eased lupine pursuits, yet populations of grazing animals remained hard to detect. Herds were scattered along meandering, narrow valleys, between imposing peaks of rock and ice. Packs were compelled to adopt large territories in order to sustain themselves. However, canine adaptability and resilience prevailed despite these topographical trials. Banff denoted historic territory for two subspecies of wolves prior to the arrival of Europeans. Northern realms represented the domain of large and predominantly black wolves, identified as Canis lupus occidentalis (the Mackenzie Valley wolf). In the south of the present-day park, wolves proved lighter in both weight and pelage, and were classified as Canis lupus irremotus (the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf).6 While the mountains signified a divide between warring Native groups, Banff represented an impromptu meeting place for wolf nations. The Explorations of the Fur Trade Motivated by the dreams of empire and enterprise, European explorers moved into Banff in pursuit of a western fur trade during the 1700s. In

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1754, the Hudson's Bay Company sent Anthony Henday on a westerly voyage to pioneer trade with Native peoples. Henday travelled a thousand miles of uncharted territory to reach the upper waters of the Saskatchewan River. The tally of hunting victims boasted in Henday's journal testified to the wealth of indigenous species in the West. Trails of tasty morsels discarded by the exploring party were readily sniffed out by hungry canines, who customarily appeared at the margins of camp. Henday did not regard the lurking lupines as dangerous, noting that "they do not meddle with any person: We cannot afford to expend our ammunition on them." Canis lupus gained from wasteful human pursuits, at least while the herds remained abundant, and traders short of bullets.7 As he neared the defiles of the Rocky Mountains, Henday observed that, "I cannot say whether them [wolves] or the buffalo are more numerous." The expeditioner may have been impressed by the sheer quantity of lupine animals, yet it is highly unlikely that wolf numbers rivalled those of the great herds. His references to "wolves without number" proved a common trend within European narratives. 8 Observations of a landscape inhabited by incredible numbers of wild animals were customary. Despite some artistic licence, Henday's remarks illustrated a classic scene of the Canadian West, of wolves, bison and rolling grasslands. On October 14,1754, Henday met with the "Archithinue Indians" (the Blackfeet) near the Red Deer River, west of present-day Calgary. Attickasish, one of the Cree guides who accompanied Henday, told the Blackfeet Chief that the white trapper had been "sent by the Great Leader who lives down at the great waters, to invite his young men down to see him and bring with them Beaver skins, & Wolves skins." In return, the HBC would provide "[P]owder, Shot, Guns, Cloth, Beads, &c." However, the Piegan leader "made little answer: only said that it was far off & they could not paddle." The incident suggested that the Blackfeet had little interest in killing wolf or beaver for commercial gain.9 Henday spent the winter trapping near the Blackfeet camp. The explorer's prior acceptance of loitering canines had been based on resignation rather than reverence. Prairie wolves had won a temporary reprieve only because of limited ammunition. Armed with traps, Henday proved that he couched lupine value primarily in terms of fur. On December 29, 1754, the trapper found two ensnared wolves, followed by two more the following day. Henday noted that his Cree companions refused to participate in any wolf-killing activities. Curious as to their

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Group portrait of Blackfoot warriors, 1907 (AY & Co., National Archives of Canada, C-OT8841).

reticence (especially given their energetic hunting activities on the eastern plains), he inquired why they did not kill wolves, nor for that matter, beaver. The Cree guides initially refused to answer, but eventually voiced concerns that "the Archithinue Natives would kill them, if they trapped in their country." Apparently, the Blackfeet did not oppose the killing of wolves per se, merely jealously guarded the wildlife resources of their territory from the incursions of other Native groups. On May 12,1755, Henday met with a Piegan group who readily traded in wolf skins. Despite their initial reluctance, the Blackfeet were well aware of the material riches afforded by dealing in dead wolves.10 During the latter years of the 1700s, competition to secure western trade intensified. The Hudson's Bay Company and its newly formed rival, the Northwest Company (NWC) spread inland, establishing fur trading posts in western Canada. HBC explorer David Thompson spent the winter of 1787-8 with the Piegan near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, which he described as "shining white clouds in the horizon."11 In 1799, the NWC built Rocky Mountain House (approximately fifty miles northeast of Banff National Park) in order to solicit trade with tribes living on the Columbia River. Fur companies and free trappers from the United States also saw an opportunity to capitalize on wildlife in the Canadian Rockies, and a stream of individuals trekked northwards from trapping grounds in Montana.

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The incursions of white trappers affected the faunal landscape of Banff just as they did in Yellowstone and Glacier. Diseases carried by roving Euro-Americans decimated human communities and lupine packs. Thompson related how wolves contracted smallpox from eating the corpses of infected Native peoples, and subsequently lost their hair "especially on the sides and belly."12 Thompson's conclusion that the smallpox plague made lupine "furr useless" illustrated the attitude towards wolves that the fur trade promoted. The pelt represented a form of currency, and mountain men employed various means to secure their lupine tender. Keen protagonists displayed a penchant for innovation. Alexander Ross, who worked the Columbia River drainage, recorded how wolves were "generally caught, sometimes dead, sometimes alive" after swallowing baited cod hooks strung from trees.13 Trappers also killed grazing animals for subsistence, thereby reducing sources of lupine prey. Food shortages even led desperate men to risk eating poisoned wolf carcasses, consuming all the meat and organs except the stomach. HBC trapper Isaac Cowie remembered times when "men often were compelled to live on poisoned wolves, and glad to get them."14 The geographical barrier of the Central Rockies nonetheless served to insulate Banff from the worst excesses of the fur trade. Wolves found some respite in the remote valleys and dense forests where human penetration proved difficult. Cowie remembered how packs learned to maintain a safe distance from people with firearms. He further believed that Canis lupus could count to seven: They have a habit of following in a trail beaten by travellers, and on a rolling prairie or mounting a rise over which the party they were following had disappeared, the wolves would halt till they got a clear sight of them again. Then, if one of a party of seven men had forked off to watch the trail to get a shot at the wolves following it, as they passed the place he had concealed himself, the animals would stop and follow no further on that trail. But if the number exceeded seven men, then one might detach himself from the party and not be missed.15

Lupine instinct for avoiding humans, what Cowie termed "a wholesome dread," seemed imperative.16 Blackfeet hostility towards HBC and NWC traders after the early 1800s mitigated the impact of the fur enterprise on Banff's lupines. Although Henday and Thompson had found the Piegan to be amenable

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hosts and willing traders, attempts by the HBC and NWC to forge alliances with the Kootenay, Snake and Salesh in the early 1800s enraged Piegan leaders. The tribe balked at the idea of white trappers bartering with their traditional enemies, and effectively prevented travel through the southern passes of the Canadian Rockies.17 A few intrepid skinseekers ventured into the mountains despite the threat of hostile Natives, but most chose to roam further north. The burning of posts on the Bow and Upper Saskatchewan by Blackfeet raiders further encouraged trappers to focus on northerly terrain. HBC and NWC activities concentrated on more secure stations at Rocky Mountain House and Edmonton House. Although Blackfeet hostility was largely spurred by a desire to maintain monopolistic control of the Western fur trade, their fierce feud with Canadian fur corporations reduced hunting pressures on Banff's wildlife.18 Civilization Encroaches During the late 1850s, the British Government sponsored the first official expedition to the Northwest Territories of Canada. Captain John Palliser led the westerly jaunt, charged with the dual tasks of exploring the region for settlement purposes and assessing possible routes for a road across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. Between 1857 and 1860, Palliser conducted four separate excursions into the Central Rockies. After traversing numerous mountain trails, the explorer remained unconvinced of the possibility of constructing a road through British territory to the Pacific. He judged the Rocky Mountains an insurmountable barrier to large-scale transcontinental travel.19 Palliser nevertheless believed that farming communities could thrive on adjacent plains. The Captain construed existing lupine residents of the prairie and nearby foothills as obstructions to an agrarian Utopia, noting that the "number of... natural enemies, the wolves" represented one of only two obstacles (the other being frost) to a successful agricultural economy on the Western prairie. The large doglike animals appeared to "roam everywhere through wood and plain." At 'Dead Meat Camp' (near the present town of Stettler), Palliser reported a gathering of "hundreds" of wolves.20 The abundance of wolves in the Canadian West symbolized the primitive state of the region, a condition that had to fall before the advance of civilization. In 1859, the Earl of Southesk, a wealthy British aristocrat, travelled to the Canadian Rockies for adventure and sport. The Earl spent most

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of his vacation hunting in the Bow Valley and Lake Louise regions. He regarded the Rocky Mountain goat as the ultimate hunting trophy, and embarked on lengthy treks through the mountains in pursuit of the sure-footed animal. Any wolves that dared approach received a hail of bullets and stones. In common with many sportsmen of the time, the Earl deemed the wolf as an unwelcome and rapacious competitor. Accordingly, on slaughtering a bull bison, Southesk concluded: "it was a mercy to save him from the cruelty of wolves." The Earl nonetheless harboured an appreciation for wolves as part of the romance of the West. In one journal entry he confessed "to a liking for the wild, melancholy and even musical notes of the wolf." Southesk imbued lupine howls with an indefinable wilderness quality, much the same as early Yellowstone travellers had done: "Never have I heard the cry of any wild animal that had not something pleasing in its cadences, when heard in a solitary desert place, where the din of man's life is far away." For Southesk, the wolf appeared a potent symbol of the region's isolation, of a prelapsarian wilderness untouched by humanity.21 The Piegan believed that the howling of wolves foretold the approach of a storm, and during the 1870s and 1880s, wolves in the Banff region faced a human deluge from which they found little shelter.22 An infamous route known as the 'Whoop-Up Trail' bustled with traffic, bringing ruffians and marketeers from Fort Benton, Montana, to Fort MacLeod, a hundred and twenty miles southeast of Banff. At trading posts along the track, with colourful names such as Fort Whoop Up, Whisky Gap, Slideout, and Standoff, enterprising brokers purchased wolf pelts in exchange for guns, whisky, and a host of other provisions. The profit motive ruled supreme. Trading forts resembled military bastions, complete with iron bars and attendant cannons. Conflicts frequently broke out between fraudulent proprietors and irate customers.23 However, Canada's 'Wild West' proved relatively short-lived. In response to the growing lawlessness endemic in 'Whoop-Up Country,' and outrage following the massacre of Assiniboine and Metis people by trigger-happy wolfers at Cypress Hills in May 1873, the North West Mounted Police intervened.24 The Mounties occupied Fort MacLeod during 1874, the law blazing a trail to the Canadian West before most settlers did.25 However, Banff's wolves received no protection from the red-jacketed police, and continued to face the wolfers who ventured north from the Whoop-Up Trail. Wolves also faced harassment from settlers living in the shadow of the Rockies. On the western prairie, the traditional scene of abundant

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herds of bison accompanied by loping wolves was consigned to the realms of frontier imagery. John McDougall brought the first cattle to the region from Montana in 1872, setting up a ranch on the Bow River at the foot of the Rockies. By 1890, a hundred and fifteen thousand cattle grazed the plains of southern Alberta.26 Cattle and sheep displaced wild animals as the new faunal residents of the grasslands. Lupine visitors who occasionally stole down from the mountains were "outlawed and a bounty offered for their destruction" according to settler D. McGowan.27 In the Canadian West, just as in the American West, struggling frontier communities regarded Canis lupus as a significant threat. Packs in Banff faced a direct assault on their home territory from the railroad. When the Crown Colony of British Columbia joined the Canadian Dominion in 1871, the agreement stipulated the construction of a transcontinental railroad to "connect the seaboard of British Columbia with the railways system of Canada" within ten years.28 A railroad linking eastern and western Canada also comprised part of Conservative Prime Minister John Macdonald's National Policy, driven by a vision of 'opening up' the Canadian West and exploiting its lands and forests for the wealth of the nation. During 1872, eight hundred workers under the direction of Chief Engineer Sandford Fleming conducted exhaustive railroad surveys across the continent.29 After numerous delays, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company (CPR) took over the project.30 Hoping to capitalize on American trade, the new consortium altered Fleming's original route over the Rockies from Yellowhead Pass (in present-day Jasper National Park) to a more southerly crossing at Kicking Horse Pass, at the western end of the Bow Valley. According to historical geographer A. Roger Byrne, the redirection "was probably the most important single factor in the historical geography of the Banff area."31 The presence of the railway set the scene for the exploitation of Banff's forests, minerals, wildlife and later its hot springs and scenery. As the tracks advanced through the Bow Valley and over Kicking Horse Pass during 1883, the landscape was irrevocably altered. The felling of trees for railroad sleepers left a forest of stumps, while sparks from locomotives and careless campfires transformed green hillsides into blackened escarpments. Wolf habitat along the Bow River became a railway siding. The railroad's penetration into the Central Rockies furthered interest in the mountains. During the early 1880s, scientific and geological surveys drew attention to the valuable minerals buried in Banff's ancient rock. The discovery of coal, copper and silver inspired a motley crew of

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opportunists to make their own inspections of the region. Ramshackle mining towns sprang up at Bankhead, Anthracite and Silver City. The unprecedented numbers arriving in the region suggested that the mountains were not as impenetrable as once thought. Geographical barriers no longer offered protection for wolves in the face of humans eager to find their fortunes in the untapped reaches of western Canada. An isolated landscape, largely unknown to Europeans, became another typically western setting of railroads, mining towns, and environmental transformation. The scale of change paled in comparison with that occurring on the prairie, yet Banff's lupine populations found it increasingly hard to avoid human contact. Prey became difficult to find as railroaders and prospectors hunted grazing animals for sport and subsistence. Scattered packs retained a paw-hold in more northerly reaches, but their future depended on a radical reappraisal of Banff and its value.

The Establishment of Rocky Mountains Park It was not sulphur the men swelled as they stripped and plunged into the crystal pool for the first swim. Their nostrils flared to the invigorating scent of dollar bills.32 SID MARTY, 1984

One November morning in 1883, three railway workers embarked on a prospecting trip in Banff's mountains, hoping to supplement their CPR wages with buried treasure. During their foray through the pine forests at the foot of Terrace Mountain, Franklin McCabe and brothers Thomas and William McCardell stumbled on a curious rocky hole. A pungent smell of sulphur pervaded the air. Intrigued by the strange natural feature, McCardell climbed in to investigate. At the bottom of the cave, the CPR section foreman discovered a hot spring, and the trio concluded their excursion by relaxing in the subterranean pool. The railroaders intended to find their fortunes in Banff's rock, and ended their search underground, contemplating mineral benefits of a different variety.33 While the enterprising railroaders sought to obtain land rights, their superiors in the CPR harboured doubts about the efficacy of handing the bubbling ponds over to private ownership. The appropriately named Secretary of Canadian Pacific, Charles Drinkwater, suggested that custody of the springs should remain with the government. Officials in

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Ottawa exhibited similar interest in withholding the springs from private acquisition, and despatched Superintendent of Mines William Pearce to survey the region in September 1885. Concerned by the prospect of unbridled commercial development, Pearce advised designating the area as a public reservation. On November 28, 1885, ten square miles of forest surrounding the hot springs received protection from "sale, or settlement, or squatting" by Order-in-Council. The enabling act establishing Banff Hot Springs Reserve emphasized its "great sanitary advantage to the public."34 The preserve in the mountains constituted a valuable health spa. According to Minister of Interior, Thomas White, the springs, "situated amidst the grand scenery of the Rocky Mountains and within easy access of the CPR, are certain to become a popular resort for people afflicted with disease, rheumatism and other troubles."35 The Banff Hot Springs Reserve clearly drew on the American precedent set at Arkansas Hot Springs in 1832.36 The Order-in-Council protected the springs and their immediate vicinity, which the government planned to control and develop for public use. Rocky Mountains Park In February 1886, Dominion Land Surveyor, George Stewart, disembarked from a train at Banff station, charged with the task of completing a legal survey of the Hot Springs Reserve and its outlying area. In his report, Stewart pointed out that the "large tract of country lying outside of the original reservation presented features of the greatest beauty." He judged Banff's soaring peaks and crystal lakes to be "admirably adapted for a national park." 37 Following Stewart's assessment, Interior Minister Thomas White introduced a bill to establish Rocky Mountains Park in April 1887. During parliamentary debate, park advocates stressed the sublime grandeur of Banff's rugged landscape. Breathtaking vistas formed an ideal backdrop to the springs resort. In common with language used to celebrate mountain landscapes in the United States, the Canadian concept of monumental scenery resounded with patriotic undertones. Prime Minister Macdonald, who had visited Banff the previous summer, predicted that Banff's scenery and springs would bring prestige to the Dominion.38 Donald Smith, member for Montreal West, mused that, "anyone who has not gone to Banff... and not found himself elevated and proud that all of this is part of the Dominion, cannot be a true Canadian."39

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Natural beauty and national pride blended easily into economic rationale. Samuel Hesson, parliamentary representative for Perth North, suggested that Canadians who had previously taken themselves, and their money, abroad on vacation, could find ample healthy recreation in the park resort. Macdonald agreed, promising that the springs would "recuperate the patients and recoup the treasury."40 Despite its preservationist tone, the national park concept did not signify an affront to the dominant belief in economic development. The design for Rocky Mountains Park was situated firmly within official doctrine that "all the section of this country should be brought at once into usefulness."41 Hot springs and scenery represented a marketable resource in the mountains. Neither did civil servants intend to allow mineral and timber riches to languish in a protected reserve, duly sanctioning mining, ranching and lumbering activities. One MP drew attention to the evident contradiction in allowing such practices: You cannot have a public park, with all the wild animals preserved in it, and have mining industries going on at the same time, you cannot have trade and traffic, involving railways going to and from the mines at the same time and keep the place for sport.42

However, few politicians shared concerns about the impropriety of extractive activities inside, or indeed outside, a protected reserve. The bill to establish Rocky Mountains National Park faced few enemies in Parliament precisely due to its focus on resource exploitation. Whereas Yellowstone's situation as 'worthless land' assisted in its smooth passage to national park status, Banff's preservation was secured by frequent allusions to its economic potential as a national park. Canadian officials remained convinced that abundant land and natural wealth in the Central Rockies allowed for simultaneous preservation and development. Senator Lawrence Power's argument that domestic grazing in the park appeared "inconsistent with the main feature of the park—the preservation of specimens of wild animals indigenous to that portion of the country," met with cries of astonishment from his peers in the Upper House.43 Robert Dickey retorted "surely the honourable gentleman does not propose that those treasures shall be locked up for all time to come merely because they happen to be within the limits of the park?"44 The Senator's rhetorical question afforded a crucial insight into late nineteenth-century interpretations, and limitations, of the national park purpose.

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Rocky Mountains attained park status on June 23, 1887. The dedication of the preserve as a "public park and pleasure ground for the benefit, advantage and enjoyment of the people of Canada" bore immediate resemblance to precedent set in Yellowstone.45 The sizes of the two parks proved less comparable. Yellowstone's thirty-three hundred square miles dwarfed the two hundred and sixty square miles protected in Canada. The purpose of Rocky Mountains as a "national park and sanatorium" clearly reflected its genesis as a health spa.46 According to the Canadian Deputy Minister of the Interior, roads, bridges and other buildings were necessary in order "to make of the reserve a creditable national park."47 Preservation alone did not define its character; Rocky Mountains represented a park to be 'made.' The government had already spent forty-six thousand dollars on the Hot Springs Reserve, and in the first six years of the park paid out $141,254 in 'improvements'—a stark contrast to the lack of appropriations granted by the U.S. administration to Yellowstone.48 Administrators envisaged a sanctuary of civilization in a sea of wilderness. In 1887, the CPRlaid the foundations for its Hot Springs Hotel, a grand chateau providing luxurious accommodation for visitors arriving at Banff station. Given the lack of concern for wildlife during parliamentary debate, the inclusion of a protective requirement in the enabling act appeared unlikely. However, the 1887 Rocky Mountains Park Act contained an important provision for faunal residents. The inclusive terms of the wildlife clause proved even more remarkable. While Yellowstone only barred "the wanton destruction of fish and game," clause 4(f) of the Banff Act called for the "preservation and the protection of game and fish, and of wild birds generally."49 The faunal provisions of the Yellowstone Act of 1872 undoubtedly furnished a model for Banff's legislators, but Canadian influences also played a defining role in shaping the wildlife dictates of the Rocky Mountains Park Act. The previous year, a report authored by former Commissioner of Fisheries, W. F. Whitcher, highlighted the commercial and aesthetic value of Banff's wild animals. Mindful of Whitcher's comment that a "paucity of fish and game will undoubtedly deprive the National Park of something of its many wild attractions," legislators incorporated wildlife regulations within the Rocky Mountains Park Act. Herds of ungulates, shoals of fish, and flocks of birds provided the details of life to round off Banff's scenic vistas. Even in the arena of wildlife protection, official considerations remained oriented towards developing a playground for visitors. That 'improving' the infrastructure

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of the preserve remained a priority was exemplified by George Stewart's appointment as superintendent. According to the Interior Minister, the progenitor of the national park idea in Banff appeared admirably suited to the job being a "civil engineer and a clever landscape architect."50

The Development of Predator Policy Wolves are so plentiful around Banff that they make night hideous and the timid sleep not.51 Calgary Herald, November 6, 1886

Wolves living within Rocky Mountains Park in 1887 found themselves beyond the boundaries of protection. Although the wildlife clause in Banff's enabling act proved more inclusive than Yellowstone's, neither national park included wolves within their preservationist design. As in the United States, perspectives on carnivorous animals in Rocky Mountains remained firmly set within the context of game protection. Whitcher proposed Canis lupus as a potent threat to the creation of a profitable and pleasurable park replete with vast herds of grazers. He warned that "large game and fish once various and plentiful in this mountainous region are now scattered and comparatively scarce. Skinhunters, dynamiters, and netters, with Indians, wolves and foxes have committed sad havoc."52 He therefore recommended the destruction of "lupine, vulpine, feline vermin that prey on furred and feathered game with a savage impartiality."53 In contrast to his vehement attack on four-legged hunters, Whitcher emerged as an advocate of hunting by humans in Rocky Mountains. He feared the depredations of carnivorous fauna, yet promoted sport hunting as "quite controllable." By allowing hunters into the preserve, officials would increase "public sympathy" for the park and remove "every appearance of exclusive preservation."54 Whitcher's comments were not extreme by the standards of the age, given that recreational and subsistence hunting were widely practised in Yellowstone by staff and visitors alike in the 1870s and 1880s. Nonetheless, park authorities in Banff disregarded Whitcher's advice. Spurred by mounting evidence of human recklessness in the Rocky Mountains, regulations in 1889 banned the shooting, wounding, capturing or killing of any wild animal or bird, predating similar stipulations made for Yellowstone under the 1894 Lacey

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Act. However, in contrast to the funds appropriated by the U.S. Congress to enforce the Lacey Act, Banff's rules received few teeth. John Connor was appointed as forest ranger to police illegal hunting in the park, but protection was constrained by a lack of finance. The ranger position remained vacant following Connor's death in 1890. Despite the general wording of Banff's 1889 wildlife regulations, Canis lupus remained exempt from guardianship. Instead, the Superintendent received an authorization to destroy lupine animals posing a threat to the park. Officials retained the privilege to bear arms in Rocky Mountains for the purposes of predator control. Alongside customary targets of wolves, coyotes, and lynx, many other species were also listed as 'undesirable,' including weasels, skunks, badgers, and even eagles, kingfishers and cormorants. Officials foresaw the only use for 'noxious' species as being that of specimens in the Banff Park Museum. The "instructive adjunct," which opened in 1895, served as a place where "mammal species so weeded out could be utilized in a satisfactory manner."55 Animals prohibited from existence in the material landscape were allowed to roam the glass cases unmolested. The Geological Survey Museum provided the first specimens for the Banff collection, donating eight species of mammals, two hundred and fifty-nine varieties of birds, and a turtle. In subsequent years, the stuffed menagerie burgeoned with home grown exhibits gathered by curator Norman Sanson on his treks through the mountains. Wolves killed in the park predator control program also joined the faunal archive. The Banff Park Museum embodied Victorian pursuits of nature collection and taxidermy, cataloguing flora and fauna and preserving them for posterity in clinical museum habitats. The self-proclaimed 'University of the Hills' relocated (and reanimated) species from an outdoor museum into an accessible and permanent indoor display. Wolves earned their place in the exhibition as vanishing forms and symbols of a primitive age. The Banff Park Museum offered the chance to observe lupine relics from the region's past. Just as Palliser had regarded lupine demise as a prerequisite for civilizing the plains, Canis lupus appeared an inevitable casualty of humankind's progress through the mountains. The stuffed creatures in the museum also conveyed traditional images of the wolf as a ferocious beast. From behind protective glass, the wolves 'leered' at onlookers, their muzzles contorted into permanent snarls, complete with bared fangs and wildlooking glass eyes. Across the aisle, their 'innocent victims,' the deer and goat, gazed on with endearing docility.

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While some ex-residents ended up behind glass, other animals found themselves confined by wooden fences and iron bars in the national park. In 1890, authorities corralled a small group of elk in the Banff Animal Paddock, thereby providing an accessible place for visitors to encounter park wildlife.56 Although William Lothian described the enclosure as a pre-eminent example of "the role of Canada's national parks as sanctuaries for endangered species," the enterprise also illustrated the way in which officials sought to create Rocky Mountains National Park from raw wilderness.57 Under the direction of Banff's second superintendent, Howard Douglas, the compound underwent considerable expansion. By 1904, residents of the paddock included "several Persian sheep, three coyotes, a timber wolf, two cougars, a badger and two golden eagles."58 By 1907, the menagerie had grown so large that Banff's authorities designed a purpose-built zoo, boasting individual cages, complete with ornamental rocks and cascading waterfalls. When the new premises opened the following year, it included three wolves, as well as coyotes, foxes, badger, marten, cougar and bears. These 'undesirables' proved immensely popular with park visitors. The entire zoo was a'favourite attraction for vacationers, indicating their increasing appreciation for wildlife. Nevertheless, the venue's popularity also reflected the infancy of societal understanding of species conservation. Animals were popular curiosities to marvelling onlookers, who paid scarce heed to the unnaturalness of the caged habitats. Most of the inmates were exinhabitants of the park who had been captured and relocated. Exotic animals, however, were the most loved creatures in the zoo. In 1912, park authorities exchanged one of the moose from the paddock for a polar bear cub. 'Buddy' became an instant celebrity. Lupine presence continued in Banff in museum cases and zoo cages, but wolves were harassed elsewhere in mountain haunts. In 1900, Superintendent Douglas received authorization to place a five dollar bounty on wolves in order to eradicate them. The Crag find Canyon applauded the measure and hoped "that it will result in the extermination of this standing menace to the game in the park."59 While official principles conveyed a distinctly anti-predator agenda, limited resources nonetheless circumscribed the active campaign of extermination against Banff's carnivores. The absence of regular warden patrols allowed packs to escape, especially in remote areas. However, funding priorities also yielded negative implications for resident packs. Without a vigilant ranger force policing Rocky Mountains Park,

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WOLF MOUNTAINS poachers slaughtered many prey species on which wolves depended.60 By 1901, Banff boasted 508 human residents and 8,156 visitors, while conservationist William Hornaday on a trip through the Rockies a few years later observed "not one Gray wolf."61

The Consolidation of Protection and Extermination With six Canadian national parks in existence by 1908, all independently controlled by their respective superintendents, officials in Ottawa decided to create a central authority to oversee the preserves. Following a brief period under the auspices of the Forestry Branch, a separate agency was established to administer the national park system in 1911. The Dominion Parks Branch earned the distinction of becoming the first agency in the world specifically charged with the management of national parks. The new bureau even contained an Animal Division, expressly created to deal with matters relating to park wildlife. According to nature writer Janet Foster, the formation of the branch marked "the beginning of an era of far-reaching protective policies initiated from within government that would lead to greater protection of parks and wildlife throughout the Dominion."62 The long-term contributions made to Canadian wildlife preservation by dedicated civil servants such as James Harkin, the first Dominion Parks Commissioner, and Maxwell Graham, who headed the Animal Division, remain undeniable. Nevertheless, Foster's claim that, by 1912, the national parks represented "true wildlife refuges" warrants serious qualification.63 For wolves in the national parks, systematic management brought extermination long before it conferred protection. Commissioner Harkin forged communications with the United States over national parks, wildlife protection and predator control. During 1912, officials from the Dominion Parks Branch engaged in intensive debate over the best methods of killing wolves with park managers in the United States. Superintendent Harris advised Harkin on practices in Yellowstone, recommending steel traps and baited balls of lard, laced with strychnine and strung along the ground'.64 Glacier's Superintendent Hutchings also sent instructions on baiting traps, including his own favoured concoction to spread over the device. According to Harris, the recipe, based on urine, anal glands, corrosive sublimate and glycerine ("to give it body") appeared "highly probable" to attract predators. Park officials construed international liaison and sharing of knowledge as mutually beneficial. Hutchings terminated his letter to Harkin with the maxim "our efforts to destroy these animals will help each other."65

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Harkin chose to ignore the advice proffered by U.S. managers, preferring to rely on bullets rather than strychnine to remove carnivores. Liberal use of poison in the parks north of the forty-ninth parallel was judged inappropriate due to the effect of toxins on non-target species. Howard Douglas, who had been promoted to Chief Superintendent of the Dominion Parks, explained, "I am always loath to use poison in case the stock or the other animals, that we are protecting, might get it."66 Instead, Douglas advocated enlisting members of the Warden Service in wolf shooting activities. Formed in 1909, the Fire and Game Guardians patrolled Rocky Mountains Park watching for fires and providing long overdue enforcement of the hunting regulations that had been flaunted since 1899. Douglas congratulated the guardians for assisting "in the effort to preserve the forests of the parks in the state of primeval nature which is one of their chief charms."67 Nevertheless, the concept of 'primeval nature' remained defined by park authorities. Natural agents, such as fire or predators, were perceived as destructive forces. The fire and game guardians played a crucial role in the consolidation of a predator control program in Rocky Mountains Park. In 1912, Douglas bought five Winchesters to allow the diligent gun-toting warden to "kill all he comes across on his patrol."68 The issue nonetheless proved contentious. Many wardens in Banff held different views over the proper use of poison. Despite the order from the Parks Branch, Warden Bill Peyto persisted in using cyanide to kill predators. When Harkin demanded that guns alone be used, Chief Warden Howard Sibbald sided with Peyto, claiming that "had we to rely only on guns in a brushy country, it would be impossible to keep the coyote down."69 Sibbald's defence stemmed from a belief that wardens on the ground had a clearer vision of Banff than their superiors two thousand miles away. For Harkin, distance instead brought objectivity. Differing opinions on predator control between authorities in Ottawa and provincial officials in western preserves proved a hallmark of Canadian national parks experience for many years to come. By 1917, warden predator control 'scores' appeared on a kind of league table, with "order of merit" based on the ability of staff to destroy "noxious, predatory and dangerous animals." Wardens Peyto and Wright topped the list, having each killed thirty-three coyotes between November 1916 and April 1917, while Warren and Curren tallied twenty-six and eighteen coyotes respectively. These individuals were praised by Maxwell Graham, the Chief of the Animal Division, as "really good trappers and first class shots." In contrast, Graham admonished

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the rest of the staff, complaining that "none of the other wardens got more than 10 and some were as low as 2." Evidently, becoming a successful warden demanded skills akin to those of past fur trappers. Judging wardens by their ability to destroy also invited protagonists to employ any means necessary against resident carnivores. According to BanfPs Superintendent, of predatory animals killed in the past winter, the "majority were trapped, the rest shot or poisoned." Five years after Harkin's ruling, wardens in Banff continued to flout the ban on poison.70 Despite the destruction of many coyotes, none of the wardens managed to kill a wolf in Rocky Mountains National Park during winter 1916-17. Wolves had been eliminated from the Bow Valley by 1914, and rarely ranged south of the Athabasca River in subsequent years. The proceedings of the 1916 Canadian Conservation Commission listed "the timber wolf [as] almost non-existent" in the Rocky Mountains.71 The demise of Canis lupus owed much to the campaign enacted by park authorities, their absence from wildlife statistics in 1917 a testament to the activities of the warden staff in previous years. Other destructive human impacts contributed to the wolf's decline. Human settlements curtailed opportunities for lupine travel beyond park boundaries. Both inside and outside the preserve, wolf populations suffered from a dearth of prey due to sport hunting and habitat loss. A combination of severe winters and over-hunting had eliminated elk from Rocky Mountains Park by 1900.72 The scarcity of wolves and elk inspired radically divergent reactions from the Dominion Parks Branch. Canadian officials opened channels with park authorities in the United States in order to reintroduce elk into Rocky Mountains National Park. In 1917, fifty-seven animals were transported from Yellowstone National Park, and placed in pens for a year before being released to roam the Canadian preserve. During 1919 and 1920, another three hundred Yellowstone elk joined the herd.73 By contrast, the rarity of wolves in Banff signified a honourable achievement rather than a conservation crisis.74 While Canadian and American authorities collaborated to return elk to Banff, they also worked to ensure that wolves remained scarce in the Rockies. Officials continued to fear lupine recolonization. The 1914 Handbook of the Rocky Mountains Park Museum warned that, although wolves were generally rare, they "may be increasing in certain parts of the Rocky Mountains."75 In 1915, officials in Washington made overtures to their Canadian counterparts calling for dialogue on predator control as an issue of "mutual advantage."76 The U.S. State Department acted on concerns voiced by

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the American Cattle Ranchers Association over "destructive animals, coming from beyond our borders."77 Preliminary discussions regarding a Wolf Extermination Co-operation Plan took place the same year. Due to the wolf's "considerable radius of action" in the West, Maxwell Graham recommended forming a trans-national organization "in touch with expert bureaus, such as the United States Biological Survey."78 Plans for an international anti-predator squad were never implemented, but the communications between American and Canadian bureaucrats illustrated vehement hatred of wolves both sides of the border. In lobbying for a North American alliance against Canis lupus, the American Cattle Ranchers Association felt sure that the "progressive people of Canada" recognized the "need" to destroy wolves.79 They were not mistaken. Ranchers in Alberta feared Banff to be a breeding ground for predators, and called for park managers to take action. One farmer even suggested that carnivorous animals consciously used the national parks as refuges from pursuing humans.80 Given that Canis lupus had been driven from the preserve by guns, traps and snares, images of Banff as a wolf sanctuary were nonetheless misplaced.81 During the 1920s, the only wolves in Rocky Mountains Park resided at the zoo. Although absent from the national park scene, Canis lupus remained a key character in Canadian literature. Wolves roamed the pages of local newspapers in abundance. Rural tales usually consisted of unfortunate encounters between lost travellers and ferocious animals. A story in the Edmonton Journal in January 1923 claimed that fourteen-year-old Toivu Piilonen had been accosted by a "monstrous beast" as he skied home in the dark. The boy allegedly beat the animal back, using his "ski to good effect."82 Terrifying tales from foreign shores thrilled Albertan readers. An article in the Calgary Albertan headlined "Wolves Growing Bolder" asserted that "howling, hungry, savage packs" were blockading Moscow, attacking outlying villages and cattle trains. The paper blamed Soviet ideology for the lupine crisis, reporting that, "the Bolshevik government is too obsessed with communism to combat them."83 Press accounts suggested that citizens of Alberta faced their own wolf emergency. A March 1925 article in the Quebec Telegraph claimed that the community of Vilna was "so menaced by the prowling, ferocious animals that settlers fear leaving their farms." The settlement east of Edmonton was allegedly under siege from wolves, with dances postponed and "social engagements involving visits between sunset and sunrise cancelled." In a tale which took inspiration from the traditional Russian story of wolves attacking a troika filled with wedding guests,

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along with echoes of Little Red Riding Hood, the paper recalled how one group of party-goers was pursued by wolves along a "lonely trail through a wood." According to the revellers, the wolves had attempted to jump into their sleigh, but were fended off. In response to the lupine menace, the pioneers at Vilna organized their own fight back. Whereas the Russian predicament had been deadlocked by communist ideology, apparently the frontier spirit of the Albertan community secured their salvation. The Calgary Herald reported how a group of intrepid settlers banded together in an "army" under the leadership of 'Captain' Bell. The troops sung 'O Canada' and set off to find the pack, yelling "wolves, we'll eat you up." The patriotic mob allegedly vanquished a total of seventeen animals. The Calgary Herald applauded the hunt, which it viewed as a "revolt of homesteaders ... against the domination of timber wolves."84 On investigation, the Dominion Parks Branch disproved such elaborate tales. Several trappers reportedly killed by marauding wolf packs wandered into town the following week, after spending time at remote cabins, consumed by whisky rather than wolves. Brave Toivu Piilonen found a dead wolf in a trap rather than despatching the animal with his ski.85 And, according to one New York paper, the Vilna episode represented little more than a "fairy story."86 Often the wolf tales were anecdotal reports, passed by word-of-mouth, and exaggerated by the vivid imaginations of storytellers. According to Canadian naturalist Arthur Hemming, "people in the cities gobble down or up such wild and weird moose, bear and wolf stories that jokers up north contribute almost anything in the way of wild-life absurdity."87 A willing public proved eager to devour sensational wilderness tales. The popularity of 'epic struggles' against wolves reflected a desire for frontier nostalgia, a fad for recapturing past days of fur trappers and wild country. Yet such stories were as much a part of rural belief as they were fare for city folk. Myths comprised an important part of the popular image of Cams lupus. Isolated communities harboured real fears of lurking lupines, borne from an awareness that even limited wolf predation posed a threat to their livelihoods. Wolves further served as tangible scapegoats for communities struggling against natural forces they were unable to overcome. For settlers in the Canadian West, the wolf embodied the dangers of the surrounding wilderness.88 Reverend Harry Nobles of Port Arthur, Ontario, even employed the wolf threat in a parable about spiritual resilience (1921), warning, "you and I are always in danger from wolves that snap and bark at the very doors of the soul." The

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preacher offered some salvation, exhorting "but we are hunters of wolves, and these prowling, subtle beasts of the bounty may be brought bleeding and hopeless to the dust, if only we are willing to stay with the hunt."89 The sermon of god-fearing pioneers pitted against devilish wolves appeared an entirely appropriate western vision, a heady blend of harsh reality and potent myth.

From Cages to Wild Habitat: Re-Appraising the Wolf There is something to admire nevertheless in these fine specimens of wild life, and a reader who shares the feeling suggests that it would be well to establish a reserve for them in some remote district before they are wholly exterminated.90 Edmonton Journal, March 9,1927

Official reappraisals of Canis lupus took time to emerge. The first changes to Canadian park policy came in 1924 when authorities clarified existing practice by refining the expansive list of'undesirable' animals. Shocked by the variety of species routinely killed in Canadian nature preserves, Harkin announced that, "there should be a strict tightening up in the matter of killing birds and mammals because these are alleged to be predatory." He justified the modification, "in view of the fact that people are interested in seeing the various forms of wildlife within the Canadian national parks."91 'Valuable' animals included species favoured by visitors and those prized for their fur.92 However, large carnivores remained on the 'undesirable' list. The revised policy stipulated that traps could still be used within national parks to capture wolves, wolverines and coyotes. Predator policy was further revised in 1928. New regulations compelled wardens to hand over all pelts to park authorities and file reports when they killed animals other than wolves, coyotes, mountain lions or wolverines. In the same year, the Parks Branch finally banned trapping in the preserves. Wardens responded angrily to the changes wrought by their superiors, not least because profit from pelt sales comprised up to fifty percent of their incomes.93 The increase in central regulation effectively limited rangers' means and incentives to engage in the control enterprise. Statistics for 1928-9 reveal that the number of coyotes killed by staff in Rocky Mountains National Park dropped from fifty-four to seventeen as a direct result of the new rulings.94 Officials in Ottawa intended to codify rather than strangle predator control efforts,

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and subsequently issued quotas for each warden to ensure they did not neglect their duties to destroy 'noxious' species.95 Parks guidelines published in 1930 continued along the same lines: "protection is given to the animals within the national parks, with the exception of predators on which war is waged to a reasonable extent."96 1930 also witnessed the passing of the National Parks Act, a significant document in terms of restricting economic development in nature preserves, but less innovative in regard to predator policy. Officials continued to subscribe to the dual tenets of wildlife preservation and predator destruction. Under the terms of the 1930 Act, Rocky Mountains was renamed Banff National Park, but little changed for Banff's canines. Legislation mandated "the protection of wild animals" but also "the disposal of noxious, predatory or superabundant animals."97 As the Edmonton Journal surmised., the wolf park idea was "hardly one that will evoke much enthusiasm."98 In a memo sent to all superintendents in 1925, Commissioner James Harkin articulated a reappraisal of predatory animals based on nascent ecological awareness. The complex interchange of animal and vegetable life in the national parks was compared to "a series of springs, each exerting a pressure in all directions and each held in check by the similar expansion of the springs surrounding it." Harkin warned: "no-one can tell what grave and far-reaching results might follow the extermination of a single species."99 The Commissioner's proclaimed philosophy bore a striking resemblance to the contemporary views of Joseph Grinnell and the American Society of Mammalogists. They too stressed the importance of maintaining natural balance, and emphasized the need for native predators within a community of species. Fresh ideas on the value of carnivores espoused by biological experts in the United States undoubtedly nurtured ecological respect in national parks north as well as south of the forty-ninth parallel. Canadian officials drew on overpopulation disasters in the United States at Kaibab Plateau and Jackson Hole in the mid-1920s to illustrate links between the destruction of predators, vegetation denudation and ungulate starvation.100 Pointing to similar scenarios in Ontario and Quebec, James Harkin asserted: "whenever stringent steps are taken by man to curtail the natural numbers of any wild creature ... there is almost sure to follow a reaction because some of the prey of this predatory animal are causing damage."101 However, the Commissioner chose to neglect the influence of American developments on the Canadian experience in subsequent statements. In a 1934 letter, Harkin noted that policy revisions in the Canadian

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preserves had "been adopted for the United States national parks... .This is apparently a case of the two administrations having independently reached similar conclusions."102 Although policy changes in the 1920s and early 1930s failed to extend protection to Canis lupus, the Canadian Parks Service's ecological rhetoric had positive implications for resident wolves. Pronouncements stressing the importance of carnivores as natural agents encouraged officials to renounce policies of mass destruction in preference for 'limited warfare' strategies. In a 1925 memo to W. W. Cory, Harkin argued that, "predatory animals are of great scientific, educational, recreational and economic value to society," and claimed that national parks represented ideal places for such species to live.103 A more benign wolf also began to stalk the pages of the press. The Edmonton Journal questioned traditional notions that the 'only good wolf was a dead one,' asserting the importance of preserving lupines other than in "zoos, circuses, or in a stuffed and mounted condition."104 Wolves at the Zoo Warden Naylor spotted two wolves in the North Saskatchewan Valley during 1931. According to Naylor, the animals roamed the area for a few days, and then disappeared.105 Wild wolves were not seen in Banff for the rest of the 1930s. Lupine populations, meanwhile, proved more visible at the zoo. In April 1934, the caged canine community was joined by a new litter of pups. In correspondence with Harkin, Superintendent Jennings noted how "bear cubs and pups of this nature are all very interesting to the public during the tourist season." However, Jennings also surmised that the new arrivals threatened the zoo with an overpopulation of wolves. Captive wolves appeared to face similar restrictions in Banff as their wild counterparts, although they faced transport to another zoo rather than guns or traps. Jennings ended his letter to Harkin by voicing concerns about wild elk nibbling poplar and aspen stands, the contrived nature of the park setting engendering its own overpopulation crisis outside the confines of concrete cages. The Superintendent failed to see the irony in his juxtaposition. While Banff had too many wolves in the zoo, the damage "to green trees by elk" proved that not enough carnivores roamed the wild park.106 An article in the Crag and Canyon on May 31, 1935, recounted a fight in the zoo between two wolves and their neighbour, a female mountain lion. The story described how the lupines, otherwise on

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"friendly terms" with the lioness, grabbed her tail through the bars of the cage and attempted to chew it off. Roused by the commotion, keeper Jim Raby broke off the ambush by hosing the culprits with water. The paper appeared mystified as to what provoked the wolves from "friendliness into the killing spirit of the wild."107 The portrayal of the incident illustrated the proscribed role for Canis lupus in Banff. In a sanitized, controlled environment, wolves represented interesting curiosities. The zoo served to civilize them, and, according to the Crag and Canyon., denoted a place where the savagery of nature remained unwelcome. Popular opinion similarly condemned natural instinct as barbarity in the national park landscape. Mabel B. Williams articulated such sentiments in a book on Banff entitled Guardians of the Wild (1936). While Williams accepted that predators played a role in the "balance of nature," she condemned coyotes for preying on antelope kids. According to Williams, the coyote "slips through the park fence and claims sanctuary. But once there he forgets the rules of sanctuary."108 Natural law remained at the mercy of moral judgment for carnivores in Banff.

Relocating Wolves In 1938, the authorities closed the Banff Zoo. The Crag and Canyon reported that complaints by local people over the howling of resident wolves contributed to the demise of the menagerie, but it was not just the canines that appeared out of place in the town of Banff.109 By 1938, park officials perceived that the zoo represented somewhat of an anomaly in a preserve purporting to represent natural conditions. Staff found new homes for the wolf pack, along with 'Buddy' the polar bear, and numerous other residents, at the Calgary Zoo. The wolves were housed in a new enclosure in the preserve on St. Georges Island. A1938 headline in the Calvary Herald that announced, "Timber Wolves roam in Calgary" suggested that lupine hordes had moved on from terrorizing small frontier settlements such as Vilna to mounting assaults on urban centres. Nevertheless, times had changed. The title contained an important qualification: "there's no cause for alarm."110 While less obvious than the concrete habitat of exotic animals, conditions in Banff's wild environment struck some observers as equally unnatural. J. Dymond, from the Royal Ontario Museum of Zoology, wrote to the Canadian government stating: "it is difficult to understand what basis there can be for killing any predators in an area set aside to

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preserve natural conditions, except that of human life."111 Dymond pointed out that shooting predators on sight was no longer acceptable in American or South African national parks. During the late 1930s, the Canadian Parks Branch engaged in its own reappraisal of carnivorous fauna. F. H. Williamson, who succeeded Harkin as Commissioner in 1938, advocated a more measured approach towards wolves. In replying to Dymond, Williamson asserted that Canadian authorities did not endorse the extermination of predators, rather "efforts of the parks staff are directed towards preserving them or at least only to subjecting them to reasonable control."112 At the 1940 Superintendents Conference, it was announced that, "there should be no black list against any animals in the parks, except in certain circumstances, and that the instructions permitting the wardens to kill as many as he can should be rescinded." Instructions on destroying wolves were amended to state that, "members of the Warden Service should use every opportunity to observe the numbers, habits and movements of mammals and birds."113 However, more inclusive protection proved hard to implement. Throughout the next decade, the policy of scientifically observing first, and shooting later, found itself severely tested.

Canine Battles in Banff National Park Sooner or later the battle must be fought for the parks.114 I.P. CALLISON, 1945

The measured approach towards predators advanced at the 1940 Superintendent's Conference spurred immediate opposition. W. Fisher, Vice President of the Alberta Fish and Game Association, warned that, "Banff park is rapidly becoming a pest hatchery."115 The organization advocated bounties for wolves and coyotes in Banff, together with paid hunters, and renewed trapping by wardens.116 Members deplored the park's new stance on predators. In response to claims of a park overrun with carnivores, the Parks Branch sent biologist Dr. R. Anderson to investigate the situation. Anderson surmised that wolves remained rare in the park, and therefore posed no threat.117 However, in the early 1940s, packs moved back into Banff National Park. The resettlement of the Central Rockies was part of a wider lupine territorial reclamation throughout Alberta, facilitated by reduced trapping activities during World War II, together with increases in deer,

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moose, and elk. Wolves travelling south from Jasper National Park, and west from mountain foothills, found vacant territory and abundant prey in Banff. Elk had thrived in the Bow Valley since their reintroduction, and, by 1945, the park herd numbered between thirty-five hundred and four thousand animals.118 The first signs of renewed lupine presence were uncovered in 1943, when a warden found tracks in Banff's northeast reaches.119 In subsequent years, packs established home ranges in the North Saskatchewan, Red Deer and Panther river valleys. In 1945, wolves were observed in the Bow Valley for the first time since 1914. Officials estimated that forty-eight wolves lived in the preserve by 1947.12° The Disputed Role of Banff National Park The resurgence in wolf numbers prompted vociferous calls for their destruction. Although Banff's lupine population numbered less than fifty animals at its apogee, the ravages of wolves became a widely touted phrase. The campaign to eradicate predators from the Central Rockies was led by W. Fisher. The Vice President of the Alberta Fish and Game Association had conjured images of a park overwhelmed with wolves in the 1930s, when packs had been absent from Banff. The return of canines to the Central Rockies in some number raised his ardour to new levels. Staff biologist C. H. Clarke described Fisher as an individual with "considerable means and much time on his hands, and he has certainly been unsparing of both in bringing pressure to bear on the parks."121 Fisher wrote damning letters to the press, and the Fish and Game Association lobbied federal and provincial authorities. Fisher's article "Sabotage in the National Parks," which was published in a Canadian sporting journal in 1942, exemplified his anti-wolf philosophy by issuing a stark warning concerning the rapacious carnivores and their ravenous appetite for game.122 Local newspapers also joined the charge. The Calgary Herald asked: "What will the CPS do next? Will the parks be full of animals to the exclusion of humans?" According to the Herald, the preserves existed for the benefit of people rather than predators. Resident fauna served solely as tourist attractions, and expendable ones at that. The paper also asserted that thousands of beaver in Banff, "far away from the roads, where tourists delight to see them," would be better utilized if they were "trapped and used for war work."123 Manly Miner, an Ontario naturalist who contributed regular anti-wolf columns to various publications, reiterated such priorities. In "We Must Control the Timber

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Wolf," Miner asserted: "We feel that when man came to North America, and took over, the deer should have been preserved for man's food and use, and not for the sport of a horde of rapacious wild beasts, the wolves, bent on killing purely for the lust of killing."124 Miner's perception of hunting by wolves as 'sport,' while humans only killed 'out of necessity,' ignored lupine sustenance needs and human hunting traditions, yet his views on lupine bloodlust were widely supported. Anti-wolf forces propagated images of national parks as havens for wolves. Fisher claimed that packs used the preserves as bases for invading surrounding areas.125 George Keltic from the Western Canada Fish and Game Council argued that wolf depredations on ungulates represented "the most critical matter facing the sportsmen, and indeed, all of our people today." Much of the responsibility for this crisis lay with national parks, which he claimed "provide an excellent breeding ground for these pests."126 Such rantings contained an explicit criticism of park authorities and their espoused principles. I. P. Callison, a prolific anti-wolf campaigner, criticized the "balance of nature hopheads" overseeing the western preserves.127 To Keltic and Callison, official policy represented nothing short of handing control of the national parks over to lupine superintendents. Park administrators voiced concerns over the effect of such pronouncements on a public largely "unfamiliar with the biological reasons behind the policy being followed in the National parks."128 Protestations to Bureau administrators seemed to confirm official fears, with many people ignorant of rudimentary animal biology. The sister of Hoyes Lloyd, Supervisor of Wild Life Protection in Canada, confessed that she did not know "a moose from a coyote" and requested that wardens "fasten labels" on park wildlife "the way they do on trees or dye them in distinctive colours."129 Eager to both educate and win over the Canadian public, the Parks Branch published articles in newspapers and sporting magazines to counter the broadcasts of the anti-predator lobby. Tony Lascelles (a pseudonym for Banff Warden Hubert Green) wrote regular columns in local papers and the journal Game Trails in Canada. In "Should Hunting be Permitted in the National Parks?" Lascelles defended the Park Service's hallowed ideals over the dictates of sportsmen.130 Five hundred copies of his essay were distributed to publishers and interested parties. Staff emphasized the importance of maintaining a full faunal complement rather than fashioning the national park into a glorified game paddock. Biologist Harrison Lewis responded to calls for active management in Banff by noting that park areas had

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little in common with planned gardens: "in cultivated areas the proper policy is to grow a few species and exclude all others. National parks are an intentional exception to this policy ... [preserving] life in its original natural variety." Wolves were "superior to human hunters ... because they weed out the weak, diseased, crippled and aged."131 Such opinions showed just how far official perceptions regarding the role of national parks had changed since the 1910s, when Banff's overseers shared similar attitudes to those of Fisher. The Scientific Approach In 1943, Clarke complained how "the naturalists would like us to make an elaborate declaration like that of the United States Park Service, and the hunters want us to have 'predator control' as a basic policy, so we please neither of them."132 Facing criticism from both sides (although the anti-wolf lobby clearly dominated), the Parks Branch maintained a middle ground position. Park officials portrayed pro- and anti-wolf campaigners as creatures of emotion and myth, while promoting their own decision-making process as scientific and entirely rational. Tony Lascelles described the Park Service as "the voice of reason" pitted against the emotive "clamours" of sportsmen.133 Lewis explained that, "some people are sentimental about wolves and some people are sentimental about destroying them," but "we try to avoid both extremes and try to be realistic about it."134 Official policy implied no aversion to wolf control when "deemed necessary by a scientifically trained wildlife technician."135 Park authorities construed the debate over wolves in terms of a divide between irrational perceptions and objective knowledge. The Parks Branch defined itself by the latter principle, as a professional agency that "keeps continually informed on the state of wildlife conditions in the different parks and applies modern scientific management methods."136 Stress on the importance of rational enquiry in guiding management decisions fostered pioneering research in the field of wolf ecology. In 1943, the Parks Branch commissioned zoologist Ian McTaggart Cowan to investigate the predator situation in Banff National Park. Wardens assisted Cowan with monthly reports on wildlife conditions and collected scat for analysis. Staff filled out observation cards, detailing the location, number, colour and activities of animals observed on patrols. Cowan's 1947 report on "The Timber Wolf in the Rocky Mountain National Parks of Canada" was the first detailed ecological study of lupine society

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in the Central Rockies, and received wide acclaim in the field of biological science. The study documented the characteristics, numbers, movements, breeding habits, hunting behaviour and diet of wolves in Banff. In Cowan's estimation, wolf predation had an "inconsequential" impact on populations of grazing animals. The Parks Branch circulated copies of Cowan's study to all its superintendents, and to interested parties throughout North America.137 The promotion of'rationalism' as a guide to action represented both a principle and a tactic. The Parks Branch firmly believed in science as an infallible guide and objective arbiter, placing faith in the careful assessment of biological facts. At the same time, scientific expertise lent legitimacy and authority to its position. In response to anti-predator strictures, Lewis stressed the superiority of the agency's informed perspective: We receive expressions of this kind every now and then from outfitters, hunters, trappers, guides and others who have much to do with wildlife. We expect to continue to receive them. These people have first hand experiences, but their experience generally lacks breadth, in both space and time, and they have not a scientific training or outlook.138

Based on research conducted by qualified biologists such as Cowan, officials argued that they knew the numbers of wolves in the parks with "sufficient exactness."139 However, opponents countered with their own challenge based on the fallibility of scientific reasoning, arguing that park authorities did not possess adequate acumen. Callison claimed that assessing exact numbers of wolves in Banff was impossible, and that census records involved "a measure of necromancy and crystal ball gazing."140 Critics questioned the wisdom of biological 'experts' and 'city-men' from Ottawa over that of experienced locals. Despite the Parks Branch's claim to authority in lupine matters, the legitimacy of their knowledge remained contested. Spreading the Scientific Message As part of their scientific semblance, officials in Ottawa portrayed the Warden Service as a professional and knowledgeable unit within the Parks Bureau.141 In private, however, senior administrators recognized that many individuals working in national parks failed to match this

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ideal. Mammalogist A. W. Banfield admitted that predator policy "is not clearly understood by the majority of members of the Parks Staff."142 Many provincial employees harboured traditional disdain for carnivores. During the 1940s, administrators in Ottawa faced a barrage of antipredator tirades from within the agency itself. Superintendent P. Jennings repeatedly warned his superiors about wolves in Banff. In December 1944, he wrote to Controller James Smart advising that, "wolves are beginning to cause us some concern." Jennings reported that five animals had been observed in the Saskatchewan district, and urged that, "we should take this opportunity to hunt these predators down."143 While central authorities defended the rights of wolves to exist in the national parks and emphasized their role in regulating prey populations, Jennings interpreted renewed lupine presence entirely differently. He turned the concept of the balance of nature to his advantage, arguing that wolves were not part of Banff's "biotic unit" due to their prolonged absence from the preserve. According to such logic, returning animals thus "tended to disrupt the balance which had been maintained up to this time." Jennings concluded that, in the interests of the park, wardens should "kill every wolf they see."144 Smart responded to the challenge from Banff's Superintendent by reiterating that the lupine return should continue unabated: The 'natural' inhabitants of Banff National Park include not only the kinds of creatures that were on the area when the park was established, but also any additional kinds that by natural immigration, without man's aid, enter the parks from time to time and establish themselves there. It is possible in this way for wolves to become natural inhabitants of Banff National Park.145

Smart appeared profoundly influenced by Cowan's conclusion that the return of wolves to Banff denoted a natural process, with variations in lupine numbers part of "the ebb and flow of animal populations that is going on incessantly."146 The Controller expected the lupine population to be checked by disease and other controlling factors. As "we shall not be able to keep them out" of Banff, authorities simply had to decide, "between letting them find their natural place in the fauna and controlling them."147 This choice spurred perennial debate at all levels of the Parks Service. Authorities in Ottawa responded to the orations of restive provincial officials with an educational campaign. Recognizing that wildlife

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preservation in the reserves no longer represented "a simple matter of police protection," central authorities attempted to instill dissenting staff with current biological principles.148 By sending academic journals such as the Journal of Wildlife Management, together with prominent articles on ecology, to each national park, senior officials hoped to increase knowledge of contemporary wildlife research. As the flagship of the national parks system, and at the centre of controversy over wolf management, Banff emerged as a leader in education efforts. The Banff Wildlife Bulletin was launched in 1946 "to try and stimulate an interest among the wardens in matters pertaining to wildlife management."149 The publication further aimed to break down barriers between wildlife academics and those educated at the university of'the great outdoors,' a rift that had beset canine discourse throughout the park era. Edited by Warden Hubert Green, the monthly Bulletin contained informative articles on park wildlife issues, including detailed explorations of anatomy, disease, parasites, ecology, and population studies. The publication offered regular updates on the status of wolves in Banff, stressing the need to learn more about them. In July 1946, the Bulletin asserted that, "predation is not what it seems—an evil to be discouraged—but a cog in the orderly and ever-turning wheel of life."150 The Other Side of Protective Policy Throughout the 1940s, national park administrators advocated natural agency, but continued to actively manage predator numbers. Canadian Parks Service (CPS) rhetoric claimed that "[M]ankind is at last learning to sit back and watch Nature sort out her problems."151 In practice, however, officials remained committed to a policy of intervention. "We must accept the responsibility of management," noted an internal document entitled "Wildlife Management in the National Parks of Canada."152 National parks were still regarded as outdoor museums, with Bureau employees as consummate curators.153 Given the latitudes of an interventionist mandate, distinguishing between assistance and manipulation sometimes proved difficult. Lingering prejudice over rapacious canines fed desires to intervene in natural systems, and the CPS exerted a powerful influence over the national park scene.154 Administrators, meanwhile, used scientific estimates to determine the 'correct' faunal complement in preserves, and willingly arbitrated when population numbers exceeded desired levels. Justifications on the grounds of biological science helped park officials view their management

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activities as compatible with, rather than contra ictory to, ecological tenets. As wolves reclaimed Banff during the 1940s, the Parks Bureau decreed "the optimum population" and strove "to maintain them there."155 As nature's self-styled assistants, park authorities effectively 'chose' how many wolves they wanted. 'Small numbers' were welcomed, but lupine populations "were not permitted to become too numerous."156 Attitudes remained influenced by the dietary requirements of the large predators. While packs that subsisted on abundant elk herds appeared "cooperatively beneficial," those residing near a whitetail deer herd in the Saskatchewan district received a less favourable reaction.157 Cowan argued in 1945 that the Saskatchewan Pack constituted "a definite threat to the continued existence of the whitetail herd." The zoologist admitted that he had not studied the situation, but recommended that control be undertaken so that the deer were not "devoured before such a study could be made."158 Smart duly instructed wardens to use "all methods available, short of poison, to discourage wolves from establishing a territory there."159 Rifles, traps and snares were employed against packs roaming in the vicinity. The resumption of killing in the Saskatchewan district reflected the agency principle that "local conditions should determine local policy."160 Although predators had been partially reappraised, they remained far less desirable than rare ungulate species. Opponents called for control measures to be adopted throughout the preserve as wolves extended their territory. One incident in September 1947 fanned fears of a wolf invasion and rekindled lurking prejudice. On patrol near the Howse River, Warden Coleman observed a group of three wolves on the opposite bank. Soon other animals emerged from the brush, until "the sand dunes were lousy with wolves." Coleman counted a total of twenty-four animals, who "just sat on their haunches and howled at me, as if daring me to come closer."161 Banfield's conclusion that "this is probably the largest group of wolves seen in a Canadian national park in recent years" undoubtedly roused the ire of those harbouring animosity towards Canis lupus.162 Staff spoke out against the resurgent lupine population, asserting that a pack twentyfour-strong indicated a park overrun with wolves. In August 1948, Chief Warden Mitchell warned Superintendent Hutchison that wolves occupied "nearly all sections of the Park north of Bow River." He urged that "it is the opinion of myself, Warden Green and the majority of the other park wardens that the wolf population in the park has increased to the point where control measured should be instituted whenever and where-

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ever possible."163 Hutchison agreed, and warned his superiors that the situation in Banff had "got to the point of necessity of carrying out control measures."164 In response to vociferous protests against Banff's wolves, Controller Smart sought advice from Dr. H. Fisher, a biologist who had visited the national park the previous summer. Fisher confirmed the wolf increase in the preserve, and advocated the implementation of restricted control measures. The biologist nonetheless disagreed with Mitchell's suggestions that "any means" be used. He expressed concern that "once the wardens experienced full freedom to shoot every wolf they see, the idea that predators are as much a part of wildlife as any other animal will be all the more difficult to get across." Fisher also feared that "many predators will continue to be shot after the authority is cancelled." Central authorities remained unconvinced that the rank and file had revised their attitudes towards carnivores. Instead, Fisher recommended cyanide guns (or 'coyote-getters') for control operations in Banff.165 In October 1948, Smart sanctioned active measures against wolves in Banff on the basis of Fisher's comments.166 A quota was set at twenty animals. The Parks Branch acquired fifty cyanide guns, placing them in the Saskatchewan Valley, around the Yaha Tinda Ranch (a holding just outside the park where the park administration stabled horses), and near the Banff townsite. The contraptions comprised of four guns anchored into hide-covered tables, which park managers securely bolted to the ground or fastened between trees. When wolves approached baits strategically strewn across the dining table, the guns went off, firing poison into their mouths.167 Officials stressed that the scheme was based on rational investigation, and would be carried out by "trained park wardens using the most selective devices."168 Fisher urged that, "all scientific use be made of specimens taken."169 Wardens examined all carcasses and recorded information on the animal's condition. Through their own deaths, wolves advanced human understanding of the lupine species. Officials not only used science to justify control measures, but also implied that predator destruction itself served an erudite cause. However, active control operations in Banff did not yield significant results. During the winter of 1948, wardens saw only a few lupine animals, and failed to kill any. Despite the lack of wolf casualties, Smart reported that lupine populations in Banff appeared "normal" by December 1949.170 That the situation in the national park could change from crisis to equilibrium in one year revealed the fabricated nature of the wolf threat. It also indicated the rigidity of official definitions

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regarding the correct balance of nature. An estimated population of forty-six wolves in 1948 prompted control measures, yet the following year, a total of forty animals seemed normal. Officials only allowed limited room for fluctuations in the predator population, and expected Banff to function as an efficient, albeit organic, machine. Park authorities constructed an image of normality and imposed false limits on natural processes. Changes in the faunal landscape required corrective adjustment, and managers faced a constant task to ensure that the park maintained appropriate levels of different species. Gibson noted that, "in this connection it has been found necessary to control the number of elk, moose, buffalo, wolves, coyotes and cougars at one time or another."171 Concern for rare ungulates, resurgent fears of voracious lupine appetites, and human interventionist mandates ensured that wolf populations were never allowed to find their own natural balance in Banff during the 1940s. As well as guns, snares and cyanide guns, wolves faced another enemy in Banff National Park during the 1940s. Warden Green in his 1951 study, The Wolves of Banff National Park, identified sarcoptic mange as a significant cause of mortality in the region. Green partially attributed the stabilization in wolf numbers between 1949 and 1951 to the ravages of the skin-mite.172 The condition first emerged amongst BanfPs coyote population in 1937. In 1946, Cowan and Warden Mitchell encountered a mangy wolf in the Bow Valley, who appeared very weak, emaciated and sparsely haired. The same year, Warden LaCasse destroyed one wolf suffering from the infestation, and found another, virtually hairless, fifteen miles west of Banff townsite.173 The Bulletin addressed the cause of the affliction in its March 1948 issue, suggesting that the plague on canines in Banff derived from a human experiment designed to destroy wolves further south. The article noted that "the origin of infection by sarcoptic mange ... is not definitely known," but "it is entirely likely ... that the comparatively recent infection of coyotes in the park, and later wolves, could well have originated from the Montana experiment of 40 years ago."174 It remains uncertain whether Montanans seeking to play god in the early twentieth century condemned Banff's wolves as well. Chief Warden Bryant certainly construed the skin-mite as a useful ally, instructing his wardens not to destroy infected animals because "it is possible that mange may prove to be a factor in the control of these animals."175

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Lupophobia and the Rabid Wolf Bands of small wolves are roaming Banff streets at night and in the early morning hours, and have frightened many small children and adults.176 The Calgary Albertan, 5 December 1959

Mange proved a cruel affliction for Banff's lupine population, but it was another disease that ensured their eradication from Banff for the second time in the twentieth century. The rabies virus appeared in red fox populations in the Northwest Territories and spread south into Alberta during the early 1950s. Hysteria grew as stories filtered through about military regiments in the Northwest Territories besieged by rabid canines. Blending traditional fears of ravaging wolves with the danger of a human epidemic, popular opinion descended into an anti-predator frenzy. Alberta mobilized to face the perceived threat, and between 1951 and 1956 agricultural authorities distributed huge amounts of poison to municipalities and special pest control officers. Ammunition used in the five-year anti-rabies assault on Alberta's wild carnivores included 39,960 cyanide guns, 106,000 cartridges, and 628,000 strychnine pellets. One hundred and seventy trappers patrolled 5,000 miles of trap lines in the province, while half of all farmers scattered poison on their lands.177 In Alberta and neighbouring British Columbia, thousands of 1080 bait stations were established to destroy carriers. The Canadian Parks Service proved far from immune to the perceived crisis. Despite their commitment to biological principles and rational enquiry, national park officials discarded their directives of acting only after investigation, and enlisted in the war against wolves. The threat of a rabies epidemic sanctioned active anti-wolf measures in Banff National Park. On 31 January 1953, wardens received instructions to shoot any wolves, coyotes, or stray dogs roaming within the preserve. Policy entailed "the extensive destruction of wolves and coyotes, strict enforcement of regulations permitting dogs in the park and an extensive innoculation campaign for dogs against rabies."178 Officials regarded the prospect of rabies invading the park and infecting resident fauna as a serious threat. While managers in Banff sought to prevent rabies from penetrating the borders of the national park, sporting and agricultural interests accused the preserve of shielding wolves. In July 1953, L. Renders from

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the Calgary Fish and Game Association claimed that "bands of wolves" roamed the mountains. He described how trappers worked the previous winter to "sew Banff up tight" by placing poison baits in all but one of the eastern mountain passes in order to kill wolves leaving the park. Renders claimed to have "big plans" for the following winter.179 South of the international border, authorities in Glacier National Park faced their own poisoning controversy during the same years. However, the Canadian and American national park administrators responded differently to the assault on their lupine populations. Whereas Glacier's officials fought the anti-predator campaign waged by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service for the purposes of ungulate protection, managers in Banff not only accepted poisoning up to park borders, but placed baits inside protective boundaries as well. The issue of rabies distinguished the situation in Banff from that in Glacier, the perceived threat to human life sanctioning wholesale killing of wild canines north of the forty-ninth parallel. Wardens maintained fifteen poison stations inside Banff National Park, even flying sets into remote areas by plane.180 Canadian authorities did not regard the refuge as exempt from the campaign sweeping other lands in Alberta. The rabies virus was portrayed as a threat to ungulate populations, domestic animals, and even human life. Because of the perceived seriousness of the scenario, Superintendent Coleman urged that, "we have no alternative but to enforce these regulations."181 Nevertheless, the campaign against potential canine carriers owed more to lupophobia than hydrophobia. Humans appeared far more frenzied than wolves. Despite fears for human safety, the actual threat posed by rabid wolves proved negligible. Between August 1953 and July 1954, none of the wolves killed tested positive for the virus. Statistics for the entire program only listed one lupine rabies carrier for the whole of Alberta.182 The Canadian Parks Service may have dismissed calls to eradicate wolves during the 1940s as irrational, but in 1953, principles of factual analysis were lost amidst pressures for control. Policy guided by scientific investigation bowed to one based on popular fears. Authorities urged that policy followed in Banff did not intend to "bring about a great reduction in numbers of predators in the parks," rather "the sole aim of the control work was to prevent the spread of rabies into the parks."183 Considering the extreme measures adopted during the program, drastic consequences for Banff's resident wolves appeared inevitable. In Alberta, a "conservative estimate" of wolf deaths between November 1952 and April 1954 stood at forty-five hundred.184

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The anti-rabies pogrom eliminated ninety percent of the provincial lupine population.185 The assault decimated wolf packs in Banff National Park. Ten wolves were killed in park operations during winter 1952. Another forty-one died after eating deadly morsels from bait stations just outside park boundaries.186 The following year, poisoned elk carcasses placed inside the preserve claimed the lives of two wolves, along with a marten, ten coyotes, four magpies, one raven and six crows.187 By 1957, the lupine population of Canada's first national park numbered only one or two animals. The lupine cull in Alberta represented a potent symbol of humanity's treatment of Canis lupus. Widely shared, yet dubious, perceptions of destructive animals foaming at the mouth condemned thousands of wolves to death in the 1950s. Human attitudes killed far more wolves than rabies did. While wild wolves in Banff National Park faced immediate destruction, their domestic cousins received vaccinations. Undoubtedly a program to cull all the canine pets living in Banff townsite would have provoked huge resistance, yet few protested the policy of wolf slaughter. The absence of any outrage indicated that most members of the public regarded wolves as expendable. When it came to an issue portrayed in terms of human health and livelihoods at stake, few wolf defenders emerged. Nor did park authorities question the validity of the rabies measures. Managers were confused about the proper role of wolves in the preserves. Officials had yet to formulate a fully developed system of scientific management. A 1957 document entitled "A Policy Statement Respecting Wildlife in the National Parks of Canada" reflected the transitional nature of the period. Expressing sentiments reminiscent of Whitcher, the report warned that, "every park is a potential trouble spot considering grizzlies, black bears, cougars, bobcats, coyotes, wolves, foxes and skunks." At the same time, the document paved the way for future emphasis on ecosystem management by listing the first consideration of park planning as "the need to adequately provide for the ecological requirements of the species of fauna present." Such principles conditioned park policy and management throughout North America in subsequent decades.188

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A Den of Wolf Defenders When I was working in wildlife biology, I considered it one of my heaviest burdens that everyone who had everyone hunting thought of himself as a wildlife expert. When I moved into park management, I wasn't bothered much by wildlife experts. Instead I was plagued by park experts.. ..Not just hunters, but everyone with an outdoor interest was a park expert.189 RY EDWARDS, 1965

Wildlife Service biologist D. R. Flook visited the western national parks of Canada during 1959 to assess the status of carnivores. Flook found that "wolves are very rare in Banff during the present time." He discovered that instructions issued in 1953 to shoot all wolves, coyotes and foxes had never been rescinded. With some urgency, Flook stressed that "instructions should be circularized regarding predator policy."190 The biologist insisted that predator control was no longer acceptable. In the same year, authorities terminated all measures against predatory species within Alberta's national parks. However, sanctuary for carnivores still depended on certain conditions. Policy stated that predators could be removed if they posed a danger to human life or damaged property. Kills were also justified under the rubric of "wildlife management."191 Considering the shy nature of wolves, the first two stipulations appeared highly unlikely to result in any incidents. When wildlife managers employed the general mandate of'wildlife management' for wolf control measures in subsequent years, they faced intense public opposition. While in the past, national park officials had often encountered vociferous interest groups demanding control measures, natural resource administrators faced a growing public constituency defending lupine rights during the 1960s. Literary Howls During the 1960s, increasing numbers of Canadians developed an interest in the environment and national parks. In 1960-61, Banff received over a million visitors for the first time in its history. By 1967, that figure had doubled.192 Canadian wolf biologist John Theberge

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explained how "thousands of urban dwellers spend their holidays in our parks or northern wilderness lands, and many of these people are demanding an opportunity to see or hear wolves. For them, the wolf may symbolize a wild Canada that is fast disappearing. The voices of these people are loud."193 In 1968, an association called Canadian Wolf Defenders was formed in Alberta to act as a watchdog for wolves and develop popular enthusiasm for the species. Theberge suggested that the profound change in public attitudes towards Canis lupus "stems to a large degree from the results of wolf research" which "put into public hands many new biological facts."194 Interpretative programs by the Canadian Parks Service had performed an important educative role in disseminating biological tenets to the wider populace. In Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, the transition from research method to popular interest took a direct route. Wolf howls, first used by biologists to locate packs in the park, rapidly evolved into a public event. In the summer of 1963, the first evening of'wolf listening' drew a crowd of six hundred.195 In subsequent years, thousands of people jammed park roads, eager to watch rangers elucidate howls from packs in distant valleys. Various books, articles, films and television documentaries also conveyed information about wolves to the North American public. Although wildlife officials had long emphasized that recourse to fact would redeem predators, one of the key influences on the popular mind proved to be a book blending science and sentiment. Published in 1963, Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf, told the story of a young wildlife biologist sent to the Northwest Territories to study the interactions between wolves and barren ground caribou. Mowat loosely based the work on his own experiences observing wolves in the Keewatin district for the Dominion Wildlife Service in 1948. Mowat explained that he originally intended for: the wolf to serve as a foil for the exposition of homo bureaucmtis ... but ... I became increasingly engrossed with my secondary character....Eventually the wolf took the book right out of my hands so that it became a plea for understanding, and preservation, of an extraordinarily highly evolved and attractive animal which was, and is, being harried into extinction by the murderous enmity and proclivities of man.196

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Never Cry Wolf managed to simultaneously condemn bureaucracy and exonerate wolves. The book provided a damning expose of government wildlife management policies, while offering a new narrative of Canis lupus that raised a potent challenge to older myths. From his tent on 'Wolf House Bay,' Mowat discovered a complex and affectionate lupine community rather than ferocious beasts baying for the blood of the caribou. Pack members were cast as individual, albeit anthropomorphic, characters: 'George,' the ideal father, 'Angeline,' the devoted yet feisty mother, and 'Uncle Albert,' the dependable pupsitter. Alone with the lupine family, Mowat progressed from imbuing the northern tundra with a ''''Hound of the Baskervilles atmosphere," to living an existence as a "pseudo-wolf."197 Prominent figures in the Wildlife Service and research field touted Mowat as a pseudo-biologist as well as a pseudo-wolf. Clarke commented "we find ourselves looking at a wonderful raconteur, posing as a scientist," while biologist J. F. Bendell suggested that Mowat wrote under the influence of the 'wolf juice' mentioned in the book, a heady blend of beer and preserving alcohol. Bendell criticized the portrayal of wolves as innocent victims in Never Cry Wolf, charging that, "Mowat has intended to whitewash the wolf and in the process blacken the authorities responsible for the study and management of wildlife."198 Biologists and laymen locked horns over the relative importance of presenting Canis lupus in a scientific or a sympathetic light. On December 13, 1963, Edmonton Journal reviewer Gerald McCaughey deemed Never Cry Wolf "probably one of the best Canadian books for years." The "savage wolf had been unfairly blamed for caribou decline. McCaughey concluded his review with the exclamation "Wildlife Service indeed!"199 On January 7, 1964, W. A. Fuller, a zoologist at the University of Calgary, published a retort to McCaughey entitled "A Legion of Exaggerations and Errors." Fuller accused Mowat of lacking a "proper scientific attitude," although his citation of the Alberta rabies program as an example of the necessity of wolf control cast doubt on the rectitude of the zoologist's own understanding. Rather than the bungling wolf-haters portrayed by Mowat, Fuller argued that biologists constituted "the first line of defence in the conservation movement." The zoologist recommended that Mowat should work with biologists to preserve national parks and wilderness areas instead of downgrading them "in the eyes of the public."200 A week later, "ex-northerner" Eaton McKay entered the discussion with a column in the Edmonton Journal entitled "Biologists, get off those pedestals!" McKay criticized Fuller

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for his "ivory towers" approach, arguing that, although not a "pure scientist," Mowat proved highly effective in drawing attention to the "debacle" over control.201 The debate took its most curious turn when McCaughey wrote an open letter to the Journal alleging that he was duped by Mowat. The article began "Dear Farley, I sure never thought, when I 'stowed away' [sic] on your troika, that I'd become the poor benighted babe rolled off into the ravenous mouths of all those howling 'wolfologists.'"202 The popularity of Never Cry Wolfnevertheless proved unquestionable. Mowat's prose proved both accessible and appealing to a popular audience. Its blend of comedy and tragedy generated a public outcry in support of Canis lupus. The book offered a lighthearted peep into the world of the wolf, until the epilogue, which informed readers that Canadian Wildlife Service agents placed coyote-getters at the entrance to the family den in May 1959. The last line of Never Cry Wolf read: "It is not known what results were obtained."203 The understated and sudden announcement marked a poignant ending to the book. Mowat's sudden re-entry into contemporary wildlife management decisions offered a powerful juxtaposition. The apparent demise of fictional characters George, Angeline, Albert and their pups roused readers to defend the wolves of non-fiction, animals threatened by government predator control policies in the material landscape. The Canadian Wildlife Service received correspondence from all over the world regarding Never Cry Wolf. N. S. Novakowski, Staff Specialist Mammalogist with the Wildlife Service, frequently received the task of responding to the myriad of angry letters criticizing wolf policy in the Northwest Territories. In a letter to Mrs. Edward Noyes of Brooklyn, Novakowski offered the exasperated reply: "we are well aware of Mr. Farley Mowat's book."204 In missives to irate letter-writers, officials recognized Mowat's role in dispelling misconceptions about wolves. However, the Canadian Wildlife Service felt that Never Cry Wolf caused as many problems as it solved. Administrators typically stressed that the book was not a "scientific or complete treatise on the ecological significance of wolves."205 Authorities continued to argue that preservation and predator control represented compatible goals of wildlife management. They urged that a wolf-cull had been required in Keewatin in order to reverse a decline in the caribou population, but acknowledged Canis lupus us a useful agent in locales such as Banff and Jasper where grazing animals abounded.206 Statements that wolves would be subjected to control when warranted by circumstance essentially

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articulated the same policy that had been followed in the national parks since the 1940s. However, by the 1960s, wildlife managers faced a radically different popular climate. Official claims to factual authority were questioned by a public with its own education in lupine matters, based on nascent ecological awareness, distrust of government and lack of faith in science. Some members of the public interpreted the complexities of official policy as inherently contradictory. Citizens struggled to accept that wolves upheld the natural predator-prey balance in the national parks, but represented ultimate threats to the survival of ungulate herds in other areas. While the Secretary of the Calgary Fish and Game Association wrote to congratulate the Wildlife Service on its control policy in the Northwest Territories, authorities also found themselves answerable to a large constituency who believed that the only good wolf was a live one.207

Wolves Retake Banff The haunting bowl of the wolf has returned to Banff National Park.208 Crag and, Canyon, June 17, 1987

Between 1957 and 1970, staff and visitors in Banff occasionally witnessed wolves roaming in the park. Annual sightings never numbered more than a few animals, while many seasons passed without a single record of lupine presence in the mountain preserve.209 Warden Anderson watched three wolves near the Clearwater River in 1960, and observed one individual in the Scalp Creek region four years later. However, during the late 1960s, wolves began to spread into Banff once more, moving south from Jasper and adjacent foothills. In 1969, biologist John Stelfox reported that animals ranged in the North Saskatchewan, Clearwater, and Red Deer regions.210 The healthy status of park ungulates ensured an abundant food supply for the returning predators, while the termination of Alberta's predator poisoning program in 1966 helped facilitate lupine recovery. The absence of anti-predator measures in Banff was a further factor in the resettlement. Whereas park managers in the 1940s construed the movement of wolves into Banff as a dangerous invasion, their reappearance twenty-five years later prompted a more positive reaction. Conservation managers finally recognized that national parks offered vital sanctuary for large carnivores in an environment increasingly dominated by humans. In 1968, Acting Regional

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Superintendent John Kelsall concluded that, "the large western national parks may ultimately provide the only refugia for these animals in Canada."211 Renewed lupine presence proved popular in preserves that officials believed were suffering under the burden of large grazing herds. In a proposal to conduct ecological studies on wolves in the western parks, biologist Ludwig Carbyn remarked that natural control proved vastly preferable to "contrived and artificial" attempts by humans to balance wildlife populations.212 In contrast to Mowat's romanticized praise of wolves, wildlife authorities used their own faith in scientificecological rationality as a way to accept Canis lupus. However, the restoration of wolves in Banff proved a slow process. Throughout the 1970s, the lupine population remained confined to straggler animals making occasional forays into the park. Wolves returned to traditional terrain in the heart of Banff during the early 1980s. Wardens discovered evidence of denning in the Bow Valley in 1980, and over the next few years the large predators were sighted more frequently. In 1983, a pack from the Spray Valley roamed along the banks of the Bow River. The Spray Valley wolves established a den site in the western Bow Valley during 1985, the first confirmed resident pack in Banff for many years. Two years of control had terminated lupine presence in the preserve during the mid-1950s, yet it took three decades for packs to recapture territory in the Central Rockies. The resiliency of Canis lupus eventually triumphed. Once wolves established territory in the Bow Valley, numbers soon returned to pre-1950s levels. By 1987, the Bow Valley supported two packs, the Spray and the Castle, and wolves roamed throughout most backcountry areas. People, Management, and Wolves As wolves reclaimed ancient haunts, authorities cast a critical gaze over Banff's past as a national park. Just as the reintroduction in Yellowstone was imbued with a sense of rectifying past crimes, official responses in Banff reflected an awareness of the history of prejudice and ill treatment towards predators in Canada's first national park. A column written for the Crag and Canyon entitled 'Carnivore Watch' described the "misguided efforts" of early park wardens who shot wolves in order to promote elk numbers. Meanwhile, the reappearance of Canis lupus injected vigour and vibrancy into a park landscape that had suffered under human exigencies. In a series of reports on the value of large carnivores, John Marriott described a "battle" of "the wolves of Castle

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Mountain versus one of the Bow Valley's healthy cow elk" as "nature's greatest show." According to Marriott, the lessons of past management suggested that: Humans were never meant to regulate wild populations by themselves. When we guess right we keep the wildlife species at a sustainable level, but when we guess wrong we further all sorts of unnatural processes: population decline due to overhunting or mass starvation, loss of fear, crop damage, population booms—all are direct results of humans trying to control nature.213

Whereas early park administrators saw a landscape 'to be made' in Banff, those inheriting a legacy of problems viewed nature in the national park as something best left alone. Park authorities regarded the return of the wolf as an excellent opportunity to learn more about the species. Scientific investigation and the pursuit of knowledge remained central tenets of the Canadian Parks Service. Past mistakes did not throw doubt on the validity of scientific rationales, rather illustrated the importance of basing policy decisions on accurate ecological data. The Park Bureau's Interpretative Service asserted that positive change for wolves had come about precisely because of "man's changing attitude towards predators and an increasing knowledge of these species."214 Seeking to gain information on the new lupine residents, park authorities initiated the Central Rockies Wolf Project. The Warden Service captured and radio-collared the first wolf in Banff during April 1987, 'Gabi,' a silver female wolf from the Castle Pack. The following year, managers radio-collared two wolves from the Spray Pack. The capture of 'Dusk,' the white alpha female, and 'Midnight,' a black male, involved luring the pair to a clearing using road-killed ungulates, and shooting them with tranquilizer darts from awaiting helicopters. In March 1989, the Warden Service darted a second animal from the Castle Pack, a young male referred to as 'Timber.' Research gained a major boost during 1989 with the initiation of a Canid Study, funded by Parks Canada, the World Wildlife Fund, and Environment Canada. Headed by wolf biologist Paul Paquet, the five-year initiative aimed to gather information on Banff's wolf population; their movements, mortality, interactions with humans, and relationship with prey species. By the end of 1989, two more wolves from the Spray Pack, 'Dianne' and 'Blizzard,' had been trapped and fitted with radio collars. The Canid

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Study flew telemetry flights every two weeks during the summer months, and every five days between September and April, in order to track the progress of Banff's wolf packs.215 The return of the wolf to Banff captured the interest of local people. In 1987, the Crag and Canyon welcomed the predator back after a prolonged absence, enthusing that "the haunting howl of the wolf has returned to Banff National Park." Such romantic sentiments differed vastly from the newspaper's comments on lupine vocalizations in 1948, when an article described how lupine "long deep howls ... joined in a most unappreciated chorus" and "disturbed the slumbers of Banffites." In the 1980s, some locals instead lost sleep out of concern for resident wolves. Reservations concerned the capture and radio-collaring of animals. In 1989, the Crag and Canyon assured readers that the method of darting wolves from helicopters was "a procedure designed to minimise stress."216 The Ottawa Citizen, meanwhile, suggested that wolves remained unconcerned by the tracking program, noting how "after two months of helicopter tracking" Dianne appeared "used to the noisy intrusion, glances up casually and ambles out of sight."217 In June 1991, the Canyon interviewed Paul Paquet, who admitted that traps looked "vicious" but had been modified to cause minimum injury. Trapping represented a justifiable "trade off given the immense data collected that would aid in protecting Canis lupus. Lupine Apocalypse Now While traps appeared a potent reminder of past eradication programs in the national park, aerial darting of wolves contained echoes of a more recent debate over wolf-kills in British Columbia. During the early 1980s, wildlife managers commenced a wolf-cull project using helicopters in the Muskwa and Keichika districts of B.C. Canis lupus served as a scapegoat for a decline in grazing animals caused mainly by human hunters and habitat loss. The instigators of the British Columbian program stressed the need to reduce a lupine population that was severely depleting regional populations of ungulates. Myths proposing the wolf as a prodigious and bloodthirsty murderer were recalled by provincial officials as facts. In one letter to a concerned citizen, Environment Minister Tony Brummett exclaimed:

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Wolves may be pretty in a book or a contrived movie. In the bush under real conditions, they are one of the most vicious, wasteful and unrelenting killers in existence. Contrary to the Farley Mowat version, they do not selectively kill. A pack of wolves will kill as many animals in a herd as they can, often tearing them open and leaving them to die slowly.218

The Environment Minister's conclusions illustrated that wolves still faced hatred and persecution, even within official conservation departments. Brummett's reference to Farley Mowat also proved a pertinent one. Controversial aerial hunts in Muskwa and Keichika districts took place only a few hundred miles north of shooting locations used for the 1983 Disney movie of Never Cry Wolf. Rather than film cameras, packs further north faced high-powered rifles, wielded by wildlife managers leaning out of'helicopter gunships.'219 Such imagery proved more reminiscent of the Vietnam war movie Apocalypse Now. The disclosure that eighty percent of the wolf population in Keichka and Muskwa were targeted suggested a policy of extermination rather than management.220 Ex-Greenpeace activist, Paul Watson, emerged as a key figure in opposition to the extermination project. Having adopted the native spiritual name 'Gray Wolf Kora-Ayn,' Watson seemed an appropriate person to fight for Canis lupus.221 Outraged by the atrocities in British Columbia, Watson established Project Wolf in January 1984. The organization acted as a coalition for other environmental groups, and collectively represented nearly a million people. In February 1984, Watson, along with other environmental activists, initiated a direct action campaign against the hunt. The protesters travelled to Fort Nelson to confront the wolf killers. Intentions to charter a plane and fly between the wolves and the helicopters proved impossible due to local hostilities and extreme conditions of minus thirty degrees Celsius. Project Wolf nevertheless scored a media victory. Television cameras followed the movements of activists in the North, keeping the issue in the public eye. People across North America roused to oppose the plan, participating in letter-writing campaigns, demonstrations and a tourist boycott.222 The Sierra Club of Western Canada produced a booklet "The (Other) Wolf Story," which asked "what about the rights of wolves?"223 In the Calgary Herald, Watson even proposed his own predator reduction scheme, explaining that Project Wolf would pay a bounty on the wolf hunters, handing out two thousand dollars for the best photograph of

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John Elliott, the biologist running the program, "with weapon in hand preferably in a killing stance." In a statement reminiscent of Mowat's cynicism over bureaucratic authority, Watson noted, "since politicians are a fairly common and somewhat of a worthless species, the best headand-shoulders shot of [Environment Minister] Brummett, suitable for mounting, will be awarded a prize of $50."224 During September 1985, pro-wolf forces thought they had achieved an important victory when British Columbia authorities made a sudden announcement terminating the aerial shooting plan. Nevertheless, in 1987, Elliott recommenced a helicopter hunt project, hoping to kill two hundred wolves in the Muskwa district. Opposition resumed, led by Friends of the Wolf, a new organization formed by Watson. The group subverted the program by parachuting into the target area and preventing authorities from shooting wolves. Meanwhile, a group of American and Canadian protesters chained themselves to a desk belonging to the Minister of the Environment. Six residents of Missoula, Montana, also drove north raising public consciousness on the issue. Such protests raised the ardour of anti-wolf forces. Ken Ellis, writing to the Missoulian, complained that, "apparently these six people have decided what is better for British Columbia than all the paid government biologists who did the studies indicating the overpopulation of wolves in that area." Ellis accused Friends of the Wolf of sentimentalism, asking "did the guys get their start by watching the movie Never Cry Wo/f ?"225 Certainly the organization gained converts to its cause courtesy of Mowat, not least because he agreed to put an advertisement for the group inside the cover of his best-seller. But, while Friends of the Wolf took every opportunity to achieve publicity through symbolic demonstrations and emotional pleas, they also recognized the value of other tactics. Public displays kept the issue in the news, while legal means finally secured the cessation of the wolf-cull. In 1988, a court case brought by Friends of the Wolf and the Western Canadian Wilderness Committee ruled that the hunt contravened the Wildlife and Firearms Act, banning shooting from aircraft. The wolf issue in British Columbia spurred intense debate across the Rockies in Alberta. In October 1989, a group calling itself the Foundation for North American Big Game was inspired rather than outraged by the Keichka and Muskwa episodes and proposed that "Banff has too many wolves and a B.C. style aerial hunt by hunters is necessary." President Archie Nesbit proclaimed that elk and bighorn sheep faced destruction from wolves in the park, and hoped that "somehow—because

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we can't seem to get the message through in Alberta—somebody will undertake a wolf control program." Canadian park authorities disagreed with Nesbit's portrayal. Banff's Associate Superintendent, Gary Sergeant, retorted: "National parks are a natural environment and a natural process must be allowed to evolve."226 Nevertheless, Nesbit's claims found favour with the Alberta Fish and Game Association, itself a long-term advocate of wolf control. Angry that the government refused to implement control for fear of alienating a largely non-hunting public, the association resolved to take the predator issue into its own hands. In 1989, the organization initiated a 'Predator Management Plan' to encourage trapping in the Rocky Mountain foothills, advertising free traps and a one-hundreddollar wolf bounty.227 The private wolf-kill program stimulated intense opposition. Local environmental groups, such as the Canadian Wolf Defenders and the Bow Valley Naturalists, argued against the scheme. Both groups circulated a petition protesting the bounty, which was left on display in Banff's Sundance Mall for locals and visitors to sign.228 Environmentalists argued that the Fish and Game Association's campaign originated from self-interest, and accused hunters of wanting to kill wolves so they could shoot more ungulates themselves. Whereas hunting groups regarded the British Columbia plan as a model solution to Banff's wolf 'crisis,' environmentalists drew a different conclusion. To the Alberta Naturalist, humans rather than wolves appeared to be the problem.229 In Banff National Park, the rarity of wolves rather than their abundance represented a critical wildlife issue. Past management decisions had created a park overburdened with grazing animals and lacking in predators. The ultimate threat facing Banff and the wildlands of Alberta was not lupine overcrowding, but human interference. Homo sapiens rather than Canis lupus needed managing.

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Wolf Paradise Lost? The day will come when the population of Canada will be ten times as great as it is now but the national parks ensure that every Canadian ... will still have free access to vast areas possessing some of the finest scenery in Canada, in which the beauty of the landscape is protected from profanation, the natural wild animals plants and forests preserved, and the peace and solitude of primeval nature retained.230 JAMES HARKIN, The Origin and Meaning of the National Parks of Canada [undated]

By 1994, Banff was part of a network of thirty-six protected areas in Canada representing diverse natural regions from the Pacific Coast Mountains to the Atlantic Coastal Plain.231 The preserves had evolved into important symbols of national and natural identity, places for humans to escape the stresses of urban living and refuges for flora and fauna. However, in Canada's oldest park, the ambiguities of maintaining "ecological integrity ... while providing opportunities for public enjoyment" proved evident.232 Banff represented the 'bad penny' of the park system as well as its 'crown jewel.' The Bow Valley Study, commissioned in March 1994 by Environment Canada to assess Banff's ecological health, found the integrity of the preserve under threat from human recreational use and economic development. The study reported that "the Banff National Park of today is the product of Canada's century long search to define a national park, and of the compromises that were made along the way."233 That search for meaning had affected both the demonization and the deification of Canis lupus. Wolves living in the park during the 1990s, meanwhile, faced a legacy of hazards due to Banff's historic focus on tourism. 234 Although Banff conferred considerably more sanctuary than in the 1910s and 1920s under Harkin's tutelage, lupine survival remained in jeopardy. By the late twentieth century, Banff Avenue, with its malls, neon signs, supermarkets and traffic, appeared scarcely recognizable from a photograph of a dirt track, bordered by a few shacks and a single telegraph pole, taken one hundred years earlier. In 1995, the town of Banff supported a permanent human population of 7,600.235 The Sierra Club dubbed Banff "the construction capital of western Canada."236 Built on meadows and aspen forest, the townsite subsumed ideal wolf terrain.237

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The sprawling conurbation also posed a major obstacle to lupine travel through the region. Situated at the confluence of the Bow, Cascade and Spray valleys, the area comprised an important lupine crossroads. Generations of wolves used the junction to roam between eastern and western ranges, until human settlements and transport routes appropriated prime land. Animals were thus forced to expend extra energy taking lengthy detours around the town, or risk contact with people.238 Warden Rick Kunelius claimed to have seen four wolves crossing the river near the Banff Springs Hotel, but packs rarely ranged within one kilometre of the townsite.239 The sprawling conurbation of Banff also interfered with predator-prey dynamics. Canis lupus had been heralded as a "natural regulator" who would restore ecological balance to the national park, but lupine hunting remained compromised by human influence.240 In 1993, the Crag and Canyon warned of a "subtle crisis which grips the Bow Valley."241 The blockage created by the townsite created an effective east-west divide. East of the town, wolves failed to reclaim territory where they had roamed in the 1950s. Elk populations thrived in the absence of predators, while their voracious appetite for aspen stands transformed the vegetation of the eastern lowlands. The grazers also wandered the town itself, feeding on succulent lawns in the security of Banff's built environment. Fully habituated to humans, elk became the scourge of some residents who complained about animals breaking into gardens. In 1936, Mabel Williams celebrated how "the wild deer were so much at home in Banff they would come to the very doors of houses and take food from the hands of little children."242 Fifty years on, some residents found the presence of ungulates in the townsite exasperating rather than endearing. By contrast, elk populations in the western Bow Valley experienced a severe decline after wolves re-established territories from Lake Louise to Vermillion Lakes in the 1980s. Increased levels of predation had a severe impact on elk herds already adversely affected by high levels of mortality. Wolves, being adaptable predators, shifted to hunting deer and bighorn sheep. Nevertheless, the impact of the elk decline on the long-term survival of wolves in the Bow Valley remained uncertain. In winter, wolves used the Canadian Pacific Railroad as a travel route, taking advantage of the ploughed tracks to move more easily through the snowy landscape. Animals also feasted on carrion meals offered on the CPR line. Although aiding movements and supplementing lupine diets, the railway exerted a profoundly destructive influence on Banff's packs. Travelling along the railway rendered wolves particularly

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susceptible to collisions with the twenty-five to thirty locomotives that passed through the national park daily. Elk often paid for grain meals spilled by passing freight trains with their lives, and between September 1986 and February 1995, thirty-two percent of all wolf mortalities in the Bow Valley resulted from encounters with trains.243 In 1990, the Calgary Herald compared the howl of a train with the howl of a wolf.244 The train still represented civilization and the wolf symbolized wilderness, but the roles of locomotive and lupine in Banff National Park had been reappraised. Roads in Banff displayed the same lack of respect for lupine trails as their steel counterparts. The first car drove into Banff in 1904 along the railroad tracks, and, by 1995,14,518 vehicles passed through the park's eastern entrance every day.245 Between 1986 and 1995, sixty-eight percent of all lupine deaths in Banff's Bow Valley resulted from collisions with vehicles.246 In 1965, biologist Ry Edwards had described wildlife management in national parks as "the kind of preservation you practice on your car, the effort being to maintain as well as possible while using it at the same time."247 Comparing nature preservation with motor vehicle upkeep was apposite in the case of Banff. After the routing of the Trans-Canada Highway (TCH) over Kicking Horse Pass in the early 1960s, park authorities faced the task of maintaining a wildlife reserve and a continental trunk route. Further contradictions came in 1979, when the government upgraded the eastern park section of the TCH into a four-lane expressway. The Trans-Canada Highway exerted a critical impact on Banff's wolves. Between 1989 and 1995, eleven animals lost their lives on park roads.248 Attempts to mitigate the impact of the TCH in the 1980s yielded mixed results. A lowered speed limit and fencing helped to reduce elk mortality, while coyotes learned to hunt sheep by driving them into roadside fences. Banff's wolves nonetheless exhibited reticence over using underpasses. In four years of research, only fourteen radio-collared wolves utilized the tunnels.249 Animals also refused to venture across the tarmac expanses, resulting in the lack of any lupine populations in the Bow Valley south of the TCH. The Bow Valley study was subtitled "At a Crossroads."250 Given the fate of Canis lupus in the region, the heading appeared a pertinent one. The size of Banff National Park posed a further problem for wolves. Although spanning over six thousand square kilometres, the preserve was too small to provide adequately for resident lupines. Vast areas of the park remained relatively untouched by highways, buildings, and even

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trails, but these towering ranges of rock and ice proved inhospitable to resident fauna. Only nine percent of Banff's total area represented high quality wolf habitat.251 In 1993, only one of Banff's five packs roamed territory totally within park borders. Individual wolves also displayed a penchant for travelling large distances. In one foray during summer 1989, Midnight, a particularly restless wolf from the Spray Pack, wandered south to Peter Lougheed Provincial Park and back to the pack's den, a round trip of nearly a hundred kilometres. Another wolf from Banff travelled south to Eureka, Montana, a distance of over eight hundred kilometres.252 Given such movements, human activities outside the preserve played a decisive role in determining survival prospects for Banff's predators. Protecting park wolves proved difficult when their travels led them across federal, provincial, and even international boundaries. Habitat loss through tourism, natural resource extraction, logging and ranching compromised places available for Canis lupus, while attitudes towards predators often proved far from benign. Between 1986 and 1993, seventy-five percent of wolf deaths in lands just west of Banff resulted from encounters with humans.253 In British Columbia and Alberta, the wolf remained designated as a game animal and furbearer. Residents did not require licences to kill wolves. Landowners could shoot any animals straying within eight kilometres of their property. In 1991, a new Wolf Management Plan relaxed already liberal trapping regulations with the intention of increasing 'harvests' north of the Bow River.254 One environmentalist, frustrated by the treatment of wolves in the region, postulated: "Imagine where wolf recovery in Yellowstone would be if the Wyoming legislature and local stockmen had the major, and final, say regarding the wolf reintroduction EIS and/or recovery plan." He failed to predict a happy future for Canis lupus, viewing Alberta in the 1990s as reminiscent of "the early years of the American West ... the times, of course, during which the wolf and grizzly bear were exterminated. "25S In 1993, Banff biologist Tom Hurd advised: "Consider Banff and the adjoining parks and wilderness areas the critical test of our collective resolve to protect wildlife."256 The fate of wolves entailed a test of ecological responsibility, a measure of national park priorities. Banff's 1997 Management Plan articulated the need to restore habitat and mitigate human impacts on sensitive species such as wolves and grizzlies. The plan emphasized how "many activities sanctioned by former policies would not be considered today. In fact, many of the park's current efforts

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are aimed at restoring systems that were radically altered as a result of former policies."257 Officials in the late twentieth century grappled with a legacy of past management decisions favouring visitors over faunal residents. In order to encourage natural wildlife movements, Parks Canada initiated a construction program to build two fifty-metre wide overpasses across the Trans-Canada Highway. Authorities also closed the airstrip, buffalo paddock, and cadet camp in an attempt to restore wildlife corridors in the Bow Valley. A population ceiling often thousand was imposed on Banff town. The core vision for the park in the twentyfirst century revolved around constructing "healthy relationships between people and nature."258 Encounters with humans had certainly proved less than wholesome for Banff's lupines in the past. Wolf history in Canada's first national park comprised a repeating cycle of territorial consolidation followed by retreat. The fortunes of returning canines were always insecure.259

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Jasper National Park, Alberta, (map courtesy of Parks Canada)

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Wolves in Jasper National Park From Earth-Maker Wolf to the Fur Trapper There can be no doubt that variable numbers [of wolves] have haunted the region far back into antiquity.1 J. DEWEY SOPER, Canadian Wildlife Service, 1970

E

XTENDING NORTHWEST from the town of Banff, Highway 93 trails the Bow River upstream to its source and then meanders north alongside the tributaries of the North Saskatchewan. At Sunwapta Pass, overshadowed by snow-capped peaks and rocky outcrops, Highway 93 crosses into Jasper National Park. Banff National Park melts effortlessly into its northern neighbour in the grandiose amphitheatre of the Columbia Icefield. The six glaciers visible today once formed part of a vast ice sheet that carved the rugged peaks and deep valleys of the Canadian Rockies. Millions of years ago, the Athabasca Glacier ground its way north to where the town of Jasper now stands, gouging a trench through the heart of the present-day national park. In a creation story told by the Native Cree, the world was carved by lupine dexterity and a ball of moss rather than the relentless grinding of ice on rock. The legend of Earth-maker Wolf described a time when an endless expanse of water covered the land. The trickster, Wisagatcak, uprooted a number of submerged trees to construct a raft, and gathered on it many creatures swimming in the ocean. Wisagatcak then instructed a raven to leave the craft and search for terra firma. The avian messenger returned after a day having spied nothing but water. In the biblical story of the Flood, Noah harboured faith in his god to save the Ark after a raven's fruitless flight. Wisagatcak instead called to a powerful lupine spirit to rescue the drifting menagerie. Earth-maker Wolf dutifully appeared with a ball of moss in his mouth. The canine deity circled round the raft, slowly unravelling the fronds of lichen. The Cree legend

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celebrated how "the moss grew, and the earth formed on it. It spread on the raft and kept on growing until it made the whole world. This is how the Earth was created."2 While geologists may doubt the power of Earth-maker Wolf to cultivate Rocky Mountain granite from damp lichen (instantaneously at least), Jasper's highlands did present primeval stomping grounds for Canis lupus. Travelling packs made forays over mountain passes, through forests of Douglas fir, and along alpine valleys. Approximately five miles west of today's Jasper townsite stands Mount Muhigan, or Wolf Mountain, a towering peak 8,559 feet high. Wolves may not have crafted the Rockies, but the rugged landscape bears the mark of their enduring influence.

From the Stone Age to the Rifle Age Human presence in Jasper dates back at least eight thousand years. Prehistoric bands wandered the valleys searching for food, and sheltered from the elements in hillside caverns. At Pocahontas Cave (near the eastern entrance of the present-day national park), one Stone Age hunter left the imprint of a human hand in red ochre, immortalizing Native occupancy in the ancient rock. Inside the cave, archaeologists later unearthed stone tools and bones from large mammals, the lasting remnants of successful hunting drives thousands of years ago.3 Prior to European contact, Jasper supported a community of Sarcee Indians.4 The Snake Indians lived along the river that bears their name, while the nearby Snaring River earned its title from a local tribe who set traps to capture browsing moose and bighorn sheep.5 Indigenous groups moved camp with the seasons, exerting a subtle impact on their surroundings. Small bands pursued local fauna using simple weapons. Animal life flourished in the region alongside the aboriginal hunter-gatherers, species finding sustenance and shelter amidst Rocky Mountain peaks. River valleys provided succulent grasses and tender saplings for browsing ungulates and gnawing beavers, while wolves emerged from earthy den sites to survey their territories from hillside vantages. Age-old subsistence patterns in the Jasper region drastically altered during the 1700s. Forced from territories in eastern Canada by European colonizers, the Cree and Assiniboine (Stoney) moved west across the prairies to assume control of lands above the North Saskatchewan River. Existing groups in the region were displaced from ancestral terrain or

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dissuaded from visiting traditional hunting grounds. The Sekani, or 'People of the Rocks,' who ranged north of Jasper, found their movements severely curtailed. In the early 1800s, explorer Daniel Harmon found the Sekani eking out a precarious existence in the Rocky Mountains, on the margins of Stoney territory.6 Jasper's sheltered alpine valleys nevertheless failed to insulate local tribes from changes sweeping the wider region. Place names in Jasper attested to the incursions of Cree and Assiniboine bands, who imprinted landmarks with their appellations.7 Invading braves armed with rifles adeptly despatched both human and faunal residents. The Sarcee fled their historic territory, and the Snake Indians were murdered by carousing Assiniboines during a supposed 'peace banquet' near the centre of the present-day national park.8 Resident canines, meanwhile, suffered an unfortunate fate at the hands of feasting Cree, who regarded the predator that they called 'Mehin-gen' as a culinary delicacy.9 Europeans, Wolves, and Fur The first white explorers and fur trappers ventured into the Jasper region during the late 1700s, journeying west by birch-bark canoe, fashioning portages across rapids and cutting tracks into steep river banks. Alexander Mackenzie compiled a detailed record of his pioneering voyage overland to the Pacific in 1792-93. A literary trail traced the Scottish explorer's route across a western landscape of rugged scenery and abundant wildlife. Approaching the Rockies along the Peace River, Mackenzie noted that "some parts, indeed, offer a beautiful scenery, in some degree similar to that which we passed on the second day of our voyage [near Peace Point in northern Alberta], and equally enlivened with the elk and the buffalo, who were feeding in great numbers." The arduous mountain terrain nevertheless hampered the writing activities of the intrepid traveller. Confessing that his journal for the last days of May 1793 proved "less distinct than usual," Mackenzie explained how an overhanging branch had swept away his trail notes while he was taking an afternoon doze in the canoe.10 Canis lupusprovcd a customary sight as the Mackenzie party traversed the mountains, streams and forests of the Canadian West. Travelling with Beaver and Sekani guides approximately a hundred and fifty miles north of Jasper, Mackenzie claimed that, "a wolf was so bold as to venture among the Indian lodges, and was very near to carrying off a child." Camped amidst western peaks a few months later, the travellers

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encountered another inquisitive wild canine. The explorer recounted how his trusty dog raised the alarm, drawing attention to a wolf "parading a ridge a few yards behind us." Mackenzie concluded that the animal "had been most probably allured by the scent of our small portion of fresh meat."11 Mackenzie wrote evocative descriptions of the western landscape and its residents, but also couched the value of wild nature in financial terms. Along the Saskatchewan River, the spirited Scot noted a wealth of furbearers: Beaver, and other animals, whose furs are valuable, are amongst the inhabitants of the North-West branch, and the plains are covered with buffalos, wolves, and small foxes ... it is now understood, that where the plains terminate towards the rocky mountain, there is a space of hilly country clothed with wood, and inhabited also by animals of the fur kind.12

The diarist translated the wildlife bounty of the Canadian Rockies into profit for his employers at the Northwest Company (NWC), the value and identity of beaver, wolves and foxes encapsulated by their coats. Mackenzie and his trader contemporaries envisioned Jasper's mountains as an alpine storehouse of piled-high pelts, a vast reserve of faunal capital. In 1795, the NWC established Fort Augustus trading post at the confluence of the North Saskatchewan and Sturgeon Rivers, approximately 150 miles east of Jasper. The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) responded by constructing its own fort, Edmonton, "within a musket shot" of the NWC post.13 Native Americans liaised with European immigrants in fostering trade at the outposts. The Cree often pitched their tents on the banks of the North Saskatchewan, bringing beaver, wolf, buffalo and fox pelts from the West to exchange for provisions at Fort Augustus, while the Assiniboines bartered wolf skins for "arms and ammunition, rum, tobacco, knives and various baubles."14 However, Native peoples were far from equal partners in the fur trade, often becoming unwitting victims as well as willing participants. The price of a dead wolf was frequently measured in watered down whisky, and sometimes laced with the same poisons used to kill Cams lupus. Explorations by David Thompson in the early 1800s signalled the further encroachment of the fur trade on the Jasper region. In January 1811, the indefatigable traveller became the first white man to map

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Athabasca Pass, thereby securing a new route to western trapping grounds.15 As he traversed the pass, Thompson marvelled at the montane vista before him, of an enormous translucent green glacier, steep rocky walls and "a little forest of pines." The explorer remarked that "it was to me a most exhilarating sight but to my uneducated men a dreadful sight, they had no scientific object in view, their feelings were of the place they were."16 With temperatures dropping well below freezing, buffeted by harsh winds which caused sap to freeze in the trunks of stunted trees, the men of the brigade focused on their own survival rather than appreciating the scenery. Trudging the Athabascan snowscape, Thompson's crew became consumed by fears of a dangerous animal stalking them. The inhospitable terrain with its strange ice formations denoted an alien and threatening land, and the travellers conjured visions of a suitably monstrous inhabitant. The men observed or heard wolves during their sojourns in lower climes, and were probably familiar with tales of ferocious packs attacking travellers, stories that usually ended with search parties finding a few scraps of clothing and blood in the snow. Canis lupus represented an obvious demon lurking in the Jasper landscape. Yet, the party seemed unperturbed by journeying through wolf country. Thompson believed that Homo sapiens commanded a degree of respect that forced even the most boisterous canine into submission.17 Instead, the men exchanged stories about an ice-age mammoth dwelling in the primeval landscape, a contemporary of the dire wolf who had survived in the icy and isolated mountains. Thompson noted "a strong belief that the haunt of the Mammoth is about this defile, I questioned several, none could positively say, they had seen him, but their belief I found firm and not to be shaken."18 Imaginations were fuelled by the discovery of a large and unfamiliar footprint in the snow. Thompson reported that "we were in no humour to follow him: the Men and Indians would have it to be a young mammoth and I held it to be the track of a large old grizled bear."19 Other early explorers envisioned strange and primitive creatures in Jasper's glacial terrain. Trapper Ross Cox, who crossed Athabasca Pass six years after Thompson's foray, remembered hearing Native guides talk of a three-hundred-foot monster, with a roar akin to thunder, who resided in the icy wastes. Travellers even saw prehistoric beasts represented in rocky form, naming 'Mastodon Peak' for its "fancied resemblance ... to the legendary monster supposed to inhabit this area."20 Fears about the woolly behemoth were nevertheless subsumed in the quest to secure furbearers, and, by the 1820s Jasper had become a

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Trapper's cabin in Fallen Timber River Country - foothills of Canadian Rockies (National Archives of Canada, PA-040620)

key route in the western trading enterprise. Scores of trappers followed in Thompson's footsteps, traversing Athabasca Pass to reach the Columbia River and the Pacific. Further north, fur brigades blazed a trail across Yellowhead Pass to access New Caledonian trapping grounds. More trading crews navigated mountain passes in Jasper than anywhere else in the Canadian Rockies, leading one historian to label the Athabasca and Yellowhead trails as the "highways of the fur trade in its most glorious days, routes rich in history and romance."21 Fur companies consolidated their hold on the region by establishing posts inside the boundaries of the present-day park. In 1812, David Thompson's clerk, William Henry, set up a supplies branch at Oldfort Hill. The NWC built Rocky Mountain House (later known as Jasper House after its proprietor Jasper Hawse) on the northern shores of Brule Lake the following year. These outposts provided welcome respite for fur brigades. Having negotiated the swift flowing currents of the Athabasca River, westbound travellers berthed their canoes on the still waters of Brule Lake and unloaded their supplies ready for the trek over the mountains. Resting at the crude log cabins,

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Rocky Mountain voyagers found time to revel in the scenic grandeur of the valley. HBC Governor George Simpson, who visited "Jasper's House" on a tour of western posts during 1824, celebrated its "beautifully wild and romantic" location.22 Exalting William Henry's depot as "surrounded by green and smiling prairies and superb woodlands," tourist Gabriel Franchere merely regretted that "there is nobody there to enjoy these rural beauties and to praise, while admiring them, the Author of Nature."23 With the arrival of trapping parties, Jasper's valleys offered less and less solace for local wolves. In The Fur Hunters of the Far West (1855),, Alexander Ross reminisced how trappers idled away their leisure hours pursuing local canines. Men scattered "bones or bits of meat on the ground as decoys" and took pot shots at animals hungry enough to approach the bait.24 Wolves preyed on horses put out to pasture or corralled near fur encampments, and trappers responded to predatory incursions on their steeds with vigour. At She-whaps Lake trading post, in present-day British Columbia, an Oakinacken Chief warned Ross of: a great band of strange wolves some hundreds in number and big as buffaloes coming up the river, and they kill every horse, none can escape them .... They are so fierce that no man can approach them, and so strong and hairy that neither arrows nor balls can kill them.25

Ross nonetheless dismissed the account of the legendary wolves as "mere fable." When a pack of conventional lupine intruders entered the camp a few nights later and killed five horses, Ross laid a dozen steel traps and pursued one unfortunate animal with a trap on his leg for twenty-five miles over "rocks, ravines, hills and dales" before despatching him with lead shot.26 Fur traders at Jasper House instituted a comprehensive campaign against local wolves. Charged with protecting three hundred and fifty horses that the HBC maintained in the Athabasca Valley, traders laced nearby wolf trails with strychnine bait. Postmasters regarded lupine presence with suspicion, and responded to predatory attacks on valuable pack animals with alacrity. Botanist James Hector, journeying north from his expeditions with Palliser in Banff, offered a first-hand account of poisoning activities at the Jasper post during 1859. Hector related how: A pack of thick-wood wolves have been killing a number of horses belonging to the Company during the winter, and the hunter

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having found a fine young mare just freshly killed the other day, salted the carcass well with strychnine, and this morning we set off to observe the effect.27

The two men crossed Jasper Lake and trailed for two miles through the woods. A clearing in the trees revealed several animals strewn around the toxic bait, some already dead and others in agonizing pain. Hector recorded: four enormous wolves, besides five or six of a smaller species, while about a score of ravens were lying about ... some lying on their backs with only the power to croak, and others wading about in the snow in a most solemn manner, with their wings trailing behind them.28

The botanist distinguished between those unfortunates caught up in the dietary deception, and the family of lupines, which he deemed the "real offenders." Traders from Jasper House had pursued the pack for some time, employing traps and poison to vanquish their canine foes. In the seconds it took to tear a few mouthfuls of meat, the fate of the renegade wolves had finally been determined. Only one pack member survived, a battle-scarred wolf who possessed an uncanny ability to cheat capture. Not only had the wolf avoided the deadly feast, but, on a previous occasion, gnawed his way out of a trap, sacrificing a leg in the process.29 Many wolves followed the example of their three-legged relative in Jasper and learned to be highly suspicious of people. Wild canines tended to avoid close encounters with travellers, a wise course of action given the bullets and rocks which human parties habitually deployed against them. Observers often misconstrued lupine evasiveness as a sign of pusillanimity. "I have always found them the most cowardly of animals,— when caught in a trap, or wounded by a gun, or when cornered up so that they could not escape, I invariably killed them with a club or tomahawk, and I never met with any resistance," remarked one Canadian hunter.30 Nevertheless, the occasional trapper's tale related how canine distrust of Homo sapiens turned to rage and retribution. According to Alexander Ross, seventeen 'vigilante' wolves once forced two NWC men to take refuge in a tree for several hours. Rather than disperse at the sound of rifle shots, the pack snapped at the heels of the fleeing traders, and patrolled around their treetop shelter for some time.31

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The folklore of the forest, as told by Ross, depicted a verdant world turned upside down, the hunter becoming the hunted and the underdog turning on the sapient master. Keen to entertain avid listeners with curious and lively tales, trappers often combined personal experience with embellishment to create a superlative story. The life of the trapper, in common with that of the Native American, involved intimate interaction with the natural world, and fauna! forms regularly proved the only companions of the roving mountain man. Animal personalities loomed large in wilderness yarns, although portrayals of a sentient sylvan community lacked the spiritualism inherent in Native legends. Trapper's tales also harked back to European forest lore in depicting Canis lupus as a conniving denizen of dusky groves. Akin to the lost and weary traveller in medieval Europe, the unfortunate trapper at times felt alienated and outnumbered in the bestial domain, a solitary figure at the mercy of physical threats and tangible fears. Yet the mountain man brought particularly North American traits to his storytelling, aggrandizing himself as a romantic frontiersman battling adversity in the wilds, a survivor who faced trials but gained stature in the woods. The wolf, meanwhile, denoted an intelligent adversary with inveterate tracking skills. Such themes were ably demonstrated in a tale concerning Jim Bridger. The seasoned trapper reputedly wandered into a lupine ambush while laying beaver traps in the Bitterroot Mountains, Montana. Bridger "ran for the nearest tree" and climbed up into the lofty canopy, safely out of reach. After prowling around for some time, most of the pack loped off, leaving a single wolf standing guard.32 According to Bridger, the wolves returned "with a beaver whom they set to chewing the tree down."33 The beaver presumably allied with the wolves to thwart the trapper's activities, having first secured lupine promises of safe passage back to the sanctuary of the watery lodge. Despite such animated narratives of a canine-rodent alliance, trappers remained the dominant militia in the forest. Wolves in the Canadian Rockies found their skills severely tested by a two-legged enemy with many means at his disposal. Poisoned baits and rifle wielding brigade men threatened those roaming Jasper's valleys. Traders working in the region feasted on elk, deer and bison, grazing animals that wolves depended on for their own survival. Trappers, explorers and hunters ate into the local ungulate population, causing food shortages for local people and local packs. In the 1820s, postmaster Michael Klyne described how bands of hungry Shuswap Indians came to Jasper House begging for food, while Hector noted a dearth of grazing animals in the region a few decades later.34

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The HBC abandoned Jasper House during the 1870s, yet pressures on Jasper's wildlife persisted as sportsmen, prospectors and settlers moved into the area. By 1900, human hunters, forest fires and a series of harsh winters had wiped out elk and bison from their historic haunts everywhere but the Brazeau Valley. Regional populations of deer, moose and mountain sheep suffered from freezing conditions and hails of bullets. Faced with continuing persecution and lack of food, Cants lupus struggled to survive. In 1896, J. Alden Loring, a zoologist with the United States Biological Survey, spied wolf tracks occasionally between Jasper House and Smoky River, and heard a solitary howl near Grande Cache.35 Lewis Swift, homesteader, outfitter, and part-time trapper in the Athabasca Valley, only managed to kill two wolves in the area between 1894 and 1911,36 Packs may have persisted in remote northern areas, but otherwise wolves were rare in Jasper by the end of the nineteenth century.

Nature, Railroad, and National Park The scenery, as we approached the mountains, was becoming bolder every hour ... and we were straining our eyes to catch the first glimpse of the perpetual snows of the mighty barrier in our path.37 GEORGE SIMPSON, Narrative of a Journey Around the World (1847)

In sum r 1872, Walter Moberly, district engineer with the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), surveyed the Jasper region for a suitable rail route across the Rocky Mountain barrier to the Pacific. Moberly explored various mountain trails, traversing the Continental Divide byway of the Athabasca, Fraser and Yellowhead passes. That September, Moberly met with a surveying party led by Sir Sandford Fleming, Chief Engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway, on the banks of the Miette River. The men spent the night in the log cabin of Jasper House, which one of Fleming's group described as "untenanted, locked and shuttered."38 In years past, fur brigades travelling to Caledonian trapping grounds had rested at the trading post before driving horse-trains over Yellowhead Pass. When Sandford Fleming cast his gaze over the track he envisaged a tributary of steel approaching from the east, with coal-powered locomotives traversing the Rockies. The Miette Valley offered a gentle

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grade for engines to climb, and Yellowhead Pass, at an elevation of 1,131 metres, denoted the lowest transcontinental crossing point in the Canadian Rockies. Fleming duly recommended the Yellowhead trail as the optimum route for a Pacific-bound railway. Reverend George M. Grant, who accompanied Fleming's survey party, felt that nature colluded in deciding Jasper's future as a transportation corridor. Imposing a subtle geographical determinism on the fur and railroad enterprises in the West, the churchman noted how "[I]t looks as if nature had united all her forces to make this the natural highway into the heart of the Rocky Mountains."39 Grant's description of a 'natural highway' proved more than mere metaphor, with many species utilizing the glacial-carved corridors between rugged peaks as essential travel routes. Generations of ungulate herds migrated along the valleys from summer to winter ranges, while wolves and bears wandered their own trails alongside streams and across meadows. Two-legged travellers chose similar routes through the mountains, following the contours of the land and forging paths through terrain of least resistance. In his musings on the Jasper region, Reverend Grant alluded to the sublime qualities of the landscape. The crystal-clear images of lofty peaks reflected in the tranquil waters of Lake Brule provided scenic symmetry to complement the rugged mountain skyline. Akin to earlier travellers George Simpson and Gabriel Franchere, the churchman imbued Jasper's scenery with romantic sensibilities. Grant fondly remembered watching the moonlight play on black clouds overhead, "rejoicing in the open sky for a canopy, and in the circle of the great mountains that formed the walls of our indescribably magnificent bed chamber."40 A similarly aesthetic appreciation of imposing rocky heights and plunging cliffs characterized the early national park movement in the United States. Grant, meanwhile, provided a veiled retort to oft-touted claims of American exceptionalism in natural landscape design, suggesting that the Athabasca Valley offered a monumental scene to rival that found in Yosemite.41 The Reverend advertised nature's canvas in Jasper as an inspiring panorama for budding artists, proclaiming "here is a scene for a grand picture equal to Hill's painting of the Yosemite valley."42 Like the small human figures lighting a fire in the foreground of Thomas Hill's Yosemite Valley, Grant appeared dwarfed and humbled by the sheer magnitude of the geological composition. For Grant, the natural beauties of the Athabascan landscape complemented his conception of the region as an essential travel corridor. The churchman promoted the trail through Jasper as both a romantic

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WOLF MOUNTAINS excursion and a practical route, fusing his ethereal musings with the contoured mindsets of his surveyor cohorts. The wide Athabasca Valley offered a "singularly easy opening into the mountains," providing the opportunity to marvel at surrounding peaks while avoiding their dangers.43 Grant's allusion to the Athabasca Valley as a fantastical and functional path proved pertinent for the future. Conceptions of Jasper as both a natural paradise and a natural highway indelibly shaped the region in subsequent years.44 When the CPR scrapped Fleming's route in favour of a line over Kicking Horse Pass in the early 1880s, Jasper's locomotive future was temporarily derailed. Attention shifted away from the Athabasca Valley. The eyes of civil officials, industrialists and financiers instead focused on the tourist potential brought by sleepers and hot springs in the Bow Valley, ushering in the establishment of Banff as Canada's first national park. Yet, in 1902, the CPR's old rivals, the Grand Trunk Pacific, resurrected the Yellowhead Pass route in their own plans for a transcontinental railway. As the Grand Trunk Pacific forged westward, the Canadian government initiated plans for a national park along Rocky Mountain rail-lines. Impressed by the commercial prosperity brought to Banff by the railway, legislators hoped to create a thriving tourist resort on the Athabasca River. Park status in Jasper sprang from the confluence of railroad and raw nature just as it had done for its southern precursor.45 Enabling legislation was modelled on the Rocky Mountains Park Act, but a subsequent legal review found certain clauses in breach of provincial law (the province of Alberta was established in 1905). Policymakers thus enacted legislation based on the 1906 Forest Reserves Act, setting aside "lands for the preservation of forest trees on the crests and slopes of the Rocky Mountains and for the proper maintenance throughout the year of the volume of water in the rivers and streams that have their source in the mountains and traverse the Province of Alberta."46 Jasper Forest Park was formally established on September 14, 1907, encompassing five thousand square miles along the Athabasca River.47 While Jasper's legislators hoped to replicate the commercial success of Banff, the CPR's careless igniting of fires and felling of trees in the Bow Valley highlighted the downsides of railroad development. By the early 1900s, Canadian civil servants had begun to articulate concerns over the appropriate course of conservation. At the first Canadian Forestry Convention (1906), officials voiced anxieties over the wise use

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of natural resources and the darker side of locomotive progress in the West. Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier lamented: If you take the train at Halifax and go to Vancouver, in every province of the Dominion where there is timber ... you will see miles and miles of what was once beautiful forest and which is now nothing but parched and blackened timber, a monument to the destructive powers of the railway locomotive.48

The Janus-headed train conferred mixed blessings on the western landscape, opening up the country, but leaving a charred trail in its wake, bringing steam-powered opportunity along with destructive momentum. Park protection for Jasper thus offered a chance to harness the railway; to utilize it as tourist transport, while preventing it from riding roughshod over the land. Over the next few years, the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Parks Branch implemented their respective designs for Jasper. The Grand Trunk finalized construction contracts for the Rocky Mountain section in 1909 10, and established fifty rail camps between Wolf Creek, Alberta, and Tete Jaune Cache, British Columbia.49 As tracks neared the defiles of Jasper, civil servants proceeded apace with matters of administration and infrastructure in the fledgling preserve. Superintendent of Forestry Robert Campbell and Parks Commissioner Howard Douglas conducted a survey of the area in 1909, appointing J. W. MacLaggan as Acting Park Superintendent. The following year, two Game Guardians took up posts in the reserve. With tourists only occasionally venturing into the park, the wardens spent most of their time monitoring the activities of rail crews cutting rights of way through the Athabasca Valley. Warden Lewis Swift patrolled the grasslands "sealing guns and posting park notices."50 By 1911, Fitzhugh (the original name for the Jasper townsite) boasted a park headquarters, stables for intrepid visitors to sleep in, and a railway station. The Grand Trunk route finally opened to public traffic in April 1912. The following year, Jasper received its first permanent Superintendent (Colonel Maynard Rogers), administration buildings and townsite survey. Park development was securely hitched to Grand Trunk trains, the line hammered through the nature preserve cutting a gash across the landscape, yet providing vital sustenance in the form of paying guests. The progress and paradox of transportation and conservation in the Central Rockies would resound for many years.

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Wolf Policy in Jasper Park Often a warden's ability and effectiveness were measured by the number of pelts he brought to town each month.51 FRANK CAMP, Roots in the Rockies (1993)

When deciding on an appropriate name for the Forest Park, Canadian authorities considered the title 'Athabasca' after the river that flowed through the heart of the preserve, but finally decided to christen it Jasper.52 The appellatory homage to Hawse's trading post proved entirely appropriate given the attitudes of early park officials towards Canis lupus. Administrators based in the rustic log headquarters regarded wolves with the same disdain as the postmasters who had whiled away their time in the crude cabin of Jasper House in years past. Driven by a desire to protect ungulates munching nearby pastures, staff in the forest park proved as committed to eliminating lupine presence from the Athabasca Valley as their trader forebears. Game Guardians patrolled Jasper by horseback and canoe, shooting any lupines they happened to encounter. Superintendent Rogers kept old traditions alive by allowing his employees to keep the skins of animals they killed. For Jasper wardens, local wolves represented bothersome animals whose only redeemable value lay in the bounty payment. Trapping practices persisted in the newly protected landscape. Confident that the small staff of wardens could not effectively patrol five thousand square miles of wilderness, poachers ventured into the region to seek their faunal quarries. In the early years of the park, some wardens even aided and abetted local trappers, supplementing their income as game protectors with money siphoned from illegal killing. Warden Frank Camp remembered that, "it was always suspected that some of the old time wardens in outlying areas travelled a fine line of honesty. It was easy enough to make a deal with a neighbouring trapper to overlook his activities for a cut of the action."53

The Consolidation of Control During forays into the Jasper backcountry, hunters and trappers schooled in wood-lore occasionally found muddy paw-prints, heard distant howls, or caught glimpses of roaming packs. These remote and inaccessible climes, where few trod, provided last vestiges of territory for Canis lupus.

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In 1914, local outfitter Jack Hargreaves observed two wolves near the headwaters of the Whirlpool River. Hargreaves watched the pair traverse a nearby mountain path, and head off towards Fortress Lake.54 Jack's brother Roy claimed that he had been encircled by a large wolf pack near the Kakwa and Narraway rivers north of Jasper, and only escaped by shooting down five black lupines.55 Despite the sporadic nature of wolf sightings—the 1916 Report of the Conservation Commission deemed Canis lupus "very rare south of the Athabaska and not abundant north of it"—such backcountry tales lent credence to the idea that Jasper Park faced a lupine onslaught.56 Stories about large numbers of roving canines raised the ire of Superintendent Rogers, who conjured visions of an army of hungry wolves moving into Jasper from the north. The Colonel responded in typically military fashion, launching a planned assault against the wolf. Undoubtedly Rogers would have applauded Roy Hargreaves' armed response to lupine presence. The Superintendent expected nothing less of his staff, which by 1916 included nine permanent wardens and two temporary rangers.57 Park personnel were expected to shoot, poison or snare as many wolves as possible. In 1916, one diligent employee killed the entire Whirlpool River Pack by scattering poisoned bait in their territory.58 The following year, the appropriately named Warden Baity received praise from the higher echelons of the Parks Branch for killing five wolves, achieving the "top score" in Animal Division Chief Maxwell Graham's "order of merit, based on success attained in destroying noxious, predatory and dangerous animals." Warden Woods came second, having despatched one wolf in Jasper.59 Despite the murderous prowess of wardens such as Baity and Woods, Superintendent Rogers argued for additional measures to combat the 'grey peril.' Rogers wrote to Commissioner James Harkin in 1917 recommending that dogs be enlisted in the campaign. The Superintendent hoisted Canis familiaris as an exemplary four-legged partner for wardens in remote districts. The trusty domestic dog would provide companionship on long winter nights and sensory assistance during predator control operations.60 The following year, Rogers inaugurated a wolf-hound breeding program in Jasper. After leaving their mothers, the young pups passed into the care of warden masters, who took the dogs on patrol to sniff out their wild cousins. Along with guns, traps and poison, the hounds became "part of the proper equipment of our wardens."61 Superintendent Rogers and his staff (in common with many people at that time) overlooked the similarities

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between dogs and wolves, and instead placed the animals each side of an unbridgeable chasm separating the tame from the wild. This false dichotomy between 'man's best friend' and the 'cruel killer of the forest' resounded with motifs of anthropocentrism and human mastery.62 The domestic dog, as tamed by humankind, exuded a playful servility, whereas the wild wolf came to signify recalcitrant menace. Canis familiaris symbolized obedience and loyalty, while Canis lupus represented ferocity and defiance. The treatment of other faunal forms in Jasper suggested a possible fusion between the worlds of the wild and the tame. Park visitors and wardens alike imbued large mammals such as bears and deer with an endearing mixture of bestiality and docility. Officials created scenes of controlled spectacle, providing tourists with interest while putting them at ease. In 1920, elk from Yellowstone National Park were released in Jasper, restoring a historic presence to the Athabascan landscape.63 Superintendent Rogers couched the reintroduction scheme in terms of human entertainment, aiming to "give these interesting animals every opportunity of becoming tame and accustomed to mankind."64 Soon elk grazed the fairways of Jasper golf course, keeping the greens trim for casual players. Meanwhile, tourists offered syrup-coated corn as saccharine inducements for bears to visit the townsite feeding ground. In 1921, one local paper urged its readers to "catch the midnight train, arrive in Jasper in the morning, feed the bears that are not in a cage, visit some of the beauty spots around Jasper and catch the evening train back to Edmonton."65 National parks satisfied the call of the wild while providing visitors with creature comforts, from the trappings of civilization amidst the scenery, to the elk and bears eager for a taste of lawn or picnickers lunch. Mabel Williams described the joys of entering a wild 'other' world of humanized animals in Jasper National Park (1928): "Of late years the animals are growing so tame that they are even entering the townsite and camera lovers with either still or motion picture cameras have thus a unique opportunity to secure pictures of those interesting inhabitants of the wild."66 Williams also relayed how creatures roamed the park "unmolested and unmolesting, learning a new relationship with man."67 She envisaged an "animal paradise" where humans 'raised' the local fauna to behave like lively, yet respectful, progeny.68 Comments made by Williams suggested a Utopian landscape where animals were neither harmed nor did harm, reminiscent of Edward Hicks' 1834 painting Peaceable Kingdom. In Hicks' eponymous realm, wolves and sheep dwelt together in biblically ordained congeniality, with

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Wrestling with Wardens and Wolves [Wardens] report that the gray beasts are coming ... from the wild, uninhabited mountain sections of Jasper Park, and farther north.72 Edmonton Journal, January 13, 1940

During the 1930s, wolves enacted their own grand design for the Rocky Mountain landscape, spreading into areas of Jasper where they had not roamed for many years. Since the establishment of the park, Canis lupus had been sighted infrequently. A few wolves probably survived in the northern reaches of Jasper, ranging in remote backcountry areas far from human contact, but refrained from travelling further south. Those who wandered too close to park cabins ended up as predator control statistics. In a 1928 report on Jasper's wildlife, naturalist E. Kindle failed to mention Cams lupus.73 However, during the late 1920s, rumours circulated that wolf packs had begun to repopulate the park, taking advantage of burgeoning populations of elk, deer and moose.74 Local outfitter Leonard Jeck remembered wolves re-establishing territories on the banks of the Sulfur River north of Jasper, and along the Saskatchewan River to the south. According to Jeck, "in the 1930's the wolves ... met in the vicinity of Jasper Park."75

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Lupine movements spurred a wave of alarmist newspaper headlines, conjuring visions of an approaching and encroaching tide of wolves. Stories traced the wolf packs as they travelled from northern Alberta, reclaiming territory in Jasper, and spreading into adjacent areas. In December 1927, the Edmonton Journal warned, "the animals are increasing in the north [of Alberta] to an alarming extent."76 By September 1934, the army of canines had 'invaded' Jasper.77 Five years later, the Journal tracked lupine paws to the Kootenay Plains further south, noting that local trappers and Native peoples alike feared the "big grey marauders of the north country."78 Jasper Park swiftly became a focus of local hostility,, with newspapers and hunting associations customarily condemning the preserve as a wolf haven. Visualizations of Jasper as a fearsome and untamed land inhabited by dangerous beasts invoked well-established North American wilderness motifs. The lupine recolonization of the Central Rockies coincided with Parks Bureau revisions in predator control policy. In 1928, officials in Jasper were instructed to stop using traps in the preserve in line with the general ban initiated by Commissioner James Harkin. New orders prohibited Jasper wardens from keeping the pelts of animals they killed. Such changes in practice only served to exacerbate the controversy over returning wolves. The relaxation of anti-predator measures came under vehement criticism from locals already bristling with animosity towards wild canines. Hunting groups condemned the attitude of park authorities as entirely irresponsible given the regional increase in wolf numbers. The Jasper Fish and Game Association regarded the trapping ban as tantamount to welcoming in 'noxious animals,' and berated the new dictate as a shirking of official responsibilities to protect ungulates. Concerned that commitment to predator control would plummet without monetary incentive, outfitters implored the Bureau to let wardens keep the skins of vanquished predatory animals. Alleging that wolves were wreaking havoc on herds in the northwest of the park, L. Wise and G. Spargo of the Northern Alberta Game and Fish Protection League called for "drastic measures" in Jasper, including the resumption of trapping.79 Many wardens in Jasper agreed with the hunting associations, expressing discord over the revised policy and appearing reluctant to follow the line set out by their superiors. Warden Wells felt "sick and disgusted looking at coyote kills, sheep and deer all over the country." His sarcastic addendum, "they don't do any harm, at least so they say in Ottawa," reflected a deep schism between Parks Bureau heads and staff

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on the ground over the value of carnivorous animals.80 Conditioned to kill as many wolves as possible, and professionally graded by their skill in despatching predators, it was unsurprising that some wardens struggled to accept the new restrictions. Long-standing Superintendent at Jasper, Maynard Rogers, retained an ingrained hatred of predatory species. In a letter to Harkin, he furiously proclaimed: "the policy of preventing Wardens from trapping coyote is causing a most serious, and in my opinion, shameful waste of our wild life."81 Rogers sent another, equally seething, note soon after, informing Harkin that "we shall of course carry on as per your ruling ... but I am compelled to place myself on record as completely disagreeing with your finding."82 Ecology, Reason, and Control When greeted with clamours to deal with the wolf problem in Jasper, officials in Ottawa employed similar tactics as they used to answer the anti-predator lobby in Banff. Senior administrators presented the Bureau as a paragon of rationality. In response to the alarmist tales of wolf invasion, staff argued that Jasper was managed effectively and scientifically. In a retort to the Jasper Fish and Game Association, James Harkin posited sound ecological reasons for allowing wolves in the preserve precisely to prey on ungulates. Citing the starvation of the Kaibab Plateau deer herd in Arizona, Harkin noted that, "by leaving in the park a limited number of predators that prey upon Deer, we deal with a very difficult situation of excess of Deer population before such a situation becomes acute." The Commissioner also drew attention to the importance of parks in preserving wilderness: "Jasper Park with its great remote and practically unexplored areas is probably one of the best possibilities for preserving a sample of the wilderness of this part of Canada in its original state."83 In order to accurately represent pristine and natural conditions in Jasper the presence of large predators seemed essential. Despite orations heralding wolves as valuable members of Jasper's fauna! community, attitudes towards Cams lupus remained far from unequivocal. To some extent, pro-wolf assertions from senior staff reflected an irritation with people telling them how to run the parks. Administrators hit back at vehement calls to turn the preserves into game farms by emphasizing the wolf's ecological role. Nevertheless, the Bureau firmly believed in the efficacy of fine-tuning park landscapes. Limited numbers proved a crucial phrase in Parks Branch vocabulary. As in Banff, Jasper's ecosystem benefited from small populations of

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wolves, but only if regulated by park wardens. Wolves were shot on sight in Jasper throughout the 1930s. Harkin's successor, F. H. Williamson, resolved to deal with the predator question in Jasper based on proven "detrimental effects ... on beneficial animals."84 While his predecessor interpreted the lack of wolf kills in Jasper as a sign of warden laxity, Williamson attributed the dearth of dead animals to a scarcity of live forms. In 1940, the Commissioner ceased all hunting of predators in Jasper as part of his directive of 'reasonable control.' Instructions issued to the Superintendent played down lupine presence entirely: You should tell the wardens that under existing policy there was to be no extermination of predatory animals, which are conceded to have a natural role to fill in any National park. In consequence the spending of many hours in hunting without results is in itself evidence that the predators are not abundant enough to justify the time spend [sic] on them.85

Rather than destroy wolves, Williamson stressed the importance of "obtaining information about their activities."86 The Commissioner initiated a series of scientific investigations to gain accurate insight into predator-prey relationships in Jasper. Armed with an arsenal of data, authorities would be able to demolish claims of a park overrun with wolves. As Williamson explained to biologist C. H. Clarke, "it is felt that some of the wardens, in view of their enthusiasm for the killing of predators, are apt to exaggerate the number of predators within their district."87 In 1938-39, R. Anderson found wolves ranging along the Brazeau River and near the north boundary.88 When Clarke snowshoed throughout the park two years later, he discovered wolf tracks near the Southesk River, Isaac Creek, Poboktan River and Blue Creek.89 Packs definitely roamed the Jasper terrain, but they proved far from rampant. However, the concept of 'reasonable control' proved eminently flexible. In 1939, Williamson authorized the use of two hundred snares in Prince Albert National Park, Saskatchewan, in order to assuage public anxieties over wolves. The Commissioner urged that "the policy of the Bureau regarding predatory animals has not been changed in any way," but the decision proved decisive.90 The control measures in Prince Albert spurred ardent calls for similar programs elsewhere. Jasper's Superintendent, James Wood, viewed the Saskatchewan project with avid interest.91 When Williamson enquired as to the efficacy of predator

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control efforts in the Rocky Mountain preserve, Wood briskly requested a new stock of rifles and the institution of a snaring program. Scientific rationales combined with traditional antipathy to advocate a snaring project for Jasper. Senior officials and biologists recommended the scheme as a worthwhile research measure and training exercise. In a January 1942 missive to Hoyes Lloyd, Supervisor of Wild Life Protection in Canada, biologist C. H. Clarke noted that: in recommending this purchase I do not wish to imply that wolves in Jasper Park constitute a menace or a problem in any way ... it is desirable that some of them [the wardens] learn to use snares, which will enable us to claim with truth that the wardens are able to go out and get timber wolves in any place when they are really abundant.92

Eagerness to experiment led scientists to endorse the program, rendering commitment to predator control only after proven detrimental effects on prey species curiously irrelevant. Mesmerized by the process itself, biologists and administrators paid little heed to the impact of the project on the thirty wolves roaming the Athabascan preserve. Science encouraged the destruction as well as the redemption of Cams lupus. In February 1942, Controller James Smart duly authorized fifty snares for use in Jasper National Park.93 The ban on trapping, which proved so contentious in previous years, was rescinded. In an accompanying letter to Superintendent Wood, Smart insisted "you will, of course, realize that these snares are not being provided because of any concern over wolves in Jasper Park."94 Warden tuition represented the principal rationale behind the project, despite the fact that raising staff proficiency in anti-predator activities seemed scarcely necessary given their usual zeal for control. Moreover, Smart appeared wary of informing the local public of the scheme, anxious that credibility could be lost as well as gained by the exercise. Perhaps cognizant of the ambiguities of promoting wolves as useful members of the faunal community, but deeming them expendable for an outdoor lesson in trapping, the Controller advised that, "it is considered undesirable that snaring operations should be brought to the attention of the public."95 Keen to maintain authority over lurking lupines and a critical public, senior officials trod carefully over the trapping issue. By improving warden efficiency, administrators hoped to counter both canine and human inspired assaults on Jasper successfully.

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Monitoring and Manipulating the Park Picture In 1943, the Parks Bureau commissioned zoologist Ian McTaggart Cowan to investigate wolves in Jasper, following increased sightings from the Warden Service. Over the next four years, Cowan compiled a comprehensive ecological study of Canis lupus. He found wolves "present during all seasons of the year along the Miette River from Yellowhead Pass eastward along the Athabaska from the junction of the Sunwapta to the confluence of the Moosehorn and Athabaska near the northern edge of the eastern boundary." The zoologist estimated a lupine population of between thirty-eight and fifty-five animals. Home territories varied significantly. Some packs moved to lower valleys or out of the park entirely in winter months. One group of wolves spent their summer in Byng Pass and Blue Creek, then travelled sixty miles to winter range in the Athabasca Valley. Another pack regularly traced the routes of the Caledonian trappers across Yellowhead Pass, then followed the Miette River east to Henry House, before circling back to British Columbia. Others remained more sedentary. Wolves resided in the meadows of Buffalo Prairie throughout the year, sustained by grazing animals that wandered the grassy lowlands. One prairie pack had denned in a rocky ridge for several years, their earthy retreat surrounded by well-worn wolf trails.96 An early report submitted by Cowan recommended, "that we destroy as many [wolves] as we can north of the Athabaska River."97 While the zoologist insisted that Canis lupus did not present a menace in Jasper, he advised that, "limited control" measures be applied "to the end that the population pressure within the Park not exceed that on the surrounding terrain."98 Aware of accusations that the preserve represented a breeding ground for lupines, Cowan endorsed control measures against resident packs. Despite advocating ecological science and maintenance of a natural balance, officials and biologists alike proved reluctant to grant lupines too much freedom, preferring to maintain a firm command. On the basis of Cowan's report, the superintendent received orders to "take some action against wolves."99 Between 1943 and 1946, Jasper Park wardens dutifully shot twenty-four animals.100 The Parks Bureau, meanwhile, became embroiled in a furore with the Toronto Globe and Mail over its depiction of predator-prey relationships in Jasper. On May 6, 1944, the paper published a photograph headlined "Wolves close in on Moose for Kill."101 Allegedly taken in Jasper Park, the picture showed a pack of wolves snapping at

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the hooves of a moose. Apparently a trapper had witnessed the contest travelling near Smoky River, and had gone for his camera rather than his rifle. Senior officials and staff on the ground in Jasper scrutinized the picture intensively. Controller Smart issued strong objections to the story, expressing concern that the wanderings of a trapper in the park might imply that his trade was permitted there (ironic given the recent approval for official snaring in Jasper). Smart also questioned the authenticity of the print, drawing attention to a suspicious line across the image. He criticized the demeanour of the animals, noting that "the wolves do not look natural in their pose, nor do the moose, in fact, all the animals look as if they had been superimposed upon the print." The Controller's appraisal revealed not only a sharp eye for detail, but also knowledge of lupine hunting strategy, that, given the light snow cover, it was "not likely the wolves would be so close on the heels of a moose."102 In correspondence with Superintendent Wood, Smart even suggested that the wolves were probably "frozen animals propped up for the picture."103 Wood brought local wisdom to the debate, replying that the landscape in the picture scarcely resembled Jasper's Smoky River country.104 On further investigation, the owner of the photograph turned out to be J. A. Rogers, General Superintendent of Transportation for the Canadian National Railway. Rogers protested that he had obtained the image in good faith from a trapper, who had mentioned nothing about a Jasper location.105 Smart subsequently blamed the media for the blunder, and justified his hounding of Rogers by concluding, "it is a mistake to have a picture of this kind published about which there might be some question as to its being authentic.106 While the grand western landscapes painted by nineteenth-century artists were rarely queried in terms of accuracy despite their tendency to exaggerate and embellish, composite images created by twentieth-century photographers failed to capture an appropriate national park scene. The Globe and Mail episode illustrated a growing knowledge of lupine ways within the Parks Bureau, allied to a belief that park landscapes, both material and pictorial, should convey a sense of naturalness. Yet, as in Banff, officials in Jasper decided the relative balance of species in the preserve, effecting their own manipulations of the environment. The camera shot may have portrayed a false image, but the physical landscape harboured its own contrivances. In 1945, wardens commenced an annual slaughter of the Jasper elk herd which had seriously over-browsed range in the Athabasca Valley. The killing of wolves continued unabated. The

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ecological fabric of the preserve was unravelling, but administrators believed that they could effectively manage park wildlife. In correspondence with the editor of Game Trails in Canada, Smart explained that, "in spite of the relatively low population of wolves in Jasper Park as a whole, we have considered it prudent to reduce their numbers in certain areas."107 By allowing canines into particular zones to prey on abundant elk, but limiting their numbers in areas frequented by rare ungulates, managers strove to maintain a seamless balance in Jasper as a whole.108 Officials perceived their actions as subtle interventions, enhancements of the landscape in pursuit of the perfect national park scene. A New Phase of Wolf Control Variant perspectives on the seriousness of the lupine threat continued to dog Jasper's wild canines during the late 1940s. In a January 1947 interview with Controller Smart and biologists Victor Solman and Harrison Lewis, Superintendent Wood complained about the triggerhappy attitude towards large carnivores that prevailed among staff. In stark contrast to his usual desire for all-out control, Wood informed his superiors that, "in view of the low populations of cougars, wolves and coyotes in Jasper Park none of these animals should be killed in the park unless they become decidedly more numerous."109 Wardens in Jasper duly received instructions to "cease the control of all predators in Jasper park until further notice."110 However, the following December, Wood reported an entirely different scenario to senior officials in Ottawa, warning that wolves "will soon become a menace to game birds." Wood clamoured for the resumption of active control measures around Maligne Lake and near the north boundary.111 Superintendent Wood appeared to be wrestling with his own perceptions of predators, the ecological value and rarity of wolves pitted against lurking fears of lupine resilience and ferocity. Senior administrators treated the apparent shift from calm to crisis in Jasper with some cynicism. Harrison Lewis remained skeptical that Jasper's wolf population had "suddenly increased to such an extent that it has become excessive." Packs were preying on elk, but Lewis reiterated that, "this is what they are supposed to do."112 "There may be some doubt as to whether we can put much credence in the reports we have received from the field," added Smart.113 Meanwhile, news that Wood had reinstituted anti-predator activities without official authorization,

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resulting in the deaths of two wolves, prompted decisive action from Bureau heads. Lewis recommended an immediate investigation into "this apparent violation of official instructions" and advised that a trained biologist should assess the Jasper 'wolf crisis' in a "factual spirit."114 Mammalogist Dr H. Fisher visited the park in July 1948, following warnings from Wood that "wolf tracks are seen everywhere."115 Fisher surmised that the thirty-five park wolves exerted a "beneficial effect in Jasper" by dining on elk. Nevertheless, the biologist admitted that the lupine population "has increased in certain areas, and that some restricted control measures are warranted." Despite his recognition that "much of the anti-wolf feeling has been drummed up by guides, outfitters and others in Jasper and Banff," Fisher still advocated a lupine cull.116 Sharply critical of 'irrational' warden responses, senior officials nonetheless refused to consider the limitations of scientific analysis, and sanctioned further killing in Jasper on the basis of Fisher's report. Having faced rifle-toting wardens, trained hounds, strategically placed poison and snares, resident packs faced a new phase of control—the cyanide gun. On Fisher's advice, fifty spring-loaded guns stocked with poison cartridges were placed at Moberley Flats, Buffalo Prairie, and around the townsite. Officials set a quota of twenty wolves for the winter of 1948-49.117 Once in place, the anti-predator program quickly developed its own momentum. Onerous reasons emerged for maintaining the project, from unfulfilled quotas to employee morale.118 Chief of the Dominion Wildlife Service, W. Winston Mair, expressed the opinion that there "is little ecological evidence at present to support predator control," but supported lupine destruction in Jasper as it won't make an "undesirable inroad upon wolf numbers" yet "might create better feeling among the wardens."119 The cyanide gun project continued through 1952, new quotas entailing fresh deliveries of weapons, shells and scent. Wardens compiled detailed reports for each cyanide-set, noting the type of gun and bait used, when it was established and subsequently checked, together with an analysis of all animals killed. Records illuminated the intertwining lives of wardens and wolves in Jasper during the immediate post-war period. Initially trained by Fisher, wardens monitored cyanide sets from December to April, with industrious individuals checking stations daily, even during Christmas festivities. In contrast to their impassioned calls for wolf killing, Jasper wardens betrayed few emotions during patrols, noting times of visits, incidents, and wolf deaths with a matter of fact demeanour. Separation of the

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sentimental from the scientific perhaps reflected a proscribed division in the mind of the warden between personal opinion and professional task. One report from Moberley Cabin related how a wolf had been found in a glade a hundred yards from the set. The animal "had evacuated several scats containing elk hair, before dying." The next line simply read: "Measurements of wolf taken, and hide + skull. Gun reset and left."120 In 1948 -49, nine wolves were killed by cyanide guns. Eleven coyotes, three foxes, one martin, and one whiskey jack also succumbed to cyanide after springing the guns or eating animals that had already died.121 However, the effectiveness of the killing machines appeared hampered by human and mechanical error. Wardens complained that many cyanide guns failed to work correctly, while Superintendent Seth Dempster (Wood's successor) reported that the charge sometimes remained in the shell due to faulty sealant.122 In the 1951-52 season, fourteen guns went off without securing a single lupine victim.123 Despite assurances from the supplier, the Canadian Trading Post of Oshawa, Ontario, that the poison was "an extra heavy load made up especially for wolves," the one animal caught merely "vomited several times but had then continued on its way."124 Nature apparently found ingenious ways to scupper the operation. A set placed in a gravel bank of the Snake Indian River spent one winter entirely covered with ice after the river overflowed. At gun sites in Moberley Flats, Blue Creek and Decoigne, magpies, Canada jays, and whiskey jacks removed beef fat, elk hide, and bacon designed to lure wolves to their demise. One frustrated warden at Blue Creek recorded how "the birds caused some trouble by pecking the bait off the traps," while a persistent colleague at Decoigne returned and rebaited the set, only to discover on his next patrol that mice had consumed the tasty morsels. Wolves varied in their response to the cyanide guns. The alluring scent of a free meal won over a few unfortunate animals. Others remained wary, approaching within a few feet before their instincts advised them to move on. Some packs loped nonchalantly past, or, in what could be interpreted as acts of lupine defiance, urinated on the guns. A curious canine response occurred at Pyramid Lake, where the warden described that "the bait, shell + holder, + firing mechanism had been pulled out of the tube + removed. It was not found and neither was wolf carcass."125 The gun components were never retrieved. Superintendent Dempster recalled additional instances when "the gun was usually damaged by a second wolf tearing the firing mechanism out of the base after it had been fired."126 Perhaps the descendants of Alexander Ross' lupine guerrillas had learned to be monkey-wrenchers.127

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A number of wolves pursued in Jasper during the early 1950s experienced an altogether different fate. The Banff Zoo had been judged inappropriate in the national park setting, but officials betrayed few qualms about removing animals from the Rockies and housing them in menageries elsewhere. Donations of park fauna to domestic and foreign zoological societies suggested that managers harboured lingering perceptions of wildlife superabundance in Canada. That the Bureau failed to question the efficacy of taking animals from park environments also highlighted the limits of its ecological perspective. Animals remained at the mercy of human utility, and were shifted from preserves to zoos as required. Bears and beavers proved popular requests, but two British zoos desired a lupine presence in their collections. In spring 1950, superintendents in Jasper, Banff, Riding Mountain, and Prince Albert national parks received instructions to capture eighteen wolves for transport to Dudley and Edinburgh zoos.128 Smart advised Dempster that: You should make every effort to capture pups for this purpose as soon as circumstances permit. It is thought that it may be possible to capture the pups by digging them out of dens. In the event that it is not possible to capture wolf pups for shipment, adult wolves should be procured.129

Dudley Zoo had requested a wolf pack so that the public could see them in the summer. Both zoological institutions agreed to pay all transport costs. Wolves had not roamed the Scottish Highlands since the 1700s, and had disappeared from the Black Country two centuries earlier, the demise of Ca-nis lupus ensured by a heritage of organized hunts, bounties, and taxes payable in wolf-skins. In bygone days, British travellers fearful of lupine ambush rested in shelters known as spittals, peering out of'loupholes' to watch for wandering packs. Modern-day tourists instead prowled the confines of the zoo, stopping to gaze at caged wolves.130 Rabies in Jasper In the rabies hysteria that swept Alberta in the early 1950s, citizens perceived their province as under threat from waves of rabid canines moving in from northern climes. Locals viewed Jasper National Park as a weak link in anti-rabies defences, a safe haven for wolves travelling

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along the Rocky Mountain trench. Park officials initiated additional control measures to stem the mouth-foaming lupine tide. Controller Smart wrote to the Superintendent in February 1953 advising that, "it is anticipated that early instructions will be issued for an all-out program, not only to reduce the predators in the park, but to prevent any movement into the Park this spring."131 The following month, strychnine and 1080 poisons joined the arsenal of rifles, snares and cyanide guns deployed against Jasper wolves. Eleven strychnine sets were established inside the confines of the preserve, with deadly pellets concealed in elk and horsemeat bait. During 1953, twenty-two wolves, nine coyotes, three magpies, four ravens and a warden's dog died after consuming poisoned carcasses. Park managers also installed eight 1080 stations at Copperwood Creek, Pyramid Lake and Brazeau River. Patrolling wardens subsequently found eight wolf casualties.132 Given Winston Mair's admission that "we all know we don't find [all] the animals," the total bodycount of the rabies poisoning in Jasper probably ranked much higher.133 The anti-rabies program in Jasper was terminated in early 1954. Warden McGuire nevertheless reassured his audience at the First Predator Control Conference, held in Calgary during 1954, that other control measures remained firmly in place. McGuire reported that, "throughout the park wardens had about 50 cyanide guns out. With these and rifles 2 wolves were taken from the Brazeau District and 6 from the Willow Creek District."134 The warden's insistent tone illustrated tensions in the region over the Park Service's dealings with predatory animals. Throughout the two-day conference, conversations repeatedly came back to the issue of killing wolves in the Rocky Mountain preserves. Local agricultural representatives eagerly checked up on measures adopted in Banff and Jasper. E. Huestis of the Alberta Fish and Game Department welcomed the presence of park officers at the meeting, principally because: Our sportsmen are of the opinion, and so are large numbers of the public, I believe, that a lot of our wolves come from Parks. I felt that they should come up and tell us something at this meeting, otherwise it leaves the unsuspecting public to believe that possibly they are hiding something.135

Judging by the remarks made at the conference, many believed, and indeed feared, that Canis lupus represented that something.

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Delegates quizzed wardens McGuire and Pittaway (from Banff) over park poisoning programs for the coming winter, to which Pittaway replied "we have orders to shoot predators. Other than that the policies are laid down from Ottawa and I can't discuss them."136 Pittaway's answer reflected latent discord over the predator issue within the ranks of the Warden Service itself. During the mid-1950s, staff in Jasper continued to demand extensive measures against park wolves. Chief Warden Brodie led the charge, recommending "the necessity" of anti-predator activities in five districts.137 After attending a course on predator control run by the British Columbia Game Commission, Warden G. M. Wells became convinced of the efficacy of 1080 poison and systematic killing. In his report, Wells suggested that, "such a program on a small scale would be beneficial for Jasper National Park."138 Faced with enmity from wardens and regional interests, officials from the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) were forced to defend Jasper Park policy. In response to heckling from representative Butler of the B.C. Game Commission, Winston Mair reiterated, "I think that as the representatives from the parks have said, their instructions at the present moment are to continue taking wolves as they have the opportunity." Noting that he had only observed one wolf track on a recent hike near Jasper's northern boundary, Mair surmised: "I think that we can feel pretty well assured that at the moment the [wolf] population is from your point desirable and from our point too low."139 Whereas early park managers perceived Canis lupus us an economic hazard, by the 1950s, ecological and rarity-based value systems had been incorporated into official thinking on predators. Although participating in the rabies program and sanctioning wolf killing in the preserves, Parks Branch heads had strayed from the ideas of agricultural and hunting interests, who, in the words of Mr. Lobay from the Department of Agriculture, desired to eradicate predators "from the face of the world for ever."140 Can/s Lupus Welcomed and Repelled The decades between the trapping ban of 1928 and the rabies campaign of the early 1950s undoubtedly proved decisive in propagating ecological ideas, but failed to give rise to a linear rehabilitation of predatory species. In common with their lupine cousins in Banff, packs reclaiming territory in Jasper were greeted with control programs. Staff defended Canis lupus., while seeking to prove their resolute management of the park. Officials frequently issued ecologically based rebuttals to irate locals

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screaming crisis, yet still enacted campaigns against resident lupines. Employing both approaches engendered a complex scenario, with adopted practices at times appearing counterproductive to general theory. A 1939 letter from F. H. Williamson demonstrated the two poles encompassed by the policy. Williamson articulated that "it becomes almost a scientific formula that numerous predators signifies an abundance of game, and an abundance of game signifies an abundance of feed,—all healthy signs for wilderness areas such as National Parks." In the next paragraph, however, the Commissioner advocated snaring measures "otherwise the proponents of developing the Parks as meat ranches may take advantage of our inaction to further work on ignorant public opinion."141 Officials resisted calls for all-out control campaigns, yet approved anti-predator programs for fear of losing the propaganda war of wildlife management. Administrators wanted to prove they were in control of the preserves, and often resorted to killing in order to illustrate this. Canis lupus remained expendable. Parks Branch policy revealed the seeds of ecological thought, but also reflected traditional groundings in wolf destruction. Ecological concepts struggled to grow amidst residual prejudice against carnivores, with official policy constantly beleaguered by the strangling influence of older habits. The era represented a time of flux, with higher officials and park staff wrestling with wolves, ecology and prejudice in Jasper. Despite the ongoing harassment, a few packs managed to survive in Jasper's remote northern reaches. In 1945, Ian McTaggart Cowan reported that, "as far as is now known, Jasper Park has never been without its wolf population."142 Even the rabies campaign failed to dislodge lupine presence entirely. The survival of Canis lupus in Jasper did not reflect a more benign policy or warden force than in other parks, but owed much to the inaccessibility of backcountry areas. The anti-rabies program eradicated wolves from the Athabasca and Miette valleys, but a residual lupine paw-print survived in isolated locales further from insidious human presence and its murderous contraptions. Nevertheless, the consistency and ferocity of the control campaigns severely tested canine resilience, and less than a dozen wolves ranged in the preserve for much of the 1950s.143

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From Outlaws to Lupine Legends The first coyote I ever saw was shot by park wardens, right before my eyes, while I was observing it from the roadside.144 DICK DEKKER, Wolves of the Rocky Mountains (1997)

Dekker's observation of a typical warden-canine interaction in Jasper occurred in 1959. The naturalist had pulled off Highway 93 to watch the coyote engaged in his own wanderings through the valley. The summary execution in the wild serenity of the park came as a total shock to Dekker, the romance of the Rocky Mountain scene abruptly shattered.145 Later the same year, Park Service legislators reached similar conclusions as to the propriety of control activities in a seminal directive entitled "Carnivorous Mammals in the Western National Parks."146 All anti-predator measures in the Rocky Mountain preserves were terminated. The gradual dissemination of ecological ideas in earlier decades finally reached a denouement in official protection for wolves. A few individuals within the Bureau continued to demand killing campaigns against Canis lupus, but their arguments found little favour among a new generation of park administrators. In December 1960, just one year after the policy revision, Superintendent J. Atkinson recommended action against wolves in Jasper. Chief Mammalogist W. E. Stevens responded by situating the rehabilitation of lupine animals in the context of ungulate overabundance. Whereas his predecessors had routinely sanctioned the shooting of both elk and wolves, Stevens confessed that "a dual effort to destroy a prey species and their natural predator simultaneously would appear to be a management anomaly difficult to justify to administrators, biologists, or the public."147 Canis lupus could at last roam the Jasper landscape without fearing gun-toting wardens or poisoned meals. With sanctuary secured by official protection, wolves gradually expanded their range. Sightings increased during the 1960s as packs moved into areas that they had avoided for many years. In 1963, Warden Young spotted three animals roaming Devona Flats. Warden Woodward watched seven black wolves ranging along Willow Creek in winter 1966, while biologist John Stelfox spotted a single animal crossing the JasperLake Louise highway during the following fall.148 In 1969, the Canadian Wildlife Service commissioned biologist Ludwig Carbyn to undertake an extensive study of wolves and their

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relationship with prey species in Jasper. The elk-culling program which had operated since 1945 was terminated the same year, and wildlife authorities hoped to document the evolution of a natural predator-prey dynamic. Carbyn estimated Jasper's wolf population at forty-eight animals. Five packs roamed territories in the park, ranging in the Smoky River, Willow Creek, Rocky Forks, Whirlpool River and Brazeau River regions. Several wolves, either alone or in pairs, wandered elsewhere in the preserve.149 Despite the abundance of wild prey in Jasper, Carbyn discovered that "wolf densities in the Park are far lower than those of other areas in North America."150 The biologist found no evidence to suggest that wolves were regulating elk numbers. That Canis lupus did not act as a natural controller of Jasper's herds was unsurprising given the cumulative effects of past management decisions which allowed ungulate populations to become overabundant, and kept numbers of predatory animals artificially low. Carbyn further suggested that disease, mange, and human pressures served as mitigating factors on lupine prosperity. Each of the packs spent part of the year outside Jasper, where trappers and hunters were perennial hazards. Dangers also loomed within the park. After visiting abandoned den sites at the appropriately named Disaster Point, Dominion Prairie, and Athabasca River, Carbyn advanced a tentative correlation between increased human traffic and the desertion of nearby wolf trails. The freight and recreational vehicles that thundered along the Yellowhead highway interfered with lupine hunting patterns. Ungulates often gathered along the road to crop seeded verges, but resident packs rarely approached.151 Carbyn concluded that: "Within Canadian National Parks, the era of predator control programmes is over. Yet other human pressures have increased almost exponentially, and these have to be carefully assessed in the future."152 From Rifle Butts to Cameras During the late 1960s, the Canadian Wildlife Service embarked on a celluloid exploration of Canis lupus. A visual excursion into the life of the wolf combined the forces of cinematography and wildlife science, offering an opportunity to educate the public on the much-maligned animal. Links between biology and filmmaking had been pioneered nearly a century earlier by Eadweard Muybridge in Sacramento, California, who set up a series of cameras to record the galloping progress of a racehorse, producing an early exposition on the moving picture and the

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moving animal. In the early twentieth century, filmmakers such as Martin and Osa Johnson introduced animals to the big screen in a series of popular films mixing nature and adventure, while, in later generations, far-off climes and exotic species were recreated in post-war living rooms through the power of television.153 By bringing wild wolves to a captive armchair audience, the CWS hoped to utilize film as a powerful tool for conservation. Director David Munro stressed the importance of an informed and purposeful narrative to accompany stunning visuals.154 Munro's didactic statement that "research and management are vital to wildlife's survival because of the change that man is making to the environment" imbued his pitch with a curious blend of wilderness symbolism and human control.155 The animal movie industry had long proved itself an expert in such matters. The call of the wild owed much to stage directions shouted by a human voice, from Frank Buck's contrived orangutan versus tiger contest in Bring Em Back Alive (1932) to the tranquilized and trained animal actors on the 1960s TV show Wild Kingdom. The Canadian Wildlife Service commissioned filmmaker Bill Mason to produce the program on Canis lupus in a joint venture with the National Film Board. In October 1967, Mason and Darrell Eagles of the CWS outlined plans for the lupine project in a four-page script. Tentatively entitled The Wolf, the first lines of the screenplay recounted a pristine, harmonious, North America: We see signs of predators and talk about the balance of nature that existed before man came upon the scene. This sequence would include shots of a wolf kill, the tracks of a small animal in the snow where they end abruptly we see the signs of a struggle, wolves from a great distance.—We hear them howling.156

The wolf represented a primitive force in this landscape, with predation an ancient and noble act. Scenes of struggle and bloodshed imprinted in the snows of Jasper in previous years had engendered sentiments of horror and repulsion, yet Mason and Eagles employed motifs of the hunt for an entirely different effect. The lupine chase illustrated vitality and balance in the landscape, nature red in tooth and claw as something to relish not recoil from. Mortality inflicted by canine incisors sustained rather than took life. The screenplay then cut to an image of a feathered arrow slicing through the air and embedding itself in a tree. The script read, "the

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thought is that at one time man did little to upset the balance of nature ... the Indian lived in harmony with nature—he was part of it." The recreation of a primordial paradise unsullied by the clear-cuts and concrete of industrial society reflected contemporary attitudes stressing the destructiveness of modern humans, a re-envisaging of post-war dreams of unbridled prosperity and capitalist progress. The following scene portrayed "the beginning of change," fur traders canoeing along streams and pioneers tilling the land outside rude cabins. Subsequent sequences conjured visions of natural paradise lost as the pioneers sought to create their own vision of Eden. The writers planned to use old prints of lupine attacks to illustrate frontier attitudes towards the wolf. The decision to display fictional depictions rather than stage a fight between a wolf pack and a human traveller differentiated the natural history film from cinematic works of the early century, where animal brawls proved customary industry fare. Mason and Eagles strove to separate the biological wolf from the wolf of myth, the living animal from the imaginary beast. Real-world scenes of carnage instead depicted the nonhuman dead sprawled around poison baits and rapacious human hunters shooting wolf packs from aircraft and skidoos.157 Mason and Eagles argued that the alliance of wildlife biology and natural history film offered a chance to see the real wolf. By showing clips of wolves roaming their natural habitat, the producers wanted the public to "realise that they are doing just what the Department's biologists do—taking an unbiased, objective look at wolves and prey species. This sequence will tell us the truth (as opposed to the legend) for the first time."158 Mason and Eagles correctly identified that popular perceptions of Canis lupus owed much to the human mind, but failed to see the mythic nature of scientific objectivity. The history of wolf persecution itself provided ample evidence of the shifting ideals and theories within the science of wildlife management. To their credit, The Wolf dealt with themes of human domination and separation from nature in stark and negative terms. The scriptwriters nevertheless appeared caught between the motifs of Homo sapiensthe destroyer and 'Homo biologist' the infallible steward. They asked "what right have we to say one animal is good and another bad?," yet urged "in certain situations control measures must be taken because of the changing environment, but these measures can only be taken with a real understanding of the prevailing conditions."159 Film and biology undoubtedly offered valuable forums to learn about other species and conveyed powerful conservationist messages, but also had the potential to create distorted pictures.

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Shooting on the production began during 1969. Bill Mason hauled cameras to locations throughout North America, seeking out cinematic wolfscapes in British Columbia, Baffin Island, Quebec, Isle Royale, and the Arctic. He also visited Jasper National Park, a locale chosen for its occupied den sites and scenic vistas, which Mason felt "would add immeasurably to the film."160 In 1957, Jasper National Park had been deemed a "trouble spot" due to its predator populations, but a decade later, officials regarded resident canines more favourably.161 Park staff and mammalogists were instructed to assist Mason and his crew by providing biological information to match the lupine images.162 Entitled Death of a Legend, the natural history film premiered at the National Arts Centre, Ottawa, in September 1971. It aired on the CBC Network the following week.163 Canis lupus had made the transition from notorious outlaw to screen legend.

Nature's Cycles and Human Constructions The interactions among members of the living community are so complex that a change at any point in the system can cause profound effects throughout the community.164 L. DAVID MECH, The Wolf (1970)

Populations of wolves and elk in Jasper fluctuated widely after the late 1960s, the dynamic character of the natural system revealed after decades of regulation. Wolf numbers in the preserve increased rapidly during the early 1970s. Packs denned in the Athabasca Valley, a location unused since the rabies campaigns of the 1950s, while wardens reported increased sightings of Canis lupus in other locales. By 1974, between eighty and a hundred animals roamed the preserve, according to Warden Wes Bradford, "most likely the highest numbers ever recorded since JNP's [Jasper National Park] establishment in 1907."165 Elk in Jasper, meanwhile, suffered a major decline, brought on by a severe winter in 1973-74. Overgrazed range exacerbated the effect of extreme climatic conditions, and a large number of animals starved. By 1975, Jasper's elk herds contained less than a thousand animals.166 In past years, such a scenario would have prompted emergency anti-predator measures, but park biologists resisted blaming wolves for the fate of the grazers. Resident wolves undoubtedly affected the already weakened herds, but weather conditions and poor quality habitat remained primary

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factors in their demise. Human activities also exacted a toll on the beleaguered ungulates. Years of fire suppression reduced grazing range in Jasper, and trees such as the bog birch and willow had colonized the grassland habitat favoured by elk. Highway and railroad traffic posed mortal dangers to the herds. One hundred and fifty-one elk died in collisions with vehicles between 1971 and 1975.167 Animals seeking sustenance outside the park ran the gauntlet of sportsmen, ungulate decline proving particularly acute in popular hunting areas such as Willow Creek and Brazeau. Natural forces and human activities conspired again in the 1980s to drastically affect resident lupines. Jasper's wolf population experienced a rapid decline. Patrolling wardens found little canine presence in areas where they had been thriving just a few years earlier. Numbers dropped to twenty-eight by the end of the decade.168 Biologists attributed the reversal in lupine fortunes to a lack of available prey. The reduced size of park elk herds impinged on local packs that depended on catching calves to provide sustenance for their own young. Wolves vacated nearby den sites following the demise of nursery herds at Willow Creek and Rocky Forks. With limited sources of food, the wolf population decreased, Cants lupus readjusting to new circumstances without the need for human intervention. Other impacts on Jasper's wolf packs proved more ominous. Rumours abounded that human agents had caused the disappearance of the Willow Creek Pack in 1983. Stories that a shepherd had despatched five wolves with his rifle just north of Jasper's boundary supported such a hypothesis. A pack from the Devona region also vanished mysteriously the same year. Locals suggested that the pack had consumed poison bait on a grazing lease near Brule Lake, a location laced with a history of poisoning since the days of Jasper House.169 Canis lupus found many hazards inside the confines of Jasper National Park. By the 1990s, pressures that had reached crisis proportions in Banff were evident at the other end of Highway 93. The Yellowhead Highway and Canadian National Railroad influenced canine fortunes significantly. Between 1980 and 1990, twenty-three wolves were killed on Jasper's tarmac and steel routes. Ten animals died in 1996 alone.170 The protected park setting paradoxically represented a mortality sink for wolves. As Wes Bradford explained: If wolves try to establish themselves in what we call the real high use area of Jasper National Park, like within a 15-20 km radius of

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Jasper townsite, the mortality rate is really high on those wolves ... they get somewhat habituated to people and living amongst people, and then when they go off hunting, foraging ... there's too much traffic volume here for them to survive.171

Historic haunts such as Buffalo Prairie, directly to the south of Jasper townsite, had not supported a successful wolf population for many years. Economic development in Jasper town further hindered local wolves. Although not yet a sprawling commercial conurbation of Banff's proportions, the growth of the northern settlement demonstrated parallels with its sister town. Situated in a fertile montane valley, the townsite occupied prime wolf country, motels and sidewalks replacing wolf dens and hunting trails. In the 1920s, Mabel Williams had enthused over the "refinements of civilization—excellent hotels, good roads, a superb golf course, doctors, hospitals, banks and shops" in Jasper.172 By the 1990s, more than necessary provisions could be found in town stores. Keen to learn the lessons of Banff before it proved too late, park officials initiated a series of programs to evaluate the cumulative effects of continuing growth on wildlife movements. In 1999, Parks Canada published draft management plans proposing trail and campground closures in wildlife sensitive areas, capped Jasper's townsite at fifty-two hundred residents, and announced restrictions on further commercial projects.173 Elk had also developed a taste for the accoutrements of civilized life by the 1990s, with a large proportion of the park herd concentrating around the town, munching on the verdant lawns.174 Wes Bradford surmised that "elk are living amongst people for security from large predators," choosing to graze in the townsite and even calving in areas of high human use.175 Whereas most wild animals learned, through instinct and experience, to avoid interaction with humans, the herds deemed Homo sapiens as less of a threat than Canis lupus. Elk distinguished between human presence and human threat, differentiating the noise of the street from that of the shotgun. Bradford recalled that Jasper's herds had become noticeably less flighty after the cessation of the culling program in 1969. Animals congregating along roads and in gardens delighted park visitors. They also attacked them. Between 1984 and 1999, ungulate preferences for strolling town streets engendered six hundred and twenty-six aggressive confrontations with Homo sapiens.176 Reduced encounters with Canis lupus, meanwhile, threatened to undermine a natural predator-prey relationship in the park. In February 1999, park authorities addressed the problem by relocating

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fifty elk to the Swan Hills, forty to Nordegg, and a further ten animals to wilder locations in Jasper Park. However, thirteen of the Swan Hills herd migrated to the town of Slave Lake and took up residence, while the animals transplanted to the Jasper backcountry returned to the town. Resident elk evidently passed on the chance for a wilderness experience in Alberta, instead perceiving the built environment as a preferable, albeit manufactured, habitat. An article in the Edmonton Journal entitled "Elks ignore call of the wild" noted that the animals left the mountains for "the easy life in the town's wolf-free parks and lawns."177 /Across Park Boundaries: Wolves and Species Protection The natural proclivity of Jasper's wolves to wander outside the confines of the park embroiled them in numerous controversies during the 1980s and 1990s. Wailing cries about roaming Canadian lupines involved matters as diverse as caribou protection, mineral extraction, and wolf recovery in the United States. The high canine profile in such debates owed much to the powerful images of Canis lupus fostered by human society. Jasper's wolves were variously cast as the demonic killers of old, ambassadors for ecological health, and endangered icons. Altercations about land use and wildlife protection in three very different parks— Willmore Wilderness Park, Mountain Park, and Yellowstone National Park—all invoked the spectre of Canis lupus, and yielded enormous ramifications for Jasper's wolves. In Willmore Wilderness Park, a provincial reserve adjacent to Jasper's northern boundary, the wolf wandered a landscape inhabited by rare mountain caribou.178 The herd experienced a severe decline during the 1970s and 1980s, numbering only three hundred animals by 1986.179 Local hunting groups immediately blamed Ccinis lupus for the situation. Dave Simpson from the Alberta Outfitters Association claimed that "wolves are strong. They'll attack livestock, they'll attack humans, they'll attack anything."180 The hunter's cry unintentionally reprised the commentary on sportsmen in Death of a Legend: "we see hunters walking along a highway within sight of their cars. They cannot find any deer but sight a wolf track (which is actually a dog track) which leads them to believe that wolves are killing off all the deer."181 A1986 Caribou Restoration Plan, published by the Alberta Provincial Fish and Wildlife Division, blamed the ailing fortunes of the caribou on a variety of reasons, including hunting, poaching, rail and road mortality, and increased disturbance of winter range. The report nonetheless agreed

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with hunters in deeming wolf depredations "the primary cause of the decline." The Fish and Wildlife Division announced plans to limit humancaused mortality, halt habitat destruction, and kill up to seventy percent of wolves roaming Willmore.182 The Restoration Plan carried disturbing implications for packs based in the northern reaches of Jasper National Park, who regularly roamed across the border into Willmore. An unmarked boundary separated sanctuary from a slated culling zone. Environmental groups saw Homo sapiens rather than Canis lupus at fault in Willmore.183 At the height of the furore, Don Sparrow, the Minister of Forestry, Lands and Wildlife, received a hundred letters a day concerning the issue.184 In December 1986, twelve hundred people attended a screening of Never Cry Wolf held by the Calgary chapter of the Sierra Club along with a presentation by Farley Mowat, who "greeted the audience with a full blown wolf howl."185 Environmentalists rallied to defend Canis lupus as an integral part of the region's biotic community, a species that hardly deserved to be extirpated for engaging in a natural relationship with caribou. One Edmonton television crew flew to Willmore, and quoted a local trapper's spirited musings that "if a wolf makes a kill the scavengers have a ball. The wolf sustains life in the forest. He is like a God."186 Yet, what Donald Worster has called the "god of GNP" seemed a more dominant force in the wilds of northern Alberta.187 Since the 1960s, increased development, mining, logging and illegal hunting in the region had alienated crucial caribou habitat. Killing Canis lupus merely served as a veneer, providing an illusion of government action on behalf of a threatened species, without dealing with long-term causes or addressing human land use issues.188 Even Michael Bloomington, head of provincial caribou management between 1978 and 1983, publicly stated that, "the wolf is being made to pay the price for what is really the consequence of human activity in the area."189 The local branch of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, meanwhile, expressed anxieties concerning the impact of the hunt on wolves from Jasper National Park. The proposed wolf-kill posed a huge dilemma for administrators in Jasper National Park. Parks Canada agreed with the importance of saving the mountain caribou from extinction, but harboured grave doubts over the efficacy of destroying wolves. Officials accepted that the endangered status of the caribou demanded special measures, and even supported a Willmore wolf cull as a last resort if other measures failed. Crucially, however, park staff urged that the situation required detailed study before arraigning Canis lupus. Jasper's officials recognized an imperative to

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preserve their wandering canines as well as migrating ungulates. With park wolves often roaming north, emergency plans to save caribou threatened the existence of Jasper's precarious lupine population. Assistant Chief Warden Duane West explained the predicament: "the woodland caribou ... spend part of the summer in the northern portion of Jasper, and we are concerned about their survival. But we are also concerned about keeping a viable wolf population in the park."190 The episode illustrated the thorny problems faced by wildlife managers when dealing with issues of endangered species protection and the maintenance of biodiversity. The Restoration Plan elevated one species at the expense of the other, neglecting the local scarcity of Canis lupus and the important role of wolves in the biotic community. The scheme threatened to disrupt regional predator-prey relationships that had only just found their niche. According to Dick Dekker: The major casually of the proposed wolf kill, if it goes ahead, would be 20 years of good wildlife management that has allowed the large mammal systems of Willmore and Jasper Parks to find their own equilibrium, for the first time since the early 1800s when Europeans began to arrive.191

Caribou and wolves proved rare and both played vital roles in the ecology of Jasper. In January 1987, a ruling by the Fish and Wildlife Advisory Council granted the wolves of Willmore and Jasper a reprieve. While the committee agreed that, "the highest priority is the saving of the caribou" they decided that "wolf management is the last issue we want to address, and would require a separate decision."192 The plan found itself on indefinite hold. The scheme had been blocked by a "lack of socially acceptable means of wolf control and apprehension of ensuing public controversy."193 Wolves from Jasper continued to make forays into Willmore, the Willow Creek Pack roving from their den in the Snake Indian drainage across the border. For their part, caribou avoided the doomsday scenario predicted for them, despite the presence of Canis lupus (and, more pertinently, Homo sapiens). In 1994, Janet Edwards, the architect of the Restoration Plan, admitted that her report had proved unduly pessimistic.194 However, the issue of predation and the status of rare ungulates remained contentious at the dawn of the twenty-first century. As Wes Bradford posited: "when you have an endangered species such as woodland caribou ... and they get down to very low numbers

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... and you find out that the biggest mortality is by wolves .... Now what are you going to do?"195 Whereas the presence of wolves among the Willmore caribou aroused traditional fears of rapacious carnivores, in the 1990s Canis lupus emerged as an ambassador species for rare breeds alongside Jasper's eastern boundary. In March 1996, Cardinal River Coals (CRC) unveiled plans for a mining venture at Mountain Park in the eastern foothills of the Rockies. The proposed Cheviot Mine represented a huge industrial project involving a chain of twenty-six open-pit mines. The CRC scheme threatened to cut a gash across the Alberta landscape twenty-two kilometres long and four kilometres wide, less than two kilometres from Jasper National Park. Back in 1895, Canadian pioneers John and Mary Gregg had staked a mineral claim near the headwaters of the MacLeod and Cardinal Rivers, anticipating coal-coloured fortune under the rolling hills. The Greggs subsequently sold their mineral lease to industrialists, who built a mining enterprise in the region complete with its own town, Mountain Park.196 Built on the bedrock of coal fortunes, Mountain Park prospered until pit closure in 1950. By the 1990s, all that existed of the frontier community was an old graveyard with wooden fences and simple crosses. Countless birds and mammals had colonized the abandoned mining site. Vulnerable and rare species such as wolverine, bull trout, harlequin duck, osprey, Canada lynx, and cougar had made Mountain Park their home. Wolves and grizzlies represented apex predators in an environment that supported twenty-seven Albertan endangered species. The decision by CRC to resume mining at Mountain Park spurred intense controversy. A coalition of environmental groups resolved to fight the $225 million project. Local groups such as the Jasper Environmental Association, Pembina Institute, and Alberta Wilderness Association (AWA), together with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society and Canadian Nature Federation, rallied against CRC. In January 1997, one hundred and fifty people crammed into a Hinton hotel to attend public hearings on the Cheviot mine before the Joint Review Panel of the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board (AEUB) and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA). 197 The implications of the project for local communities, both human and nonhuman, produced heated debate. Speakers from both sides invoked Canis lupus as a four-legged envoy for their respective causes. A video submitted to the AEUB/CEAA hearings by the local branch of the United Mineworkers of America (UMA) included shots of

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mountain sheep, elk and wolves roaming across the proposed Cheviot mine site. Canis lupus was employed as a symbol of vibrant Alberta wilderness. The presentation then switched to show an environment at a disused pit, revealing a reclaimed and re-natured landscape of green hills set behind a sparkling lake.198 The UMA implied that wild terrain retained its natural beauty despite the machinations of extractive industry, suggesting that wolves and other species could roam the foothills before, during, and after, the Cheviot scheme. CRC Project Manager Bob Munn continued in a similar vein, portraying a mine at nearby Cadomin as a coal-crafted faunal Utopia. Bulldozers at Cadomin had sculpted the contours of new hills, while a large artificial pond had been created from an excavated pit. Even the old tires lying at the bottom of the lake apparently served an ecological purpose by providing shelter for small fish.199 Both CRC and the UMA invoked images of a shared environment, mutually used by the human and non-human, alluding to a natural alliance between industrial developers and faunal residents. They conjured visions of wildlife adapting and prospering in a landscape moulded by human artifice. A reclaimed Cheviot site was even promoted as a wild area to rival that of adjacent Jasper National Park. Gordon Ulrich explained that: "what people don't understand is that it is possible to take the land, replace the topsoil, seed it, and plant trees ... its rebuilding what is over time going to be a pristine mountain environment."200 At Mountain Park, seeds and roots had indeed grown up, through and over human constructions, with animals making their homes in the abandoned industrial setting. Ulrich's confidence in constructing a Cheviot mine/nature complex nevertheless bore the hallmarks of corporate greenwashing. Environmentally sensitive advertising afforded industries the opportunity to curry favour with a public responsive to images of endangered species.201 Appropriating the natural landscape served the ends of capital, industry chiefs ultimately concerned with the greenery of the dollar rather than the floral variety. Miners wore Tshirts emblazoned with "Our future. Our jobs. Our environment."202 Moreover, the scale of transformation planned for Cheviot belied Ulrich's claims to restore pristine conditions. The conscious recreation of a seemingly natural zone at Mountain Park instead conjured up a sanitized Disney experience, a re-natured Frontierland. To AWA Director Ben Gadd, the restoration scheme merely entailed a "theme park for corporate self-congratulation. In the end you're going to get twenty-two kilometres of spoil pits with the odd tuft of native forest here and there."203 For corporate bosses, wilderness represented mere topsoil, quantified in

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tonnage, gouged out, and, in time, refilled. Industrialists assumed that ancient ecological processes could be removed, and later replaced, by heavy plant machinery. Taken to its logical extreme, such promotions of human-industrial agency as benign and natural deemed all landscapes essentially replaceable, implying a dangerous level of relativism. Ulrich himself appeared to present little difference between wilderness courtesy of industrial excavation and protected park landscapes. For eco-activists, Cheviot represented a dramatic threat to Jasper National Park rather than a supplementary nature reserve. Rocky Mountain peaks moulded by millennium-old geological forces could not be replicated by the machinations of Caterpillar earthmovers. Canis lupus emerged as a keystone symbol of this imperilled wild environment. The Canadian Nature Federation (CNF) interpreted the Cheviot danger in no uncertain terms, embarking on litigation for the first time in its history.204 Environmentalists argued that critical habitat in the area would be rendered off limits to large carnivores for one hundred years, threatening endangered species that inhabited the area, and jeopardizing essential wildlife movements out of Jasper. By the mid-1990s, between forty and fifty wolves roamed Jasper and only one or two packs possessed territory entirely within the park.205 Speaking on behalf of Canis lupus, the Alberta Wilderness Association declared: "The best option for carnivores would be no mine and immediate implementation of a comprehensive carnivore conservation strategy for the region."206 Industrialists and their environmentalist opponents clashed over whether the Cheviot project would be compatible with, or catastrophic to, local wildlife. Their activities reflected widely different notions about naturalness and value, and yet both groups cast Canis lupus as a symbol of ecological vibrancy and wild nature. Pro-Cheviot interests co-opted the resilient grey wolf for green public relations, while environmentalists fought to defend a lupine landscape from industrial encroachment. Both reflected a post-war identification of wolves with vibrant ecosystems. The Cheviot controversy further revealed the depth of public concern over the fate of large carnivores. In April 1999, the protracted campaign against provincial and federal agencies sympathetic to resource extraction proved victorious. The Canadian Federal Court rejected CRC's project on a legal technicality, namely the company's failure to conduct a cumulative effects study concerning the impact of the Cheviot mine on resident wildlife as required by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. Cardinal River Coals had failed to substantiate its claims of beneficent land stewardship.

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South of the international border, Canadian Rocky Mountain wolves again emerged as icons for wildlife preservation and ecological holism. At the same time as Albertans debated killing wolves to save caribou in Willmore Wilderness Park, Americans discussed plans to bring the large predators back to ancestral haunts in Yellowstone National Park. Endangered species advocates either side of the forty-ninth parallel both targeted Jasper's wolves, but for very different reasons. In 1923, the Winnipeg Free Press alleged that "hunger-mad" Canadian wolves threatened the livelihoods of American homesteaders.207 Seventy years later, the Calgary Herald offered a different spin on an old tale: "Wolves have become so scarce in the U.S. they are classified as endangered everywhere but Alaska and Minnesota. So when officials began planning to re-populate Idaho and Yellowstone, they looked to Canada."208 Whereas frontier citizens south of the border had once glanced fearfully to the north for grey ghosts sneaking over the boundary, Americans in the 1990s looked to Canadian wolf country to restock wild areas with their most popular icon. "If you have a toothy snarl, a trademark Canadian howl, and a taste for American elk, Yellowstone National Park has a home for you" advertised the Edmonton Journal.209 With five thousand wolves roaming the province, many Canadians appeared unconcerned about the plan to remove thirty-three animals from the eastern Rocky Mountain slopes and relocate them to Yellowstone and Idaho. The Colorado-based High Country News reported "not much fuss over wolves in Canada." The article quoted Rocky Mountain House resident Calvin Mallette, who confessed "my own opinion is, I don't know why you want to bother bringing wolves down to the states .... nobody even knows they're around anyway." The furore over the reintroduction scheme in the United States contrasted with the low-profile nature of the issue north of the fortyninth parallel. To locals such as Mallette, wolves appeared a customary part of the Albertan landscape, albeit shadows who usually remained unseen. "Canadians who live with the animals can't figure out why their neighbors to the south are making such a fuss," related the High Country News.210 The presence of Canis lupus nevertheless bred antipathy as well as acceptance in Alberta. The draconian nature of hunting and trapping laws in the province indicated that ranchers and hunters refused to fully accept their lupine neighbours. Some would have gladly donated the entire Albertan wolf population to Yellowstone. The plan to trap wolves in Alberta and expatriate them to the U.S. nevertheless proved highly contentious for some locals. Whereas U.S.

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environmental groups fought to return Cams lupus to the American West, a few Canadian organizations appeared uneasy about the reintroduction program. Environmentalists in Alberta articulated particular concerns about animals frequenting Jasper National Park. Jill Seaton, a member of Canadian Wolf Defenders, argued: Parks Canada recognizes that biodiversity and ecosystem management are of paramount importance. They should be very concerned that some of these wolves may be part of national park ecosystems ... every one of these packs is needed to keep park elk and other prey within the range's carrying capacity.211

In order to mitigate any danger of taking wolves away from Canadian national parks, wildlife authorities chose a capture site near Hinton, twenty miles east of Jasper. Critics nonetheless remained unconvinced by the gesture, given lupine abilities to range over large territories and the lack of information on the movements of Jasper's packs. Looking back on the program in late 1995, with Albertan wolves roaming Yellowstone's hills and valleys, AWA member Brian Horejsi remarked, "there is no guarantee, not even any evidence, that these famous Canadian national parks did not share the impacted wolf populations. How's that for a touch of irony!"212 The Yellowstone program was touted in the United States as a paramount example of successful endangered species legislation and environmental consultation. Yet, Canadian critics pointed to the lack of environmental assessment and public input to the project north of the border. In contrast to the avalanche of information available from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Albertans remained relatively uninformed about the scheme. Horejsi exclaimed, "imagine, if you will, the unannounced appearance of caged wolves at the gates of Yellowstone or the River of No Return Wilderness. That's essentially the way the wolf removal came down in Alberta." Horejsi did not doubt that Americans "gained something very valuable," but questioned the acceptability of a program that circumvented democratic process and sacrificed ecosystem integrity in Canada: "Consider how you would feel if you were losing the wolves without public involvement and without knowing any of the details. That neighbours, is how many Albertans feel today."213 Canadian commentators expressed anxieties concerning the impact of the program on wolves marked for relocation. Environmentalists

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articulated fears over the stress placed on target animals during the capture process. Jill Seaton noted that "these wild wolves who have never had anything to do with humans ... will be vaccinated, ear-tagged, radio-collared, and loaded into crates."214 Coverage of the capture by the Calgary Herald alluded to motifs of human mastery and lupine incarceration. "The frightened wolves sat sullenly in their pens, curled up in balls" related one editorial. The Herald described how "helicopters buzzed Alberta's forests in search of more animals," conjuring military visions of wolves as cornered guerrillas, with Switzer Park as their Prisoner of War camp.215 Fears were also expressed for the safety of wolves once they reached Yellowstone. In a telephone call made to Gray Jones of the Canadian Wilderness Committee, a caller identified only as 'Rogers' issued a death threat to Alberta's packs. 'Rogers' expressed his anti-wolf fervour in no uncertain terms, vocalizing: "now we know they're coming, we're ready for them. That's why God made semi-automatics."216 Jill Seaton regarded the animals as disoriented Canadian tourists, overwhelmed and under threat in a strange country.217 She castigated Montanan attitudes towards Canis lupus as "still back in the Middle Ages," a strange accusation given the tortuous fate routinely meted out to wolves wandering ranchland in Alberta.218 Biologist John Gunson, meanwhile, noted that a wolf "stands a much better chance of surviving down there."219 The lore of the plains lingered on in Western animosity towards predators on both sides of the international boundary, but in the United States wolves did have federal law on their side. An article in The Denver Post supposedly offered a lupine perspective on the proceedings, describing a conversation 'between' two black Canadian wolves on the costs and benefits of U.S. residency. Advising his pack-mate "don't get hot under the collar," one wolf noted that, "it'll be worth the wait. In America we'll be an endangered species, so we'll be protected. No more hunters on our tails." His companion proved more cynical, replying, "don't bank on it ... they've classified us 'experimental non-essential.' That doesn't sound like protection to me." The first wolf retorted, "that simply means we're expected to be on our best behavior, just like all the other immigrants."220 However, criticism from the north ebbed when popular fears that the Albertan emigres would be killed proved unfounded. In 1998, the Edmonton Journal emphasized that "Canadian wolves" had adjusted to their new country "beyond anyone's wildest expectations." Despite their newly found American residency, the Edmonton paper claimed proud

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sovereignty over the animals, reiterating that Canadian wolves "appear to be beginning to restore the kind of ecological equilibrium in Yellowstone that was lost when they were eliminated from the food chain." The Journal ended by quoting project leader Doug Smith: "Every day, I thank Canada for sending us these animals. These wolves are truly a symbol of friendship and co-operation between our countries."221 An article in the High Country News "to: Mom, From: Wolf 3, Somewhere in Yellowstone National Park" described his experiences in fresh terrain. The animal viewed his capture and reappearance in a "new forest" in terms of an alien abduction. Despite a feeling of "being watched" by the "weird metal ships" which passed by, the wolf concluded: Mom, you ought to come down, and bring the triplets. Now you must really think I'm crazy. But here's the deal. There's room here. We're talking lots .... Besides, its nice country. Creeks, mountains, trees that nobody else has marked except a few mangy coyotes. There's a down side, sure. Every now and then the hairless ones show up and grab one of the gang. It's getting a little old. Same old stories—pricked and handled and carried off—but so far they've always brought us back.222

Back in Jasper, the cousins of Wolf 3 continued to forge pack life in the place where Canis lupus had roamed for millennia. Several packs, totalling fifty to seventy animals, wandered the Canadian preserve in the late 1990s.223 The region named after Jasper House had brought its fair share of adversity, but the area always remained wolf country. Animals from Jasper repopulated the national parks of Banff, Glacier, and eventually Yellowstone, ear-tags and radio collars marking them as heroes in the grand tale of Rocky Mountain wolf restoration.

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The Trials and Trails of Wolf History Exceptionalism in the Rocky Mountain Wolf Parks The wolves be in some respect different from them in other countries.1 WILLIAM WOOD, New England, 1633

B

ETWEEN 1995 AND 1999, an estimated twenty thousand visitors observed wolves loping across the terrain of Yellowstone National Park.2 Gift shops at Mammoth Hot Springs and Old Faithful Village plied vacationers with celebratory souvenirs from T-shirts to heat-sensitive mugs, which, when filled with hot liquid, revealed an image of a meritorious wolf surveying the landscape. Those unable to reach Rocky Mountain climes could satiate their appetite for lupine information in the virtual domain. Internet sites meticulously followed the lives of the Yellowstone wolves, documenting home territories, births, deaths and inter-pack disputes.3 In contrast, lupines roaming ancestral lands in Jasper National Park failed to kindle commensurate civic fanfares. Pack manoeuvres in the Athabascan preserve scarcely mustered attention from internet wolf-watchers. Such divergence in public interest reflected the variant levels of fame ascribed to Rocky Mountain national parks. The four preserves had different identities in North American popular consciousness. Americans and Canadians had crafted the mountain parks into separate and special entities, each with its own unique story. Wolf tales in Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper reinforced notions of local distinctiveness. Yellowstone National Park was extolled as a unique place of unparalleled natural splendour. The intense symbolic meaning assigned to the mountain wonderland resonated with American Exceptionalism. Enshrined as a geographical and ideological monument to the special bond between Americans and their country, the park was emblematic of the soaring grandeur of the landscape and the heady democratic

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Two wolves in the Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park, July 1995 (NPS photo).

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ideals on which the Republic was founded. Americans fondly recalled the birth of an extraordinary idea at Madison Junction in 1870, when Cornelius Hedges ventured preserving the strange curiosities in the area as a "great National Park."4 In 1983, Western writer Wallace Stegner described the national park concept as a paragon of American conviction, put candidly, "the best idea we ever had."5 The reintroduction of the wolf to Yellowstone both endorsed and elevated the portentous reputation of the reserve. Restoring the large predators to the 'wild heart of North America' signified an unprecedented event in twentiethcentury wildlife conservation. It embodied two epic American tales— the creation of the first national park and the conquest of a continent. The superlatives of the Yellowstone wolf story, from wholesale slaughter to wondrous welcome, symbolized the two extremes of the American environmental legacy. Reintroduction was dramatized as a poignant act of redemption by contrite human stewards, an absolution for past crimes committed under the rubric of material progress and Manifest Destiny. From 1995 onwards, Yellowstone was canonized as the preeminent wolf park. Capacious media and public fascination with lupine tales in Yellowstone demonstrated the cultural significance of the Wyoming reserve. Over a century and a quarter, laudatory publications and personal experiences had afforded Yellowstone a powerful and distinctive eclat. The heady mystique attached to America's first national park, which seemed to differentiate it from other preserves, was further embellished by canine howls. Lupine presence validated Yellowstone's preservationist iconography and restored its ecological luminosity. Environmentalist Dave Foreman described Yellowstone as a place reinvigorated by canine incisors: "the legs of the elk are being whittled again by wolves ... and the whole place is alive."6 The alliance of predatory charisma and a hallowed landscape meant that wolves in Yellowstone culled a particular allure. Vacationers usually travelled to Glacier National Park for its alpine peaks, eponymous ice flows and the spectacular drive along the Going to the Sun Highway. Terminal moraines and tarmac defined Glacier's public identity while wolf trails were largely ignored. When the predators returned to Glacier in the 1980s, lupine activities earned scant national fame. Wild canines sneaked silently across the border and reclaimed territory in the land where Rising Wolf stockaded their ancestors years earlier. The momentous return of Canis lupus to American soil did not prompt Glacier's consecration as a landmark to lupine rehabilitation and human rectitude. Glacier had consistently attracted less fame than

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Yellowstone, and lupine history in the park proved likewise. Even in the 1990s, visitors attending interpretative talks failed to realize that Glacier harboured wolves. Resettlement of the preserve in northern Montana stemmed from canine rather than human agency. Different levels of human interference either side of the Continental Divide rendered Glacier a unique lupine landscape. In the North Fork, pioneering packs enjoyed a relatively peaceful coexistence with bears, mountain lions and few humans, while wolves from St. Mary struggled to survive forays into adjoining cattle country. Canine fortunes told different stories on the western and eastern slopes of the Shining Mountains. Neon mall signs, condominium lights and cinema billboards gleaned Banff National Park a reputation as a place of resplendent development. The difficulties incurred by the dual mandates of preservation and use were endemic to both U.S. and Canadian preserves, but the profligate commercial activity in Banff distinguished it from its Rocky Mountain counterparts. Wolf chronicles along the banks of the Bow River were similarly marked by economic exigencies. Hounded from the wilder echelons of the early park, Canis lupus had nonetheless been granted citizenship in Banff's urban realms as a carnivorous curiosity. Caged lupines enthralled visitors to the Banff Zoo. The built environment continued to frame human-lupine relations in Banff in the late twentieth century. The townsite, Trans-Canada Highway and Canadian Pacific Railway serviced human wants but scarcely heeded lupine requirements. Elk learned to adapt to the leafy avenues of Banff, but wolves were forced to wander elsewhere. While Banff won status as Canada's first national park, and, later, earned a more dubious honour as a construction mecca, Jasper National Park achieved less renown. In the late twentieth century, Jasper's reputation appeared analogous with Glacier's, a rugged northern realm overshadowed by its more famous southern neighbour. The Athabascan reserve shared river systems, mountain ranges, and an asphalt roadway with Banff, yet retained a distinct identity in popular consciousness. The largest of the four preserves, and the least visited, Jasper was synonymous with isolation and remoteness.7 Wolves were scarcely seen in the northerly valleys and dense forests. However, in the days of Jasper House trading post, the area had been a singular landmark in a scarcely explored Rocky Mountain landscape. The machinations of the fur trade deemed it the most notorious of the four national parks in the early 1800s. Poisoning campaigns enacted by postmasters at Jasper House denoted the first organized attempt to eradicate wolves from any of the

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preserves. Jasper nonetheless retained a remnant wolf population throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a feat not replicated in Yellowstone, Glacier, or Banff. Cants lupus survived in the Athabascan park not because trappers, settlers or park officials were more compassionate, but due to remote swathes of land to the north which proved less susceptible to human penetration. Space and seclusion were instrumental in forging Jasper's distinctive wolf history. Differences between the Rocky Mountain parks have been customarily attributed to their position vis-a-vis the forty-ninth parallel. Yellowstone and Glacier, as American national parks, were thus differentiated from the Canadian preserves of Banff and Jasper. Americans frequently couched national distinctiveness in terms of U.S. leadership and Canadian indolence, with northerly national parks characterized as trailing behind their counterparts in the 'Lower 48.' This notion of Canadian lag befitted exceptionalist rhetoric lauding the United States as a munificent leader entrusted with dispensing its redemptive ideals to other nations. The national park represented an illustrious creed that was eminently exportable. In the realm of wolf policy, reverential emulation from park authorities in Canada provided evidence of American conservationist foresight. Dominion officials habitually relied on U.S. discussions to formulate their own policies. Overseers of the Alberta parks stole glances southwards, soliciting information on killing predators (and, later, saving them) from American sources. With funding opportunities far more limited than in the U.S. before 1945, Canadian administrators tended to rely on the resources and expertise of organizations south of the border.8 Larger federal agencies in the United States, together with state fish and game organizations, willingly provided verbal and chemical ammunition for the wolf war in Banff and Jasper parks. In turn, National Park Service (NFS) conference proceedings, scientific articles and personal correspondence discussing the ecological value of wolves were passed to Canadian authorities. Dominion officials drew on arguments brought by U.S. critics in the 1920s and 1930s to air their own reservations concerning predator control. National Park Service legislation extending protection to predatory animals bolstered notions of American primacy. Revisions in Canadian predator policy were characterized as laggard in comparison with the United States, the inference being that southerners were considerably more progressive in terms of preservationist intent. Predators were deemed 'special charges of the parks' in Yellowstone and Glacier in 1933, whereas unequivocal protection for large carnivores in Banff and Jasper

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WOLF MOUNTAINS was not evinced until 1959. While Canadian park managers exhibited a heightened degree of respect for resident canines, they continued to adhere to management dictates no longer considered appropriate in the two American preserves. Alterations in Canadian policy from 1924 onwards codified and curtailed park practices, but wolf control represented a habitual recourse in Banff and Jasper through the mid1950s, reaching its apogee in the anti-rabies program. Complete protection for the infamous denizen of the wilderness arrived in Banff and Jasper twenty-six years after Yellowstone and Glacier. Canadian commentators also sought to distinguish outcomes north of the border from experiences in the United States. An alternative interpretation of national park wolf policies in North America emerged. Dominion officials chose to overlook early extermination measures and the rabies 'pogrom' in Alberta, and instead emphasized the buoyancy of lupine populations in Canada. In a 1961 letter to a Michigan resident concerned about stories of wolf destruction north of the border, Acting Chief of the Canadian Wildlife Service W. E. Stevens noted that, "We in Canada feel fortunate to have some wolves remaining in our fauna." He characterized Canadian predator policy as one of reasonable control rather than the "campaign of extermination as has occurred in the United States."9 The desire to differentiate Canadian experience from the United States, inferring distinctiveness if not superiority, was evident in other bureaucratic pronouncements. One earnest copy editor proofreading a document on preservation deleted references to Canadian preserves as "guided" by the U.S. experience and stressed the creation of the Dominion Parks agency "five years before a similar step was taken in the United States."10 Such exhortations were rooted in a sense of nationalism and underscored with conservationist chauvinism but ably illustrated Canadian desires to commemorate their own special connections with the land. By the late twentieth century, Canadians, as well as Americans, had anointed national parks as exemplary symbols of their country. The idea of Canada as vibrant wolf country was augmented by the Yellowstone reintroduction. The restoration of Canis lupus to northwest Wyoming inspired odes to Canadian as well as American exceptionalism. While Americans read the return of the wolf as an unprecedented event in the world's first national park, Canadians focused on the national origin of the lupine pioneers. Wild canines from northern climes were touted as ecological saviours coming to the aid of a tamed and emasculated Yellowstone. Environmentalists implied that faunal citizens

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were afforded more respect in Canada than in the United States. The continued existence of wolves in Alberta and the Northwest Territories denoted a wilder West than had graced Montana or Wyoming for most of the 1900s. The common trails of wolf history in the Rocky Mountains nonetheless serve to temper notions of national exceptionalism. American claims to exemplary foresight in lupine rehabilitation and Canadian avowals of auspicious and philanthropic wolf policy both require qualification. Instead of underlining a unique bond between U.S. or Canadian citizens and their fellow creatures, lupine history in the national parks revealed broader North American trends at work. The American and Canadian Wests were characterized by comparable topographies and faunal and floral compositions. Land-use debates either side of the international boundary were marked by similar cultural inclinations. Ideas about wildlife protection, natural landscapes and human management that shaped the fortunes of Yellowstone and Glacier also moulded the nature of Banff and Jasper. Events either side of the forty-ninth parallel at times followed different paths, but a number of common themes underscored Rocky Mountain wolf tales. Early treatment of wolves in the four parks proved analogous. Packs failed to find sanctuary in Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff or Jasper. Each park was established for similar purposes—to preserve the scenic attributes of a monumental mountain landscape from private acquisition. Nebulous legislative directives afforded American and Canadian managers the opportunity to enforce distinctive strategies. However, in the domain of predator policy, supervisors of the different reserves betrayed a homogeneous disdain for Cants lupusy articulating congruent notions of carnivorous animals as noxious vermin. The common death sentences imposed on wolves in the early Rocky Mountain preserves reflected a widespread antipathy towards flesh-eating animals in North America. Superintendents interpreted amorphous terms such as natural purpose unequivocally, designating the parks as places for aesthetic and recreational pleasure and sanctuaries for game. Officials betrayed personal preferences for certain methods of control, experimenting with rifles, poison, cyanide-guns, hounds, and mange. Tentative use of toxic substances or reluctance to distribute rifles reflected fears for the unintentional deaths of valued animals such as elk and deer. Canadian preference for guns as opposed to U.S. proclivity for poison merely denoted different routes to the same goal. Few preservationists, scientists or park managers shared the incipient biocentrism of Sierra

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Club founder John Muir. Muir's apostasy that animals were not created for human use and should not be judged by anthropocentric criteria ran counter to the overwhelming tendency to rank animals by their culinary or aesthetic utilities. The wolf, as defined by predation, represented a vile competitor for domestic steers and wild deer, a brutal and entirely reprehensible killer. Morality pervaded the cause and course of wildlife protection in equal measure in Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff, and Jasper. Contrary to the notion of American-Canadian exchange as one-way traffic, predator control methods and ideas, ecological dogma, literary texts, and official documents travelled freely across the international border in both directions. U.S. wildlife managers paid attention to park initiatives north of the border. Early administrators in the United States perceived their own efforts to destroy carnivores in the 'Lower 48' as inextricably linked to the Canadian context. For Glacier's Superintendent Payne, British Columbia and Alberta took on the demeanour of wolf country, 'problem' territories that harboured invading armies of wolves. Administrative developments in the Canadian parks, meanwhile, received enthusiastic overtures from the United States. Bureaucrats in the newly formed National Park Service stressed a need to cultivate a constructive liaison with northern cohorts, Director Stephen Mather receiving instructions from Secretary of Interior Franklin Lane to "maintain [a] close working relationship with the Dominion Parks Branch of the Canadian Department of the Interior, and assist in the solution of park problems of an international character."11 Pioneering ecological studies on wolves in Banff and Jasper by Ian McTaggart Cowan in the 1940s also provoked widespread U.S. interest.12 The Canadian Parks Service maintained a plethora of international contacts, procuring literature on national parks from foreign governments while supplying data to interested parties in far-flung climes.13 Interaction between conservation agencies in North America was part of an international discourse between government officials, ecologists and wildlife managers that spanned Old and New Worlds. In a letter to NPS Director Newton Drury in 1946, Canadian Parks Service Controller James Smart couched the value of U.S. exchange in the context of shared experience, noting that, "we encounter conditions that parallel closely those you meet."14 Analogous wolf policies and communication between the American and Canadian Rocky Mountain preserves indicated strong mutual interests and common designs. Debates about the efficacy of wolf control in the inter-war years placed the national parks at the forefront of ecological thinking in both

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countries. Park administrators in Canada and the United States broadcast Cams lupus as a natural, rightful and useful resident. Predators in Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper were identified as essential biotic agents and valued members of the community. This shared definition of lupine value revealed a broader appreciation of animal ecology amongst North American conservationists. Similar semantics in each of the four parks reflected an ample trend of wolf rehabilitation rather than simple emulation on the part of Canadian authorities. Parallel policies of wolf destruction had given rise to similar problems in each of the preserves. Local conditions in Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper validated broader principles of ecological holism as the fallacy of removing native predators manifested itself in burgeoning elk herds, denuded stream beds and cropped aspen stands. Along the rugged backbone of North America, press releases and correspondence resounded with ideals of widening the circle of protection, preserving national parks as places of wilderness in a changing world, and protecting the wolf for ecological, scientific, educational and aesthetic purposes. American and Canadian managers were similarly united in their use of science as a guide to action. The stress on impartial facts over emotional prejudice, which dominated North American discourse, cast science as an ultimate arbiter and axiom of truth. The infallible and objective appellations customarily attached to rationalism reflected deepseated cultural biases that had enshrined reason as a hallowed tool of human enquiry since the Enlightenment. Meanwhile, alternative authorities, working according to equally entrenched folk beliefs or regional loyalties, set out to debunk ecological convictions on behalf of loquacious anti-wolf interests. Local fish and game associations, together with old-time park wardens, resisted granting lupine residency rights in the parks. The inter-war years in Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper were marked by dissenting voices. Arguments over wolves appeared more protracted in Banff and Jasper principally because lupines habitually roamed there. By the time wolves became 'special charges' in Yellowstone and Glacier, lupine tracks had all but disappeared. Debates over predators in the United States were waged in the pages of journals, in memos, newspapers and letters, whereas the physical presence of wolves in Banff and Jasper sentenced live animals to the whims of management in a time of transition. Predator policies in the 1930s appear less divergent once the details of national park practices are considered. Simple declarations of protective intent masked notable similarities between the United States

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and Canada. The NFS revised policy on carnivorous animals, in common with Canadian pronouncements, allowed for flexible management to meet changing circumstances. The welcome afforded to prodigal predators in U.S. parks remained contingent on the vitality of prey species that required 'special protection.' Preservation resembled a hierarchical system where animals were judged by rarity, despite the insertion of ecological criteria. Yellowstone's coyotes failed to command the same value as vanishing game or rare carnivora. The canine tricksters suffered the same resurfacing animosity from park staff and locals that wolves experienced in Banff and Jasper, and were subjected to lingering control measures. Meanwhile, in Mount McKinley National Park, Alaska, where wolves remained prevalent, Canis lupus was far from redeemed. Controversies about wolf control raged in McKinley for many years, and protection for resident lupines was only secured in 1952. Predator rehabilitation in the U.S. parks, just as in the Canadian preserves, represented an arduous and gradual process. Divergences in attitudes and practices in the Rocky Mountain national parks were thus more a reflection of local conditions than national distinctiveness. Managers subscribed to similar agendas of extermination and protection, but the vagaries of geography, past policies, and public opinion engendered particular lupine scenarios in each of the parks. Scarcity proved a key factor in determining wildlife policies both sides of the forty-ninth parallel. While the paucity of funding in Canada demanded glances over the border in the pre-1945 period, the absence of wolves in the continental United States helped enshrine the species as an important and valuable form.

Crossing National Park Boundaries They don't understand boundaries, they don't understand zones ... you may talk about zone three, but its not as if you can tell Mr. Wolf, 'here's your boundary, please don't go any farther.'15 STUART DOGGETT, Montana Stockgrowers Association, 1986

Regionalism proves as malleable a tool in explaining wolf history in the national parks as notions of exceptionalism. Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper parks retained distinctive characters—moulded by topography, the behaviour of park officials and the activities of resident wolves—but they also formed part of a wider Rocky Mountain West.

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An internal NFS document in the 1930s pertinently characterized predator policy as a shifting concept guided by a myriad of interest groups articulating their own views of park purpose, thereby "swinging the pendulum one way and another, especially as regards decisions of national versus local interest in specific areas."16 There was no shortage of vociferous parties howling about wolves in the Canadian preserves either. The national parks could not be separated from their regional context. In lupine circles too, residents of Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper did not differentiate parklands from surrounding territory, and frequently wandered large distances across Rocky Mountain terrain. Human and canine maps both perceived the national parks as part of a wider system. Boundaries overlay the process of western settlement, Euro-Americans transposing their own political and territorial lines on the topographical landscape. Maps situating mining claims or homestead rights, state lines or national borders delineated the process of Euro-American conquest. Boundary-lines denoted spheres of power, security, wealth and ownership. For the acclaimed western writer Wallace Stegner, growing up on the Montana-Saskatchewan border, the forty-ninth parallel denoted "an agreement, a rule, a limitation, a fiction perhaps but a legal one, acknowledged by both sides; and the coming of law, even such limited law as this, was the beginning of civilization in what had been a lawless wilderness."17 In this 'lawless wilderness' however, borders already existed, not just between Native nations, but also between non-human communities. Boundaries underlay the human landscape of the West, from ecological zones to watershed divisions. Faunal forms inhabited their own territories, and secured their own spheres of subsistence usage. Pack ranges were marked by scented posts and defensive posturing, prairie dog towns by sentries and cropped grass, and beaver domains by lodges and flooded plains. Territorial dynamics comprised an essential part of the natural world, the definition of home terrain by the availability of food or safe shelter a customary part of life for all species. The difficulty came with human cognition of existing territories and boundaries. Two-legged colonizers often failed to recognize the validity of wolf range or trails in the landscape, and re-envisioned lupine rangers as trespassers. Packs living in Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper in the nineteenth century struggled to survive the onslaught brought by westward expansionism, the movements of wolves either side of the international border sharply curtailed by Euro-Americans 211

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forging nations by natural resource exploitation. Defining territory was never an entirely harmonious process in faunal societies. In the 1990s, wolves in Glacier clashed over favoured lands, while packs in Yellowstone displaced the wily coyotes who had assumed top dog position in their absence. However, the exclusive control of landscapes by human-defined jurisdictions jeopardized the spatial requirements of species and, ultimately, threatened ecological holism in the Rocky Mountains. Early preservationists envisioned national parks as protected areas insulated from the forces of acquisition and exploitation sweeping the rest of the nation. Legislated boundaries separated the fantastical museum pieces from a wider landscape under transformation. While surrounding areas were settled, mined and grazed, the designated parks would preserve pristine slices of original North America for time immemorial. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt celebrated Yellowstone as "a natural breeding-ground and nursery for those stately and beautiful haunters of the wilds which have now vanished from so many of the great forests, the vast lonely plains, and the high mountain ranges, where they once abounded."18 Roosevelt scarcely felt that the wolf deserved a place in this game paradise, but, in later years, even the 'beast of waste and desolation' received protection. Aldo Leopold, writing in 1944, believed that national parks offered the last best places for wolves to survive in North America.19 However, the separation of park and regional perspectives never proved a viable proposition. Despite the ideals of creating outdoor museums distinct from adjacent terrain, the boundaries of park protection were never impregnable. Local interests consistently informed management decisions. Official pronouncements regarding resident canines were infused by references to outlying areas. Rocky Mountain park managers publicized their enthusiasm for, and efficiency in, control measures to placate local constituencies who slurred the preserves as 'breeding grounds for wolves.' Policies of predator destruction were consistently seen in a broader geographical context. Bureau of Biological Survey agent Vernon Bailey couched his killing agenda in Yellowstone in terms of clearing the infested park on behalf of stock-raisers in surrounding lands, while his arrival in Glacier was predicated on the need to prevent wolves from invading the game sanctuary from adjacent locales. The rabies fervour in Alberta in the 1950s similarly damned Banff and Jasper as bases for infected canines, thereby plunging the parks into their own poisoning sprees.

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The successful return of the wolf to ancestral territories in Jasper, Banff, Glacier and Yellowstone in the late twentieth century illustrated the crucial sanctuary role played by national parks. Dispersing animals from Jasper moved south into Banff, where the next generation of wolf pioneers struck off for Glacier. The established boundaries installed by human settlement were challenged by a wave of returning wolves. Roving canines established a neo-lupine frontier based not on appropriating the terrain of others, but reclaiming their own. However, wolf restoration in the national parks remained contingent on regional imperatives, both in terms of political support and geographical requirements. The thousands of miles of protected lands did not provide enough space to secure sustainable wolf populations. High elevation areas originally preserved for their scenic value, considerable segments of the four Rocky Mountain parks proved inaccessible to resident wildlife. Dangerous, even impenetrable, areas existed within the protected domains themselves. The straight-line, politically devised, park boundaries further confounded attempts at species protection, with designated lands often failing to match ecological systems or include migration routes. By the late twentieth century, national parks increasingly resembled landlocked ecological islands—pockets of wild lands swamped by proliferating commercial interests.20 The prescient visions of early park advocates took form, as the preserves became wild isles amid a vast reservoir of development. However, given the shortcomings in park design, this raised fundamental difficulties for local fauna. Crossing borders represented an inevitable part of pack life for returning wolves, but habitat fragmentation from clear-cutting, mineral extraction, and urban encroachment jeopardized lupine routes. Wandering canines were constantly beset by lingering prejudice. Wolves travelling huge distances encountered diverse political and legislative jurisdictions where canine exigencies often clashed with human desires. Traversing artificial boundaries incurred countless hazards and legal snares. Yellowstone's packs ranged a Wyoming terrain where the judiciary bayed for the restitution of wolf bounties, while wolves from Glacier habitually strayed into British Columbia, a province where they were deemed 'vermin.' Lupine travellers from Banff moved onto ranchlands where they could . be killed on suspicion of predatory behaviour, and Jasper's animals faced the vagaries of provincial wildlife management imperatives to protect grazers. The importance of the regional dimension in national park wolf recovery proved tragically clear in the case of Waterton Lakes National Park, a small preserve adjoining Glacier.21 In 1993, a dispersing animal

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from Glacier's North Camas Pack liaised with other lone wolves and established the Belly River Pack. Wolves had not denned in Waterton for fifty years. The animals moved freely between the U.S. and Canadian parks. Afforded analogous protection either side of the forty-ninth parallel, the boundary between the two park systems was invisible. However, hunting, trapping and poisoning outside the confines of Waterton, fuelled by resurgent antipathy in Alberta, ensured the deaths of forty-four park animals in 1994-95. Lupine restoration in Waterton proved short-lived.22 Without self-sustaining ecosystems inside the reserves, or secure opportunities for movement outside of them, the western national parks of North America face a spiralling cycle of extinction, with enclaved populations doomed by insufficient numbers to guarantee genetic diversity.23 The national parks provide "protected reservoirs" for species, but wolf survival depends on protecting movements between preserves as well as inside them. Without adequate travel corridors, projections suggest that large carnivores will only exist in twenty-two percent of the world's national parks by the late twenty-first century.24 Dedicated to the infusion of a more holistic perspective into conservation in the Rocky Mountains, a coalition of North American biologists and preservationists launched the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y) in 1997. The Y2Y project stressed the importance of maintaining connectivity between protected wildlife populations, and articulated a desire to protect wildlands in a vast ecological system stretching from Yellowstone to the Yukon. Environmentalist Harvey Locke lauded Y2Y as a visionary scheme: "it's like somebody came to Greater Yellowstone in 1870 and said, 'Let's do this thing right, from the start. Instead of making a square, let's create a plan for the whole area.' This is as big a deal as the creation of Yellowstone, the first national park in the world, or the creation of Banff, the second national park in the world."25 This idea of connecting park landscapes was not an exclusively human rendition. Roving wolves from Jasper, Banff, Glacier and Yellowstone ably demonstrated the importance of situating protection in a broader Rocky Mountain context. As Locke pointed out, "that is their system." In defining the geographical delineation of the Y2Y project, activists concluded that, "in the end, after considerable thought and debate ... in reality the Y2Y had no discreet boundaries ... except those defined by people."26 These imposed lines drawn on the Rocky Mountain map had consistently failed to cater for nature's design.

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CONCLUSION • The Trials and Trails of Wolf History

Restor(y)ing the Wolf But what of the Wolf? Who will speak for him? And, perhaps, a more important question is Kwho will listen I"27 JOSEPH MARSHALL III, 1995

Over the centuries in Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff, and Jasper, wolves roamed popular narratives. Native Americans, trappers, explorers, pioneers, park employees and visitors alike talked about the large predators. Such stories revealed Canis lupus as an animal with incredible resonance in the human imagination, charismatic megafauna that provoked extremes of hatred and adoration. Recollections resounded with spirited references to canine qualities or misdemeanours, and were frequently peppered with notations of stalwart human resolve or allencompassing fear. How observers perceived the animals that they saw and heard, or, more often, heard of, in Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper reflected broader social values. The destruction of national park wolves in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries signified an incontrovertible evil or defining glory depending on the storyteller (or indeed the listener). Both views were prefigured with judgments on progress. Old black and white photographs depicting wardens or settlers holding pelts aloft reveal such interpretative divergences. For the posing subject—grasping the neck of a trapped wolf, or seated, rifle in hand, in front of a cabin adorned with skins—the captured moment signalled the proud Westerner vanquishing the formidable lupine enemy. For many late twentieth-century observers, such photographs represented antiquated relics from another age, exhibitions of atrocity when humankind arrogantly purged the land of other species. Tales of the return of the wolf to Rocky Mountain national parks consistently revisited this scene from the Old West. The faded snapshots of lupine corpses were invariably attendant in modern-day narratives depicting the wolf as ascendant hero or perennial villain. A sense of history infused both traditions—the redeemed predator triumphantly returning after years of misplaced prejudice, or usurping critter sneaking back to the West to denigrate a glorious pioneering heritage. The opposing views reflected differing perceptions of the human place in nature. Fractious anti-wolf forces couched the West as a storehouse of resources to be tapped by the pre-ordained and dominant Homo sapiens. Equally vehement pro-wolfers berated the profligate destruction wrought on

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the West by humans, and stressed a need to consider the requirements of other species. Commentators wrangled over the desires and rights of people and predators to roam the national parks, and Canis lupusbecame conscripted in the battle between the Old and the New West. The tale of wolf rehabilitation in North America produced a new story, and a retelling of older truisms. In each of the four parks, the positive story of lupine rehabilitation was grounded in the rise of ecological thinking, and infused with notions of science as an instrument of redemption. The wolf had been saved by the triumph of rational thinking over fervent bigotry. The NFS characterized its policy revision as "the adoption of impartial scientific data over ancestral prejudice."28 Canadian pronouncements adopted a similar tone. Field research undoubtedly yielded important information about pack life and fostered a view of wolves as valuable members of the park community. Deer eruptions, meanwhile, testified to the intricacies of the natural world and the perils of upsetting the complex interconnections between species. References to epic eco-disasters such as the Kaibab Plateau filled national park correspondences, and were duly employed to explain ecological tenets to a popular audience. However, the history of wolves in Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff, and Jasper also revealed science to be an unreliable protagonist in the story of wolf redemption. Science provided ammunition to save the wolf, but also requisitioned the bullets for lupine destruction. BBS staff proved eager to justify their extermination campaigns as scientific endeavours. In the Canadian preserves, supposedly objective rationales sanctioned experimental control in the 1940s, deeming wolves laboratory rats in national park testing grounds. Defined as cogs in the ecological system, predators remained at the mercy of interventionist managers wishing to fine-tune park ecosystems. Immense emotional attachment to Canis lupuswas also an important factor in the story of wolf restoration. Sensitive portrayals of the wolf from Native American stories to works of modern fiction elucidated appreciation and respect for the much-maligned carnivore. Books such as Never Cry Wolf gained enormous currency in popular culture. Emotive overtures encouraged a powerful sense of empathy with Canis lupus and fostered enthusiasm for returning them to old haunts. Sentiment, however, proved equally adept at authoring a damnatory wolf narrative. Consuming fears of lupine armies invading the national parks represented recurring images for early superintendents, and sanctioned equally intense campaigns of killing. Aggressive images of wild canines as devilish rovers

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and consummate killers permeated the early conservationist cause. Attitudes towards wolves reflected shifting Euro-American sentiments regarding wilderness, both predator and landscape greeted with emotional displays of revulsion and veneration. Cultural tenets, whether clothed in scientific or sentimental garb, have yeilded unreliable valuations of the wolf. Over the span of a century, North American preservationists articulated different attitudes towards wild carnivores. The return of the wolf to the Western national parks by the late 1900s testified to the continuing saliency of environmental concerns in American culture, and offered what Wallace Stegner called "a geography of hope."29 However, the capricious nature of human narratives still begs the need for a more stable basis for species protection. Lupine history in the Rockies amply illustrates the need for a further restor(y)ation. Biocentrism offers one route towards giving rightful consideration to 'fellow mortals' who share the land. The biocentric perspective situates Homo sapiensvntiwi a broader community of species, all granted an "equal right to live and blossom."30 According to Californian deep ecologists Bill Devall and George Sessions, an ecological consciousness leads humans to become "more aware of the actuality of rocks, wolves, trees and rivers—the cultivation of the insight that everything is connected."31 The aspiration is to create a culture more in tune with nature, to build a more egalitarian relationship with the environment from the grassroots up. The holistic tenets of ecological science, treating the land and its creatures as an interdependent community, and spiritual, romantic and aesthetic attachments to animals, can be fused by biocentrism. In detailing his 'land ethic,' Aldo Leopold juxtaposed the process of biological evolution with a parallel extension of ethics, envisaging the devolution of rights to a wider community that included "soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land."32 The U.S. Endangered Species Act represents one such legislative advance, articulating ecological and rights-based precepts by championing the needs of individual species within a biotic system.33 The boundaries of human concern, law, and responsibility need to be further extended to include our natural brethren. National park stories incorporate the narratives of non-humans as well as sapient protagonists. Joseph Marshall III described history as "a trail that was walked by our ancestors," and legions of species forged paths through the Rocky Mountain wilds far before people arrived.34 The history of wolves in Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper has been undeniably shaped by human process, but the forces of lupine agency

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should also be acknowledged. Yellowstone may have been anointed as the principal wolf park, but all four preserves deserve the epithet wolf country. Resident packs possessed an intimate knowledge of the grasslands of the Lamar, the pine forests of the North Fork, the banks of the Bow River, and the Athabascan flood plain. Notable pack heroes can be recorded. The three-legged Jasper wolf learned to be a cunning avoider of HBC traps and poison. Kishinena struggled with adversity and raised a settler family in Glacier. Midnight garnered a reputation as a profuse wanderer from his Banff den site. Wolf#9 raised the first reintroduced pups in Yellowstone, and eventually proved genetically responsible for seventy-one percent of the entire park wolf population.35 To paraphrase Karl Marx, wolves make their own history, but they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves.36 National park history can only be enhanced by allowing lupine narratives to complement our own stories. The wolf, as Henry David Thoreau noted, gives voice to the wilderness.37 Learning to listen to wolves requires recognition of the national parks as their places, as ancient terrain marked by earthy dens, rendezvous sites and hunting trails. Moreover, the stony fortunes of Canis lupus bind the histories of two American and two Canadian parks together. Animals roamed between Jasper and Banff, Banff and Glacier, and Jasper and Yellowstone, while Glacier's dispersers may eventually venture to Yellowstone. With canine manoeuvres encompassing nearly eight hundred miles miles of rugged topography, traversing park, state, and national boundaries, the Rockies deserve the appellation Wolf Mountains. When Aldo Leopold wrote his famous essay "Thinking Like a Mountain," he decried the fact that the "deep chesty bawl" of the wolf was no longer heard in the 'Lower 48.'38 Just over fifty years later, packs had reclaimed the Rocky Mountain parks of Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff and Jasper. By pausing to listen to canine vocalizations, the hidden meanings of wolf history can perhaps be recognized.39 Lupine tracts deserve respect, not just inside the national parks, but throughout the Wolf Mountains.

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Epilogue

Legal Wrangles, Canine Appetites, and Shifting Cultural Attitudes

W

)LF RESTORATION IN THE WEST remains controversial at :he beginning of the twenty-first century. With lingering :oncern over lupine impacts on ranching livestock (as well as on wild ungulates), Rocky Mountain wolves remain fiercely contested animals. Packs negotiate innumerable human-crafted boundaries in their search for food and shelter, wandering from park enclaves to privately owned property, bravely crossing busy freeways and shrewdly negotiating ranch fences. The biological canine and the mythological beast continue to collide at the Continental Divide, resulting in a multitude of opinions on the right of Canis lupus to populate the Rockies. One nagging issue relating to the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction project was resolved in January 2000. While wild canines freely wandered the Lamar valley in the latter half of the 1990s, the legality of the reintroduction remained under challenge in the court of law. The Canadian-born immigrants became the feral wards of the American courts, their significance interpreted by lawyers, and their futures dependent on the application of the U.S. judicial system. In January 2000, three judges from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that wild wolves could rightfully occupy Yellowstone National Park, thus settling a lengthy wrangle over the legality of the restoration project. The judicial decision—upholding the rights of transplanted wolf populations to remain in the park—elicited relief from federal officials. National Park Service personnel had fretted over the logistical difficulties associated with rounding up a hundred wild canines and shooting them (Canada had revoked any 'sale or return' policy on migrant wolves) before a watchful, and predominantly wolf-friendly public. Intriguingly, the entire debacle sprang from a bizarre judicial conjoining of ranching and environmentalist interests. Bound together by their mutual criticism of the federal reintroduction plan, anti- and

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WOLF MOUNTAINS pro-wolf groups found themselves on the same side of the courtroom.1 Despite their common ground in legal matters, the two plaintiffs entertained radically different solutions to the 'wolf problem.' The Wyoming Farm Bureau argued for the shipping of wolves back to Canada, while the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund wanted wild canines to roam the American West with full protection (rather than the partial assurances offered by restoration overseers). Canis lupus retained a remarkable ability to provoke extremes of hatred and adoration from sapient protagonists, with each faction utterly convinced of the efficacy of their position. When the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favour of the reintroduction (thereby overturning a 1997 federal court decision by Judge William Downes that ruled the project 'unlawful'), environmental groups celebrated and stock-raisers grumbled. Presiding judges Wade Brorby, William J. Holloway, Jr., and Robert H. Henry hailed the restoration project as a poignant example of American commitment to nature preservation. Five years after the lupine motorcade first trundled into Yellowstone under the Roosevelt Arch, the legal position of park wolves was finally secured. Marked in human culture as a time of millennial celebration, the year 2000 promised much for Canis lupus m Yellowstone. The Rose Creek Pack had two litters and the Druid Peak Pack had three. Seventy-one out of seventy-seven youngsters born during 2000 survived into the next year (a far higher percentage than the previous season when many pups suffered from canine parvovirus).2 However, contests with humans, livestock, and fellow predators, together with the rigours of the Rocky Mountain terrain, tested the resilience of Canis lupus. In January 2001, a young male from the Nez Perce Pack died during a violent confrontation with the Swan Lake Pack. Five months later, the alpha male of the Gravelly Pack was shot by state wildlife authorities for depredating on sheep near Dilllon, Montana. Wildlife agents relocated the alpha female, along with the rest of the pack, to the Turner Ranch for aversive conditioning treatment using electric shock radio collars.3 Frontier life for North America's wolves, as for human pioneers, entailed opportunity, challenge, trauma and technological innovation. Given the ingrained cultural fascination with wolves as arch-predators, it is unsurprising that the hunting activities of Yellowstone's packs continue to draw scrutiny. Scientific studies confirm a lupine preference for dining on elk, the large ungulates comprising eighty-seven percent of canine diets in 'America's Serengeti.' The impact of wolf predation on regional herbivore populations remains a matter of intense debate.

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EPILOGUE • Legal Wrangles, Canine Appetites and Shifting Cultural Attitudes

While government-sponsored surveys in the early 1990s assumed a maximum reduction in the Yellowstone elk herd of fifteen to twentyfive percent, biologists are now beginning to see a more complicated scenario unfolding. Hunting groups report a sizeable decline in the nineteen-thousand-strong Northern Yellowstone elk herd following wolf reintroduction, arguing that predation is exerting a significant toll on ungulate populations. Such high levels of elk mortality may indicate the fallacy of ideas of natural balance and the subjectivity of scientific projections based on the idea of wolves as wholly benign ecological agents. By contrast, NFS officials posit climate change, human hunting, and natural population cycles as more important population determinants. Environmentalists surmise that regional sporting groups are using the wolf as a scapegoat for declining elk numbers and growing restrictions on natural resource usage. Despite myriad scientific reports, it seems that we still do not fully understand the role of lupines in ecology. Obtaining accurate information on natural predator-prey relationships appears fraught with difficulty, from judging the accuracy of public claims of ungulate decline to choosing a baseline year for comparison. Scientific judgments are invariably influenced by prevailing cultural biases, sometimes rendering it hard to separate biological from ethical assumptions. The absence of lupine predators in Yellowstone for much of the twentieth century only complicates matters. Canis lupus represents a complex ecological agent that we struggle to configure as neither outlaw nor hero. Meanwhile, the long-term role of wild predators in natural systems remains unclear. At the time of writing, sixty-four wolves from eight packs hold territory in northwest Montana. In Glacier, the long-established North and South Camas packs now share the landscape with a third canine community, the McDonald Pack. Further south, a hundred and fifty wolves from eight packs boast home range in Yellowstone. North of the forty-ninth parallel, thirty-five to forty canine denizens patrol the valleys of Banff, while fifty to eighty wolves roam in Jasper. Due to the buoyancy of canine populations in the Rockies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced plans to reclassify Canis lupus from endangered to threatened status in the 'Lower 48.' In a July 2000 press release, Fish and Wildlife Service Director Jamie Rappaport Clark noted: "The quick success in the northern Rocky Mountains means we can move forward to propose reclassifying those wolves to the less serious threatened status." With healthy wolf populations in eight U.S. states, wildlife authorities argue that the species has effectively recovered.

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Federal officials seem keen to make good on their promise that Canis lupus will be expediently delisted when appropriate, cognizant that the future of wolves in the West remains contingent on good relations with local resource users and state authorities. As Clark surmises: "This [threatened] status allows biologists and other wolf professionals more flexibility to manage growing wolf populations and address the needs of people who live, ranch, and farm in wolf country." However, given the controversial nature of lupine populations in Montana, many environmentalists perceive the move as politically expedient. Whatever transpires, the extensive public consultation process demanded by reclassification will doubtlessly reconfirm Cants lupus as a totem animal of both the Old and the New West, a creature that symbolizes fiery human contests for resources, land stewardship notions, and contrasting freedoms for cowboys and eco-feminists alike. Debates over delisting the wolf demonstrate both the success of the canine restoration project and the broader merit of endangered species legislation. Heralding Rocky Mountain wolf recovery as a historic conservationist achievement, Jamie Rappaport Clark contended: "The Endangered Species Act gave us the tools we needed to achieve this milestone ... we used the law's protections and its flexibility to structure wolf recovery to meet the needs of the species and those of the people. This is truly an endangered species success story." Five years on from the euphoric return of wolves to Yellowstone, the event remains shrouded in almost mythological significance. According to Sue Consolo-Murphy of the Yellowstone Center for Resources, wolf restoration signified "an ecological and conservationist milestone." Ex-Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt extolled the process as an intensely moral act: "Wolves are a living symbol of the regard Americans have for things wild.... We as a people have made the choice to do the right thing and bring these animals back from the brink of extinction." Such laudatory offerings confirm the remarkable allure of wolves within North American culture as symbols of wilderness.4 The social relevance of the Yellowstone reintroduction continues to surface in American popular culture, from pictures on candy bars to pithy references in the television drama series The West Wing. Wolves look set to maintain their legendary stature in human society. Few would dispute that the return of wolves to the Rockies represents a phenomenon of ecological and cultural significance. Assessments on the actual nature of that significance—what it means for human communities and environmental systems—prove considerably more contentious.

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Notes to the Introduction 1 John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America (London: Arrow Books, 1997 [1962]), 145-8. 2 Wolves inhabited much of the Northern Hemisphere above latitude thirty degrees north. In pre-Columbian North America, the wolf roamed from the Arctic to present-day Mexico and from Atlantic to Pacific coasts. 3 Adolph Murie, The Wolves of Mount McKinley (Washington, DC: U.S. National Park Service, 1944), 30. 4 Barry Holstun Lopez, Of Wolves and Men (New York: Touchstone Books, 1995 [1978]), 62. 5 Murie, The Wolves of 'Mount McKinley', 29. 6 L. David Mech, The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1970). 7 See "The Truth About Wolves," Ottawa Citizen, 23 December 1940. 8 Albertus Magnus quoted in Lopez, Of Wolves and Men, 219. 9 Young and Goldman uncritically accepted stereotypes of wolves as savage and wanton predators that posed a serious threat to cattle and sheep industries. See Stanley P. Young and Edward A. Goldman, The Wolves of North America, Part 1: Their History, Life Habits, Economic Status, and Control (New York: Dover Publications, 1944). 10 Mech, The Wolf, R. J. Rutter and D. H. Pimlott, The World of the Wolf (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1968); F. H. Harrington and P. C. Paquet, eds., Wolves of the World: Perspectives of Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation (New Jersey: Noyes, 1982); Durward Allen, Wolves of Minong: Their Vital Role in a Wild Community (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979); Murie, The Wolves of Mount McKinley, Mike Link and Kate Crowley, Following the Pack: The World of Wolf Research (Stillwater, Minnesota: Voyageur Press, 1994). See also Erich Klinghammer, ed., The Behavior and Ecology of Wolves: Proceedings of the Symposium on the Behavior and Ecology of Wolves, 23-4 May 1975, at the annual meeting of the Animal Behavior Society, Wilmington, N. C. (New York: Garland Press, 1975). 11 Lopez, Of Wolves and Men, 204. 12 Ibid., 240. 13 Winthrop cited in Valerie Fogleman, "American Attitudes Towards Wolves: A History of Misperception," Environmental Review, 13 (Spring 1989), 66.

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14 Legislation of 9 November decreed that: "Every English man that killeth a wolf in any part within the limits of this patent shall have allowed him Id [one penny] for every beast & horse, & ob. [half-penny] for every weaned swine & goat in every plantation, to be levied by the constables of the said plantations." Quoted in Rick Mclntyre, ed., War Against the Wolf: America's Campaign to Exterminate the Wolf (Stillwater, Minnesota: Voyageur Press, 1995), 30. For a discussion of the hardships of colonial settlement, not least with regard to wild predators, see Alan Taylor, "Stories of American Settlement," Environmental History, 3/3 (July 1998), 291-310. 15 Phrase quoted in Bruce Hampton, The Great American Wolf (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 85. 16 Lee Wilder and James L. Jackson, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?," in Program Interpretation: Wolf Recovery, 5. Held at Parks Canada Document Centre, Hull, Quebec. 17 Figure quoted in Lopez, Of Wolves and Men, 180. 18 For William Bartram's perspective on Canis lupus, see Hampton, 80-1. Meanwhile, Ernest Thompson Seton's popular nature stories of the late 1800s enshrined a moral and beneficent natural community rather than the world of violence and competition promulgated by Charles Darwin. In Lobo, the King of Currumpaw (1898), he described wolves as intelligent and loyal creatures with unwavering family values. See Ernest Thompson Seton, Wild Animals I Have Known (New York: Penguin, 1987 [1898]), 15-55. 19 Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf (Toronto: Seal Books, 1979 [1963]); Dances with Wolves (1990, Majestic Films International, Dir. Kevin Costner). Celebrations of the large predators also appear in Robert Busch, ed., Wolf Songs: The Classic Collection of Writing about Wolves (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1994); John Murray, ed., Out Among the Wolves: Contemporary Writings on the Vfa//(Seattle: Alaska Northwest Books, 1993). 20 See Jody Emel, "Are You Man Enough, Big and Bad Enough? Ecofeminism and Wolf Eradication in the U.S.A.," Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 13 (1995), 707-34; Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992); Joseph Marshall III, On Behalf of the Wolf and the First Peoples (Santa Fe: Red Crane, 1995); Teresa Tsimmu Martino, The Wolf, The Woman, The Wilderness: A True Story of Returning Home (Troutdale, Oregon: New Sage Press, 1997). 21 John Scieszka, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (New York: Viking, 1989). 22 The rich folkloric heritage attached to the wolf has garnered attention from numerous academics from the fields of psychology, history, anthropology and

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natural resource management. General works on the wolf include Steve Grooms, The Return of the Wolf (Minocqua, Wisconsin: Northword Press, 1993); Mclntyre, War Against the Wolf, Peter Steinhart, The Company of Wolves (New York: Vintage Books, 1995). For lupine folklore, see Robert Busch, The Wolf Almanac (New York: Lyons & Burford, 1995); Lopez, Of Wolves and Men; Montague Summers, The Werewolf(New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1912); Elliot O'Donnell, Werewolves (London: Methuen, 1912). Changing public attitudes towards predators are explored in Thomas Dunlap, Saving Americans Wildlife: Ecology and the American Mind, 1850-1990 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Lisa Mighetto, "Science, Sentiment, and Anxiety: American Nature Writing at the Turn of the Century," Pacific Historical Review, 54 (1985), 33-50; Lisa Mighetto, Wild Animals and American Environmental Ethics (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991). For caninehuman interactions in particular localities, see Rick Bass, The Ninemile Wolves (Livingston, Montana: Clark City Press, 1992); David Brown, The Wolf in the Southwest (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1983); James Burbank, Vanishing Lobo: The Mexican Wolf and the Southwest (Boulder, Colorado: Johnson, 1990); Richard P. Thiel, The Timber Wolf in Wisconsin: The Death and Life of a Majestic Predator (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993). 23 Stress on the preservation of resplendent scenery in American national parks reflected the influence of European Romanticism. Romantic writers, poets and artists rendered rugged climes as divine places for spiritual elevation. The dramatic terrain of the Far West received further lustrous overtures from cultural nationalists struggling to forge a distinctive American identity. Environmental historian Alfred Runte coined the term 'monumental scenery' to describe the rugged and imposing vistas preserved in early U.S. national parks. See Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 11-47. 24 1919 Annual Report by Stephen Mather, reprinted in Mclntyre, War Against the Wolf, 212. 25 National Park Service biologists George Wright and Ben Thompson urged that national parks should preserve American wilderness areas. Thompson stated that "national parks have a very definite function to perform in maintaining primitive conditions" and criticized calls "to introduce this or that exotic ... to kill predators; to make zoos ... to provide fashionable amusements; and in general to make of the parks just another string of fashionable resorts." See George Wright and Ben Thompson, Fauna of the National Parks of the United States, Fauna Series No. 2, July 1934 (Washington, DC: Dept of Interior, 1934), 54.

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26 In 1962, the Special Advisory Board on Wildlife Management (chaired by biologist A. Starker Leopold) was appointed by Secretary of Interior Stuart Udall to investigate species management goals in U.S. national parks. The board's assessment, commonly known as the Leopold Report, recommended that "biotic associations within each park be maintained, or where necessary re-created, as nearly as possible in the condition that prevailed when the area was first visited by the white man." Quoted in Frederic Wagner, Wildlife Policies in the U.S. National Parks (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1995), 25. 27 For political histories, see Ronald Foresta, America's National Parks and their Keepers (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1984); John Ise, Our National Park Policy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press/ Resources for the Future, 1961); Dwight Rettie, Our National Park System (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995). Prominent figures are considered in Robert Shankland, Steve Mather of the National Parks (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970, 3rd edn) and Donald Swain, Wilderness Defender: Horace M. Albright and Conservation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). Autobiographies from ex-directors of the National Park Service include Horace Albright [as told to Robert Cahn], The Birth of the National Park Service: The Founding Years, 1913-33 (Salt Lake City: Howe Brothers, 1985); George Hartzog, Jnr., Battling for the National Parks (Mount Kisco: Moyer Bell Limited, 1988); Conrad L. Wirth, Parks, Politics, and the People (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980). 28 An admirable survey of the changing ideas surrounding the U.S. park system remains Alfred Runte's National Parks: The American Experience (1979). Issues of racial exclusion are explored in Robert Keller and Michael Turek, American Indians and National Parks (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998); Mark David Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Meaning of National Parks (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Mark David Spence, "Crown of the Continent, Backbone of the World: The American Wilderness Ideal and Blackfeet Exclusion From Glacier National Park," Environmental History, 1/3 (July 1996), 29-49; Louis S. Warren, The Hunter's Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth Century America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). For an expert survey on the role of women in the National Park Service, see Polly Welts Kaufman, National Parks and the Woman's Voice (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996). Criticism of scientific management policy, recreational emphasis and the threats facing the park system can be found in Richard West Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); Michael Frome, Regreening the

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National Parks (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992); John Freemuth, Islands Under Siege: National Parks and the Politics of External Threats (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1991). 29 For Yosemite, see Alfred Runte, Tosemite: The Embattled Wilderness (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990). Literature on Yellowstone ranges from laudatory accounts laden with stunning pictures to explorations of accidents, see Michael Milstein, Yellowstone: 125 Tears of America's Best Idea (Billings: Billings Gazette, 1996); Lee Whittlesey, Death in Tellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park (Boulder: Roberts Rhinehart, 1995). Aubrey Haines and Richard Bartlett furnish colourful and insightful histories of the park, while Katherine Early and Judith Meyer examine the potency of the Yellowstone ideal rather than the place itself. See Aubrey Haines, The Tellowstone Story: A History of Our First National Park, 2 vols. (Niwot, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 1996 [1977], rev. edn); Richard Bartlett, Tellowstone: A Wilderness Besieged (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985); Katherine E. Early, "For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People": Cultural Attitudes and the Establishment of Tellowstone National Park, The Georgetown Monograph in American Studies No. 1 (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1984); Judith Meyer, The Spirit ofTellowstone: The Cultural Evolution of a National Park (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996). By contrast, Glacier National Park has been largely ignored by academics. C. W. Buchholtz's Man in Glacier (West Glacier, Montana: Glacier Natural History Association, 1976) constitutes the only proper history of the preserve. A brief history is also provided in Donald H. Robinson, Through the Tears in Glacier National Park: An Administrative History, National Park Service Bulletin No. 8 (West Glacier: Glacier Natural History Association/National Park Service, May 1960). 30 Exceptions include Thomas Dunlap, "Wildlife, Science, and the National Parks, 1920-1940," Pacific Historical Review, 59/2 (May 1990), 187202; Thomas Dunlap, "'The Coyote Itself, Ecologists and the Value of Predators, 1900-1972," Environmental Review, 7/1 (Spring 1983), 5470. For critical appraisals of Park Service wildlife policies from political scientists and agency staff, see William L. Halvorson and Gary E. Davis, Science and Ecosystem Management in the National Parks (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996); Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, Wagner, Wildlife Policies in the U.S. National Parks; R. Gerald Wright, Wildlife Research and Management in the National Parks (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992). A popular history of Canis lupusin the U.S. preserves is provided by Rick Mclntyre in A Society of Wolves: National Parks and the Battle Over the Wolf (Stillwater, Minnesota: Voyageur Press, 1993).

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31 Alston Chase, Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America's First National Park (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1987). The views of Chase receive convincing rebuttal from Paul Schullery in "Yellowstone's Ecological Holocaust," Montana: The Magazine of Western History, 47/3 (Autumn 1997), 18-33. 32 Anti- and pro-wolf forces sought recourse to historical accounts to either deny or confirm the historical presence of wolves in Yellowstone. See Troy Mader, Unnatural Wolf Transplant in Yellowstone National Park (Gilette, Wyoming: Common Man Institute, 1990); Paul Schullery and Lee Whittlesey, "The Documentary Record of Wolves and Related Wildlife Species in the Yellowstone National Park Area Prior to 1882," in Wolves for Yellowstone?: A Report to the United States Congress, vol. IV Research and Analysis, eds. John D. Varley and Wayne G. Brewster (Yellowstone National Park: National Park Service, July 1992), 1:3-173. 33 Hank Fischer, a member of environmental group Defenders of Wildlife who campaigned for wolf reintroduction, detailed the political machinations behind the program. See Hank Fischer, Wolf Wars: The Remarkable Inside Story of the Restoration of Wolves to Yellowstone (Helena: Falcon Press, 1995). Local journalist Michael Milstein offered a popular history of the restoration in Wolf: Return to Yellowstone (Billings: The Billings Gazette, 1995). Michael Phillips and Douglas Smith, the leaders of the reintroduction project, provided an overview of the proceedings, interspersed with a plethora of colour photographs and comments from officials and environmental advocates. See Michael K. Phillips and Douglas W. Smith, The Wolves of Yellowstone (Stillwater, Minnesota: Voyageur Press, 1996). Official park historian Paul Schullery edited a collection of key documents pertaining to the release: The Yellowstone Wolf: A Guide and Sourcebook (Worland, Wyoming: High Plains Publishing, 1995). Environmentalist and nature writer Thomas McNamee offered a refreshing personal look at the reintroduction, along with intriguing coverage of the wolves themselves. See Thomas McNamee, The Return of the Wolf to Yellowstone (New York: Henry Holt, 1997). 34 Brief overviews of Glacier's wolf history in the 1980s can be found in Mclntyre, Society of Wolves and Steinhart, The Company of Wolves. 35 Geographer J. G. Nelson noted the necessity for research on Canadian national parks and public attitudes towards wilderness in "Man and Landscape in the Western Plains of Canada," Canadian Geographer, XL/4 (1967), 262. The four-volume series by official Canadian park historian William F. Lothian entitled A Brief History of Canada's National Parks (Ottawa: Parks Canada,

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1976-81) provides a comprehensive overview of the formation of the Canadian preserves, bureaucratic developments, and management issues. P. Dearden and R Rollins, eds., Parks and Protected Areas in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993) follows a political science approach. The development of the national park system and its attendant problems are discussed in J. Nelson and R. Scace, eds., The Canadian National Parks Today and Tomorrow, Studies in Land Use History and Landscape Change, National Park Series No. 3, 2 vols (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1968) and J. G. Nelson, Canadian Parks in Perspective (Montreal: Harvest House, 1970). 36 Working for Wildlife described the efforts of a small band of committed civil servants to advance the cause of species protection in the early 1900s. See Janet Foster, Working For Wildlife: The Beginning of Preservation in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998 [1978], rev. edn). 37 Thomas Dunlap, "Ecology, Nature and Canadian National Park Policy: Wolves, Elk and Bison as a Case Study," in To See Ourselves/To Save Ourselves: Ecology and Culture in Canada, Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Association for Canadian Studies, 31 May-1 June 1990, eds. Rowland Lorimer, Michael M'Gonigle, Jean-Pierre Reveret and Sally Ross (Montreal: Association for Canadian Studies, 1991), 139-47; Alan MacEachern, "Rationality and Rationalization in Canadian National Parks Predator Policy," in Consuming Canada: Readings in Environmental History, eds. Chad and Pam Gaffield (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1995), 197-212. 38 Other early explorations include Rorke Bryan, Much is Taken, Much Remains: Canadian Issues in Environmental Conservation (Duxbury, Mass.: Duxbury Press, 1973); Anne Innis Dagg, Canadian Wildlife and Man (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1974); Gaffield and Gaffield, Consuming Canada. 39 Visitation figures for 1994 cited in "Canadian Parks Service—Environmental Scan Volume 1," June 20,1994, Coopers & Lybrand Group, Warden Service Library, Banff National Park, Banff, Alberta (hereafter cited as BNPL). Eleanor Luxton compiled a local chronicle in the 1970s, and mountain poet Sid Marty wrote an adulatory account of the park's creation to mark its centennial: Eleanor G. Luxton, Banff: Canada's First National Park, A History and Memory of Rocky Mountains Park (Banff, Alberta: Summerthought, 1975); Sid Marty, A Grand and Fabulous Notion: The First Century of Canada's Parks (Toronto: N. C. Press, 1984). Some critical attention has been directed at problems of commercial development, see A. Roger Byrne, Man and Landscape Change in the Banff National Park Area Before 1911, Studies in Land Use History and Landscape Change, National Park Series No. 1 (Calgary: University of Calgary, 1968); R. C. Scace, A

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Cultural and Historical Study of Land Use and Management in a National Park Community to 1945, Studies in Land Use History and Landscape Change, National Park Series No. 2 (Calgary: University of Calgary, 1972). 40 See Brenda Gainer, The Human History of Jasper National Park, Alberta (n.p., 1981), held at Jasper Public Library (hereafter cited as JPL); Great Plains Research Consultants, Jasper National Park: A Social and Economic History, unpublished report for Parks Canada, 1985, JPL; Mabel B. Williams, Jasper National Park (Ottawa: Dept. of Interior, 1928). 41 Dick Dekker, Wolves of the Rocky Mountains From Jasper to Yellowstone (Surrey, British Columbia: Hancock House, 1997). As a keen wolf-watcher and expark warden, Dekker displayed an intimate knowledge of the Jasper landscape. 42 The notion of transcending national boundaries and framing historical discourse by connecting regional, national and global relationships is advanced by environmental historian Richard White in "The Nationalization of Nature," Journal of American History, 86/3 (December 1999), 97686. 43 Edmonton Journal, 24 July 1987. 44 W. Lowry, Capacity for Wonder: Preserving National Parks (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994) and Robert D. Turner and William E. Rees, "A Comparative Study of Parks Policy in Canada and the United States," Nature Canada, 2/1 (Jan/March 1973), 31-6, represent the only comparative studies of the U.S. and Canadian park systems. Cursory comparative comments are offered in John S. Marsh and Bruce W. Hodgins, Changing Parks: The History, Future and Cultural Context of Parks and Heritage Landscapes (Toronto: Natural Heritage/Natural History, 1998). 45 Roderick Nash, "Wilderness and Man in North America," in The Canadian National Parks Today and Tomorrow, 75; Ise, Our National Park Policy, 659. 46 For examinations of American Exceptionalism, see Deborah L. Madsen, American Exceptionalism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998) and Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York: Norton, 1996). 47 Chad and Pam Gaffield note that "[Canadian] historians have traditionally concluded that Frederick Jackson Turner's classic frontier thesis in American history is inapplicable in Canada; rather than portraying the development of a new democratic and individualistic society in the rugged wilderness, historians stressed the role of large companies and the state in organizing Canadian society, even in remote areas," Gaffield and Gaffield, Consuming Canada, 2. Interestingly, recent works by American scholars have highlighted the role of the U.S. government in facilitating westerly movement, in contrast

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to images of individual pioneers forging their own, isolated destinies. See Richard White, 'It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own*: A New History of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 55178. 48 Gaffield and Gaffield, Consuming Canada, 3; Dekker, Wolves of the Rocky Mountains, 96. 49 Paul Sharp, Whoop-Up Country: The Canadian-American West, 1865-1885 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955). 50 William Beinart and Peter Coates, Environment and History: The Taming of Nature in the U.S.A. and South Africa (London: Routledge, 1995); Thomas Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin, eds., Ecology and Empire: Environmental History and Settler Society (Edinburgh: Keele University Press, 1997). 51 Compiling history 'from a wolf's point of view' poses distinct challenges. However, the vivid descriptions of wolves in explorers' journals, together with detailed reports on lupine activities from park wardens, allow canine manoeuvres in the Rocky Mountains to be profitably recounted. Robert Kuhn McGregor advances the possibility of writing the history of a red fox using a rich body of material gleaned from the journal of renowned New England naturalist and transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau: see Robert Kuhn McGregor, "Deriving a Biocentric History: Evidence from the Journal of Henry David Thoreau," Environmental Review, 12 (Summer 1988), 1178. Discussions of animal behaviour in works of natural history, together with the wider scientific literature on wolf biology, can yield additional assistance. A notable attempt at relating history from a canine perspective remains Roger Caras, The Custer Wolf: Biography of an American Renegade (Boston: Little Brown, 1966). Caras groomed available historical accounts and made regular visits to a captive wolf pack in order to fashion his lupobiography of an animal who became legendary in Montana during the 1910s for preying on cattle and evading capture. 52 Robert Kuhn McGregor denned biocentric history as "an accounting of all life pertinent to a specific place and time, and it must place human beings firmly within that context. If people are not separate from the rest of nature, historians should not treat them separately in environmental history." See McGregor, "Deriving a Biocentric History," 123. 53 Steinbeck, Travels with Charley, 148.

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Notes to Chapter 1 1 The essay "Thinking Like a Mountain" was written on 1 April 1944, but was first published in Leopold's collection A Sand County Almanac: With Essays on Conservation from Round River (New York: Ballantine Books, 1970 [1949]), 137. 2 In Natural Trap Cave, Wyoming, a hundred miles from Yellowstone, the remains of at least thirty-five wolves, including the wolf's prehistoric ancestor, the dire wolf, have been discovered embedded in rock layers ten to twenty thousand years old. For a detailed review of the archaeological sites in the Yellowstone region, see Kenneth P. Cannon, "A Review of Archaeological and Paleontological Evidence for the Prehistoric Presence of Wolf and Related Prey Species in the Northern and Central Rockies Physiographic Provinces," in Wolves for Yellowstone?: A Report to the United States Congress, vol. IV Research and Analysis, eds. John D. Varley and Wayne G. Brewster (Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming: National Park Service, 1992), 1:175-265. Cannon reviewed thirty-six sites in the region and documented fourteen containing evidence of wolf habitation from prehistoric through proto-historic times. 3 Turtle Island was the name given to North America as told in Native American creation myths. 4 The cause of the extinctions is not fully understood, and the relative impacts of human hunting of herbivores (on which predatory species depended), and climatic variations remains sharply contested, not least as part of the debate concerning the capacity of Native Americans to transform their environment. 5 Joseph Marshall III, On Behalf of the Wolf and the First Peoples (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Red Crane Books, 1995), 24. 6 Archaeological sites in Yellowstone revealed Obsidian skinning tools covered with canine blood. 7 Native Americans used domestic dogs during the hunt to drive wild sheep into concealed traps. The notion of canine interbreeding was expounded by sportsman George Bird Grinnell during a visit to the park in 1875. Cited in Lee H. Whittlesey, "A History of Large Animals in Yellowstone National Park Before 1872" (January 1992 Draft), 97, held at Yellowstone National Park Research Library, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming (hereafter cited as YNPL).

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8 Alston Chase, "A Solution for Yellowstone's Wolf Woes?," Washington Times, 3 December 1994. See also Alston Chase, Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America's First National Park (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1987), 92-115. 9 Historic populations of wolves have been debated since the 1920s, when biologists Milton Skinner and Vernon Bailey published articles suggesting a scarcity of the large canines before 1872. According to Skinner and Bailey, Canis lupus only moved into the national park once surrounding lands had been settled. Similar arguments regarding the rarity of wildlife in Yellowstone before 1872 were articulated in the 1980s and 1990s by Alston Chase, Stephen Budiansky and Troy Mader. In-depth archaeological and historical studies in the early 1990s nevertheless authenticated the residency of Canis lupus. Prehistoric wolf toes have been discovered in the Lamar Valley, and over 98% of Yellowstone's terrain has yet to undergo archaeological inventory. Wildlife biologist Adolph Murie further noted that wildlife often remained in remote areas, away from human presence. See Chase, Playing God in Yellowstone, 14-17; Stephen Budiansky, Nature's Keepers: The New Science of Nature Management (London: Phoenix Giant, 1996 [1995]), 131-155; Cannon, "A Review of Archaeological and Paleontological Evidence for the Prehistoric Presence of Wolf," 1:199,1:250-1; Troy Mader, Unnatural Wolf Transplant in Yellowstone National Park (Gilette, Wyoming: Common Man Institute, 1990), 1-9; Lee Whittlesey and Paul Schullery, "The Documentary Record of Wolves and Related Wildlife in the Yellowstone National Park Area Prior to 1872," in Wolves for Yellowstone?: A Report to the United States Congress, vol. IVResearch and Analysis, 1:9-18, 1:157-60. 10 In 1925, Ernest Thompson Seton suggested a figure of two million as a conservative estimate of the number of wolves inhabiting the continent in pre-Columbian times. See Donald Worster, An Unsettled Country: Changing Landscapes of the American West (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994), 67. Librarian Dave Walter cited a figure of three hundred and fifty thousand wolves in Montana in 1800. See Dave Walter, "Wolf Wars," Montana Magazine, January/February 1986, 22. Fur trapping records revealed that wolf numbers in the Yellowstone region could have exceeded thirty-five thousand (although some of the pelts inevitably belonged to coyotes). See Hank Fischer, Wolf Wars: The Remarkable Inside Story of the Restoration of Wolves to Yellowstone (Helena, Montana: Falcon Press, 1995), 12. 11 For an exploration of Yellowstone's name, see Aubrey Haines, The Yellowstone Story: A History of Our First National Park, vol. 1 (Niwot, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 1996 [1977], rev. edn), 3-14.

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12 James K. Hosmer, ed., History of the Expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark 1804-5-6, vol. 1 (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1902), 215. The journals of Lewis and Clark have been reprinted and edited by numerous authors. The quotations in this book are generally taken from Hosmer's edition. 13 Clark's entry for July 24, 1806, taken from Reuben G. Thwaites, Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804-1806, 8 vols (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1904), V, 206. 14 Dave Walter offers this summary of Lewis and Clark's impressions of Canis lupus m "Wolf Wars," 22. 15 Hosmer, History of the Expedition, vol. 1, 150. 16 See Clark's entry for August 8, 1806, in James K. Hosmer, ed., History of the Expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark 1804-5-6, vol. 2 (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1902), 424. 17 Lewis' metaphor offered on June 3, 1805. See Thwaites, Original Journals of Lewis and Clark, I, 307. Significantly, in Hosmer's edition, Lewis' entry referred to wolves as "enemies" rather than "shepherds" of the bison. See Hosmer, History of the Expedition, vol. 1, 260. 18 Whittlesey and Schullery, "Documentary Record of Wolves," 1:31. 19 DeLacy's journal entry for 24 August 1863, cited in ibid., 1:35. 20 "Biological dollars" is a phrase coined by Richard White regarding Western stock interests attitudes to sheep and cattle. See Richard White, "Animals and Enterprise," in The Oxford History of the American West, ed. Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A. O'Connor and Martha A. Sandweiss (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 258. 21 Osborne Russell, Journal of a Trapper, ed. A. L. Haines (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 46. 22 For an exchange between cross-species communication specialist Jim Nollman and a pack of wolves, see Ted Crail, Apetalk and Whalespeak: The Quest For Interspecies Communication (Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1981), 248-50. 23 Quoted in Whittlesey and Schullery, "Documentary Record of Wolves," 1:43-44. 24 James Schultz, "The Eagle Creek Wolfers," reprinted in War Against the Wolf: America's Campaign to Exterminate the Wolf, ed. Rick Mclntyre (Stillwater, Minnesota: Voyageur Press, 1994), 63. 25 Truman C. Everts, "Thirty-seven Days of Peril," Scribner'sMonthly, 3 (March 1871), 8. For members of the 1869 Folsom Expedition, the "stealthy steps of the bear, and almost human wail of the mountain lion" also took on an ominous demeanour, so that, "even [the] horses would draw near to the camp fire for protection." See Whittlesey and Schullery, "Documentary Record of Wolves," 1:45.

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26 Russell, Journal of a Trapper, 129. 27 Clawson quoted in Whittlesey and Schullery, "Documentary Record of Wolves," 1:59. 28 Ibid., 1:48-50. 29 Edward Curnow, "The Eradication of the Wolf in Montana," MA thesis (University of Montana, Missoula, 1969), 25. 30 Ibid., 30. 31 Fischer, Wolf Wars, 14. 32 Whittlesey and Schullery, "Documentary Record of Wolves," 1:81. 33 Roger Caras, The Custer Wolf: Biography of an American Renegade (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1966), 64. 34 Ibid., 63. 35 For a discussion of the essential symbols of Yellowstone and their persistence, see Judith Meyer, The Spirit of Yellowstone: The Cultural Evolution of a National Park (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996). 36 Trapper John Colter is regarded as the first white man to have observed Yellowstone's geothermal wonders, in 1807-9. On a map of the region, Colter marked an area as "Hot Spring Brimstone." Even in the late 1860s, reports of the land of bubbling mudpots and spouting geysers were treated with derision. "We do not print fiction!" was the response afforded to Charles Cook by Lippincott's Magazine when he submitted an article based on the findings of the 1869 Folsom-Cook Expedition to Yellowstone. However, the strange geothermal features of Yellowstone were immortalized as icons of the region in sketches by Thomas Moran and photographs by William Henry Jackson, who both accompanied the 1871 Hayden Expedition to Yellowstone. For comprehensive coverage of Yellowstone's discovery, see Haines, Yellowstone Story, vol. 1, 84-155. 37 Yellowstone earned the label 'Colter's Hell,' after trapper John Colter nearly starved in the vicinity during 1809. For Colter's travels, see ibid., 35-8. 38 This dichotomy plays on the "worthless lands" thesis advanced by Alfred Runte, who suggested that early national park acquisitions related to their 'uselessness' for purposes of economic development. See Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 48-55. 39 Such arguments are evident in the House and Senate debates on the proposed establishment of the park. See Katherine Early, "For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People": Cultural Attitudes and the Establishment ofYellowstone National Park, The Georgetown Monograph in American Studies No. 1 (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1984), 79-83.

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40 "The Yellowstone Park Act of 1872," reprinted in The Yellowstone Wolf: A Guide and Sourcebook, ed. Paul Schullery (Worland, Wyoming: High Plains Publishing Co., 1996), 221-2. 41 Although widely regarded as the world's first national park, Yellowstone's claim has come under scrutiny. Commentators have emphasized the importance of precedents, notably the secession of Yosemite to the state of California in 1864. Others have pointed out that the term 'national park' was first used legislatively in New South Wales, Australia, in 1879. In the U.S.A., the term only appeared as part of enabling legislation in 1899 with the establishment of Mount Rainer National Park. While qualifications are clearly important, Yellowstone's claim nonetheless stands up to such challenges. Although officially designated as a 'public park' rather than a national one, Yellowstone was the first in all but name. The size of the reserved area was unprecedented, and, from 1872 onwards, the annual reports submitted by Superintendents consistently referred to Yellowstone as a 'National Park.' 42 Nathaniel P. Langford, "Annual Report of the Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park for the year 1872" (Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office, 1872), 2, held at the Bancroft Collection, University of California, Berkeley (hereafter cited as BANG). 43 P. W Norris, "Report Upon the Yellowstone National Park to the Secretary of the Interior for the year 1877," 12, in Yellowstone National Park Reports: 1877-1900, BANG. 44 Langford, "Annual Report, 1872," 4. 45 Theodore B. Comstock, The Scientific Value of Yellowstone Park (Salem: Salem Press, 1874), 10. 46 P. W. Norris, "Annual Report of the Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park to the Secretary of the Interior for the year 1880," 38-42, in Yellowstone National Park Reports, 1877-1900. 47 "Biological morality" is a term used in Ronald Wauer and William Supernaught, "Wildlife Management in the National Parks: A Historical Perspective," National Parks, 57/7-8 (July/August 1983), 13. 48 Norris, "Annual Report, 1880," 39. 49 Hornaday quoted in Lisa Mighetto, Wild Animals and American Environmental Ethics (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991), 78; Roosevelt quoted in Barry Holstun Lopez, Of Wolves and Men (New York: Touchstone Books, 1995 [1978]), 142. 50 In describing the early years of the Yellowstone administration, John Ise subscribed to the view that "poachers were not the only threat to the wildlife; predators took a considerable toll." See John Ise, Our National Park Policy:

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A Critical History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press/Resources for the Future, 1961), 47. 51 Species listed were "buffalo, bison, moose, elk, black tailed or white tailed deer, mountain sheep, Rocky Mountain goat, antelope, beaver, otter, martin, fisher, grouse, prairie chicken, pheasant, fool hen, partridge, quail, wild goose, duck, robin, meadow lark, thrush, goldfinch, flicker or yellow-hammer, blackbird, oriole, jay, snowbird, or any of the small birds commonly known as the singing birds." See "1883 Letter from Secretary of the Interior H. M. Teller Prohibiting Public Hunting in Yellowstone National Park," reprinted in The Yellowstone Wolf, 223-4. 52 George Grinnell quoted in Paul Schullery, "Yellowstone's Ecological Holocaust," Montana Magazine, 47/3 (Autumn 1997), 25. 53 Expert projections made regarding wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone estimated that full restoration in the park would mean an average population of 150 wolves. See Barbara Koth et al., "Effects of Restoring Wolves on Yellowstone Area Big Game and Grizzly Bears: Opinions of Fifteen North American Experts," in Wolves for Yellowstone1?: A Report to the United States Congress, vol. II Research and Analysis, prepared by Yellowstone National Park, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, University of Wyoming, University of Idaho, Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, University of Minnesota Cooperative Park Studies Unit (Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming: National Park Service/United States Fish and Wildlife Service, 1990), 4:55. 54 Grinnell quoted in Whittlesey, "A History of Large Animals in Yellowstone," 97. 55 Norris, "Annual Report, 1880," 42. 56 Grinnell cited in Whittlesey, "A History of Large Animals in Yellowstone," 97; Superintendent Norris described the "excellent sport" of hunting a wolf: see "Annual Report, 1880," 576. Tourist H. Pearson spent two months in Yellowstone pursuing wolves and grizzlies and planned to return with other Californians in Fall 1885: see Aubrey Haines, The Yellowstone Story: A History of Our First National Park, vol. 2 (Niwot, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 1996 [1977], rev. edn.), 80. 57 Haines, Yellowstone Story, vol. 2, 471. 58 George Catlin, North American Indians, ed. Peter Matthiessen (New York: Penguin, 1989 [1841]), 263. 59 For Act, see Schullery, The Yellowstone Wolf, 222. 60 Carl, "Montana Wolves and Panthers," Forest and Stream, 22 July 1886, reprinted in War Against the Wolf, 84-6.

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61 Capt. M. Harris, "Report of the Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park to the Secretary of the Interior for the year 1887," 14, in Yellowstone National Park Reports, 1877-1900. 62 Capt. F. Boutelle, "Supplemental Report of the Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park to the Secretary of the Interior for the year 1889," 22, in Yellowstone National Park Reports, 1877-1900. 63 Capt. G. Anderson, "Report of Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park to the Secretary of the Interior for the year 1891," 10-11, in Yellowstone National Park Reports, 1877-1900. 64 "An Act to Protect the Birds and Animals in Yellowstone National Park, and to Punish Crimes in Said Park, and for Other Purposes, Approved May 7, 1894," reprinted in Larry M. Dilsaver, ed., America's National Park System: The Critical Documents (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 1997 [1994]), 36. 65 Col. S. B. Young, "Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park to the Secretary of the Interior for the year 1897," 9, in Yellowstone National Park Reports, 1877-1900. 66 Major J. Pitcher, "Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park to the Secretary of the Interior for the year 1902," 6-7, in Yellowstone National Park Reports, 1901-15, BANG. 67 Major J. Pitcher, "Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park to the Secretary of the Interior for the year 1904," 7-8, in Yellowstone National Park Reports, 1901-15. 68 See Vernon Bailey, "Wolves in Relation to Stock, Game, and the National Forest Reserves," reprinted in War Against the Wolf, 149. The Bureau of Biological Survey was a federal government department created in 1885 for the purpose of wildlife research, but which evolved into a predator control agency. For a survey of its history, see Jenks Cameron, The Bureau of Biological Survey (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1929). 69 Quoted in Haines, Yellowstone Story, vol. 2, 81. 70 Caras, Custer Wolf, 8. 71 Report entry reprinted in John Weaver, Wolves ofYellowstone, Natural Resources Report No. 14 (Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office, 1978), 28. 72 Col. L. M. Brett, "Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park to the Secretary of the Interior for the year 1914," 16, in Yellowstone National Park Reports, 1901-15; Col. L. M. Brett, "Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park to the Secretary of the Interior for the year 1915," 22, in Yellowstone National Park Reports, 1901-1915. 73 Weaver, Wolves ofYellowstone, 7, 28.

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74 Ibid., 29. 75 Bailey, Animal Life of Yellowstone National Park^ 135. 76 Haines, Yellowstone Story, vol. 2, 82. 77 Bailey's report entry reprinted in Weaver, Wolves of Yellowstone, 32. 78 Ibid., 33. 79 Historians have commonly portrayed the army era as bringing order and systematic enforcement of regulations to Yellowstone, so that when they left, "the park was more secure than it had ever been before." See Richard Bartlett, Yellowstone: A Wilderness Besieged (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985), 257. While the cavalry secured the park as a preserve for people and sanctuary for grazers, resident canines clearly had a less positive and peaceful encounter with martial ways. 80 The treatment of wolves in national parks, and throughout the American West, qualifies as genocide. Federal officials and settlers alike waged a brutal campaign to deliberately exterminate the species of Canis lupus. The vehement hatred expressed towards wild predators engendered acts of extreme perversity. Wolves were ripped apart by ropes, had their mouths wired shut, and were encouraged to swallow fat containing sharp hooks. A number of authors have employed militaristic or genocidal metaphors to describe the management of native carnivores. On the cover of Rick Mclntyre's War Against the Wolf, the author asserted "[NJever before has one species declared such total war on a fellow species," while Barry Lopez titled his chapter on the destruction of North American canines, "An American Pogrom." See Lopez, Of Wolves and Men, 167-99. 81 "National Park Service Act, 1916," reprinted in The Yellowstone Wolf, 230. 82 Ibid., 231. 83 Taken from Mather's introduction to the National Park Service Annual Report for 1922, reprinted in War Against the Wolf, 213. 84 Robert Sterling Yard, National Parks Portfolio (Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office, 1917 [1916], 2nd edn). A foreword by Stephen Mather noted that "The main object of this portfolio, therefore, is to present to the people of this country a panorama of national parks and national monuments set side by side for their study and comparison," 5. The book contained an abundance of superlative descriptions and plates depicting mountains, flora and fauna. Yellowstone was presented as a place of "canyons of sublimity," "innumerable wild animals," and "great hotels," SYS. 85 Toll quoted in Michael Milstein, Wolf: Return to Yellowstone (Billings, Montana: Billings Gazette, 1995), 24. 86 R. Gerald Wright noted that, "having virtually no internal scientific expertise on this matter, NPS actions were influenced strongly by prevailing public

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attitudes, which were strongly supportive of predator control." See R. Gerald Wright, Wildlife Research and Management in the National Parks (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 63. 87 Quoted in Bruce Hampton, The Great American Wolf (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 134. 88 Mather's comments taken from 1928 Superintendent's Conference, and cited in "Predator Policy Statements Abstracted From Minutes of Superintendent's Conferences," enclosed with memo from Victor Cahalane, Acting Chief, Wildlife Division, to Dr Carl Russell, 22 March 1939, Box N17: Research Division: Animals, Predators, Correspondence and Sightings 1936-8, chronological record of correspondence 1926-38, Folder 719: Predatory Animals, YNPL. 89 Quoted in Bartlett, Yellowstone: A Wilderness Besieged, 384. 90 1918 Annual Report, reprinted in Mclntyre, War Against the Wolf, 204. 91 1920 Annual Report, reprinted in ibid., 205. 92 April 1922 Monthly Report, reprinted in ibid. 93 April 1920 Monthly Report, reprinted in ibid. 94 March 1921 Monthly Report, reprinted in ibid. 95 Quoted in Michael K. Phillips and Douglas W. Smith, The Wolves of Yellowstone (Stillwater, Minnesota: Voyageur Press, 1996), 14. 96 Elbert Bowman, "Wolves: Being Reminiscent of My Life on an Eastern Montana Ranch" (1938), reprinted in War Against the Wolf, 106. 97 Report entry reprinted in Weaver, Wolves of Yellowstone, 36. 98 The Superintendent's 1923 monthly report read: "Wolf Den near Tower Falls cleaned out; old female killed and five pups brought out alive to Mammoth for exhibition." See ibid. 99 Whittlesey and Schullery, "Documentary Record of Wolves," 1:147. 100 Under the command of the Park Service, anti-predator measures not only continued, but also escalated. Figures recording the federal agency's campaign against resident carnivores cited in Phillips and Smith, Wolves ofYellowstone, 15. 101 If more wolves had survived through to the 1920s, they would also have been eliminated. For numbers, see Hampton, Great American Wolf, 123; Fischer, Wolf Wars, 22. 102 The principle of naming topographical features in Yellowstone after the local flora, fauna, and geology, was established in 1887, in accordance with the recommendations of Arnold Hague, from the U.S. Geological Survey. See Lee Whittlesey, "Wonderland Nomenclature: A History of the Place Names of Yellowstone National Park Being a Descriptive of and Guidebook to its Most Important Natural Features Together with Appendices and Related Elements" (Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1988), 1990, YNPL.

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103 "Discussion of Predator Control Policy" [undated], enclosed in memo from Victor Cahalane, Acting Chief Wildlife Division, to Dr Carl Russell, 22 March 1939, Box N17, Folder 719, YNPL. 104 Edmund Heller, "The Big Game Animals of Yellowstone National Park," Roosevelt Wildlife Bulletin, 2/4 (1925), 430. 105 Minutes of 1932 Superintendent's Conference, "Predator Policy Statements." 106 Minutes of 1928 Superintendent's Conference, ibid. 107 Minutes of 1932 Superintendent's Conference, ibid. 108 For an exhaustive review of efforts by Roger Toll and the Wildlife Division of the Park Service to protect pelicans, see James A. Pritchard, Preserving Yellowstone** Natural Conditions: Science and, the Perception of Nature (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 78-106. 109 Milton Skinner, "The Predatory and Fur Bearing Animals of Yellowstone National Park," reprinted in War Against the Wolf, 293, 295. 110 Heller, "Big Game Animals of Yellowstone," 430. 111 Skinner "Predatory and Fur Bearing Animals," 293, 296. 112 Ibid., 296. 113 Ibid. 114 Evidently, lupine vocalizations retained their devilish connotations even amongst wolf defenders. Heller, "Big Game Animals of Yellowstone," 430. 115 Ibid. 116 Albright's Report for 1922, reprinted in Weaver, Wolves of Yellowstone, 356. 117 "Condensed Chronology of Service Predator Control Policy" [undated], enclosed with memo from Victor Cahalane, Acting Chief Wildlife Division, to Dr Carl Russell, 22 March 1939, Box N17, Folder 719, YNPL. 118 Horace Albright, "The National Park Service's Policy on Predatory Mammals," Journal of Mammalogy, 2/2 (1931), 185-6. 119 Ibid. 120 The biologist was nevertheless keen to point out that the era when "one spoke of campaigning against carnivores as though they were something devilish" was confined to the past. George Wright and Ben Thompson, Fauna of the National Parks of the United States, Fauna Series No. 2 (July 1934) (Washington, DC: National Park Service, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, 1934), 15. 121 Wilbur's comment made on 3 March 1933, cited in "Discussion of Service Predator Policy." 122 Minutes of 1932 Superintendent's Conference, "Predator Policy Statements."

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123 R. Gerald Wright even contended that, "cynics could conclude that this was, in fact, the only reason the policy was changed." See Wright, Wildlife Research and Management, 39. 124 Comment by NFS biologist George Wright, cited in "Discussion of Service Predator Policy." 125 Murie's comments quoted in Memo from Carl Russell to Superintendents of Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier and Rocky Mountain National Parks, 7 April 1939, Box N17, Folder 719, YNPL. 126 "Discussion of Service Predator Policy." 127 Between 1924 and 1930, eighty thousand deer starved to death at Kaibab Plateau, on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Years of predator control removed all natural limits on the herd, which subsequently exceeded the carrying capacity of local vegetation. For mortality figures, see Wauer and Supernaught, "Wildlife Management in the National Parks," 13. 128 Memo from Russell to Superintendents, 7 April 1939. 129 "Predator Policy Statements." 130 See, for example, the clauses in the Yellowstone Act and the National Park Service Act stating that the parks should be maintained unimpaired in a natural condition. As far back as 1897, Colonel Young's attention had been drawn to the perils of upsetting Yellowstone's natural balance. In his annual report, he wrote "the opinion has been advanced by a few of the friends of the park that if the coyote is exterminated the gopher in time would eradicate the grass from the winter valley ranges." Young retorted, "I do not concur in this opinion, and request authority to reduce the numbers so that they will not hunt in packs." Young, "Report, 1897," 9. 131 Minutes of 1922 Superintendents Conference, "Predator Policy Statements." 132 Minutes of 1923 Superintendents Conference, ibid. 133 Such justifications were used by Horace Albright in replying to an inquiry concerning the use of the steel trap in the national parks (June 1930). See "Chronological Record of General Correspondence Relating to Predator Control," enclosed with memo from Victor Cahalane, Acting Chief Wildlife Division, to Dr Carl Russell, 22 March 1939, Box N17, Folder 719, YNPL. 134 Goldman quoted in Hampton, Great American Wolf, 139. 135 For coverage of the 'Nature Faker' debate, see Ralph Lutts, The Nature Fakers: Wildlife, Science & Sentiment (Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing, 1990); Lisa Mighetto, "Science, Sentiment and Anxiety: American Nature Writing at the Turn of the Century," Pacific Historical Review, 54 (1985), 33-50, and Wild Animals and American Environmental Ethics. The story of "Lobo: King of Currampaw," a honourable and dignified wolf who is finally captured by hunters while seeking his beloved mate, is

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told by Ernest Thompson Seton in Wild Animals I Have Known (New York: Penguin, 1987 [1898]), 15-55. 136 Minutes of the 1932 Superintendents Conference, "Predator Policy Statements." 137 Memo from David Madsen, Supervisor of Fish Research, to Director, 20 May 1939, Box N17, Folder 719, YNPL. 138 Albright recommended "open war" against Yellowstone's coyotes. Coyote control continued in Yellowstone until 1935 under his authorization. See Minutes of the 1932 Superintendent's Conference, "Predator Policy Statements." 139 1 March 1935, 18 October 1937, "Chronological Record of Yellowstone Correspondence Related to Predator Control," enclosed with Memo from Victor Cahalane to Dr Carl Russell, 22 March 1937, Box N17, Folder 719, YNPL. 140 Murie's comments quoted in Memo from Russell to Superintendents of Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier and Rocky Mountain National Parks, 7 April 1939. 141 Memo from Madsen to Director, 20 May 1939. 142 "Discussion of Service Predator Policy." Ranger Dart had been authorized in 1935 "to kill the occasional coyote for the purposes of examining stomach contents as part of his study." 10 December 1935, "Chronological Record of Yellowstone Correspondence." 143 7 January 1938, "Chronological Record of Yellowstone Correspondence." 144 Comment made by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes regarding Yellowstone coyotes, 28 December 1933, cited in "Discussion of Service Predator Policy." 145 Marguerite Arnold, "Yellowstone Wolves," Nature Magazine, 30/2 (August 1937), 111. 146 It is not clear whether these few animals survived the control campaign, or perceptively moved into Yellowstone after persecution had terminated. 147 Based on Weaver's criteria for assessing these sightings, such as the observer's experience with wolves, distance from the animals, length of sightings and description, he counted thirty-five 'probable' accounts of wolves. See Weaver, Wolves of Yellowstone, 12-3. 148 Arnold's history, together with a broader exploration of women in the U.S. parks, is offered in Polly Welts Kaufman, National Parks and the Women's Voice (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 12, 77-8. 149 Arnold, "Yellowstone Wolves," 111-12. 150 Interview with Leo Cottenoir, reprinted in The Yellowstone Wolf, 93-5. 151 Weaver, Wolves of Yellowstone, 13.

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152 By scouring available records, Cole collated one hundred and fifty wolf sightings between 1930 and 1969. Glen Cole, "Yellowstone Wolves" Research Note No. 4, Yellowstone National Park, April 1971, folder: Cole, Animals-Mammals-Canidae, YNPL. 153 Ibid. 154 Weaver discussed these various scenarios in Wolves of Yellowstone, 20-1. 155 L. D. Mech and R. Rausch, "The Status of the Wolf in the United States, 1973," in Proceedings of the First Working Meeting of Wolf Specialists and of the First International Conference on Conservation of the Wolf, IUCN Publications, Supplementary Paper No. 43,1975, Morges, Switzerland, 838. 156 Peter Steinhart, The Company of Wolves (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 247-50. 157 Chase, Playing God in Yellowstone, 133-5. 158 Weaver, Wolves of Yellowstone, 21. 159 Cole, "Yellowstone Wolves." 160 Weaver, Wolves of Yellowstone, 15. 161 Stanley Young and Edward Goldman, The Wolves of North America: Part 1: Their History, Life Habits, Economic Status, and Control (New York: Dover, 1944), 385. 162 Aldo Leopold, "Review of The Wolves of North America" (1944), reprinted in The Yellowstone Wolf, 97-8. 163 Working as a U.S. Forest Service ranger in New Mexico and Arizona during the 1910s, Aldo Leopold readily engaged in predator control activities. However, on one notable occasion, after fatally wounding a wolf, Leopold underwent a conversion from profligate predator killer to canine defender: "We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunter's paradise. But, after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view." See Leopold, "Thinking Like a Mountain," 138-9. 164 Quoted in Frederic Wagner, Wildlife Policies in the U.S. National Parks (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1995), 25. 165 Quoted in Hank Fischer, "Deep Freeze for Wolf Recovery?," Defenders, 62/6 (November/December 1987), 30. 166 Eighty-two percent of park visitors felt that wolves should still have a place in Yellowstone National Park. See David McNaught, "Wolves in Yellowstone? —Park Visitors Respond," Wildlife Society Bulletin, 15 (1987), 518-21.

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Nationally a majority advocated reintroduction, however, only 50% of state and 40% of county respondents backed the program. See Alistair Bath, "The Public and Wolf Reintroduction in Yellowstone National Park/' Society and Natural Resources, 2/4 (1989), 297-306. Bath's conclusions suggested divisions in public opinion based on different regional and interest groups. 167 Department of Interior Environmental Assessment, "Restoring a Viable Wolf Population in Yellowstone National Park" (Draft 8 July 1975, National Park Service and Department of Interior), 1, Box N157/N1427, YNPL. 168 "Return of the Wolf," Yellowstone National Park Service/Yellowstone Foundation Newsletter, August 1996, courtesy of the Yellowstone Center for Resources (hereafter cited as YCR). 169 Interview with Sue Consolo-Murphy, 11 September 1997, Yellowstone National Park. 170 Ron Marlenee drew such a comparison in his article "Environmentalists Represent Wolves," Billings Gazette, 14 June 1988. 171 Speech by Chad Shearer, hunting guide from Great Falls, and John Murphy, President of the Montana Woolgrowers Association, "Public Hearing on Wolf Environmental Impact Statement, Helena, Montana," cited in War Against the Wolf, 378, 385. 172 Troy Mader, "Wolf Reintroduction in the Yellowstone National Park: A Historical Perspective" (Gilette, Wyoming: Common Man Institute, 1988), 5, folder: Mader, Animals-Mammals-Canidae, YNPL; Burns' comments quoted in Fischer, Wolf Wars, 164. 173 Marlenee, "Environmentalists Represent Wolves." 174 Montana rancher Pete Story's comments quoted in Nicholas Dawidoff, "One for the Wolves," Audubon, 94/4 (July/August 1992), 40. 175 Yellowstone National Park et al., Wolves for Yellowstone'?: A Report to the United States Congress, vol. II, Research and Analysis; Varley and Brewster, eds., Wolves for Yellowstone?: A Report to the United States Congress, vol. IV, Research and Analysis. 176 Francis Singer, "Some Predictions Concerning a Wolf Recovery into Yellowstone National Park: How Wolf Recovery May Affect Park Visitors, Ungulates and Other Predators," in Wolves for Yellowstone?: A Report to the United States Congress, vol. II, Research and Analysis, 4:24. The designation of full recovery as ten breeding pairs over three years in each of the recovery areas was set out in: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, "Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery Plan" (Denver: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1987), held at the University of Montana Library, Missoula (hereafter cited as UML). 177 Wolves were designated as "experimental non-essential" populations in order to allow flexible management options, specifically allowing wolves preying

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on cattle or sheep to be removed or shot. For the rules, see Federal Register, 59/224 (22 November 1994), "Establishment of a Nonessential Experimental Population of Gray Wolves in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Central Idaho and Southwestern Montana; Final Rules," 60264-6. 178 For details of the Defenders program, see "Defenders of Wildlife's Wolf Compensation Fund," folder: Defenders of Wildlife, Animals-Mammals Canidae, YNPL. 179 Quoted in Hampton, The Great American Wolf, 218. 180 The EIS considered five alternatives: (1) Reintroduction of Wolves Designated as Experimental, thus allowing for flexible management to minimize impacts on livestock and ungulates, (2) Natural Recovery (no action), (3) No Wolves, (4) Wolf Management Committee Recommendations, allowing individual states to implement recovery, (5) Reintroduction of Wolves Designated as Nonexperimental, involving total protection under the Endangered Species Act. In May 1994, the EIS was published, advocating option (1). See "The Reintroduction of Gray Wolves to Yellowstone National Park and Central Idaho: Summary," Final Environmental Impact Statement (Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of the Interior/U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, 1994), v, xii-xix. 181 For a description of the operation, see Steven H. Fritts, Edward E. Bangs, Joseph A. Fontaine, Mark R. Johnson, Michael K. Phillips, Edward D. Koch and John R. Gunson, "Planning and Implementing a Reintroduction of Wolves to Yellowstone National Park and Central Idaho," Restoration Ecology, 5/1 (March 1997), 7-27; Fischer, Wolf Wars; Phillips and Smith, Wolves of Yellowstone; Thomas McNamee, The Return of the Wolf to Tellowstone (New York: Henry Holt, 1997). 182 Fritts et al., "Planning and Implementing," 15. 183 Captures were made on 11 and 19 January 1995. Fourteen wolves were sent to Yellowstone, fifteen to Idaho, and four re-released near their capture sites in Alberta. See ibid., 18-19. 184 Quoted in Tellowstone Wolf Tracker: A Monthly Bulletin on Wolf Recovery in Tellowstone March 1995, Yellowstone National Park Service, YCR. The Wolf Tradbr newsletter was first produced in October 1994 by the Yellowstone Center for Resources to provide updates on the wolves in the park. 185 Paul Harvey's comments quoted in Tellowstone Science: A Quarterly Publication devoted to the Natural and Cultural Resources, 3/2 (Spring 1995), 17-18, YCR. 186 Smith quoted in The New Tork Times, 27 March 1995. 187 "Makin' a Run for the Border ... ?," Billings Gazette, 4 April 1995.

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188 While livestock losses proved less than even the most conservative projections, and no humans were attacked, over half of Yellowstone's wolf mortalities between 1995 and 1997 were caused by people. Of twenty-four wolves removed or killed by summer 1997, seven died by natural causes, four pups died in their dens, four animals were illegally killed, collisions with vehicles signalled the deaths of four more, two were legally killed for preying on livestock, and one wolf was caught in a coyote trap. A further two wolves were removed from the park: one was taken to another locale after preying on cattle, while a second wolf was re-housed in a captive facility following injury during a management radio-collaring exercise. See Yellowstone Science, 5/3 (Summer 1997), 17, YCR. 189 Milstein, Wolf: Return to Yellowstone, 88. 190 Interview with John Varley, 15 September 1997, Yellowstone National Park. 191 For wolf breeding information, see issues of Wolf Tracker., July-December 1996, 4; The Buffalo Chipy Resource Management Newsletter, Yellowstone National Park (July 1997), 23-4; Nathan Varley, "Polygamy in Yellowstone," The Yellowstone Wolf Tracker, 1/1 (September/October 1997), 13-14. All courtesy of YCR. 192 In August 1997, there were eighty-eight wolves in the park, a figure that had yet to include the full count of the 1997 breeding season. See Doug Smith "Yellowstone Gray Wolf Restoration Project Current Wolf Population Status," August 5 1997, Yellowstone National Park, folder: Smith, AnimalsMammals-Canidae, YNPL. 193 Geoff O'Gara, "Filling in a Missing Link," Sierra, 71/6 (November/ December 1986), 20. 194 Other instances of packs living in proximity to humans include Montana's Ninemile Valley, where wolves resided in the midst of ranching country, and the outskirts of Rome, Italy, a city reputedly built on a lupine inheritance. 195 Interview with Wayne Brewster, 9 September 1997, Yellowstone National Park. 196 Yellowstone Science, 3/4 (Fall 1995), 17, YCR. 197 "Return of the Wolf." 198 Interview with Doug Smith, 11 September 1997, Yellowstone National Park. 199 Babbitt quoted in Phillips and Smith, Wolves of Yellowstone, 52. 200 John Varley in his foreword to Phillips and Smith, Wolves of Yellowstone, described the emotive and historic events of January 1995 in terms of the wolf "coming home" to Yellowstone. 201 Curnow, "Eradication of the Wolf," 89; "The Reintroduction of Gray Wolves to Yellowstone National Park and Central Idaho: Summary," Final Environmental Impact Statement, xx.

247

Notes to Chapter 2 1 Quoted in Walter McClintock, The Old North Trail: Life, Legends and Religion of the Blackfeet Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992 [1910]), 56. 2 Prehistoric hunters pursued bison in Glacier's montane valleys, while the Flathead, Kootenay, Kalispel, and Stoney Indians lived in, or close to, the Northern Rockies in historic times. In the 1700s, the Blackfeet moved into the region from ancestral lands in eastern Canada. See C. W. Buchholtz, Man in Glacier (West Glacier, Montana: Glacier Natural History Association, 1976), 1-11. 3 James Willard Schultz, Signposts of Adventure: Glacier National Park as the Indians Knew It (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926), 210-11. 4 The Piegan label is used to describe the sub-group of the Blackfeet tribe who reside in northwest Montana and southern Alberta. 5 Several Euro-American explorers and trappers have recorded the importance of Glacier to the Blackfeet, see James Willard Schultz, Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1912); Schultz, Signposts of Adventure; George Bird Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1892); George Bird Grinnell, Blackfeet Indian Stories (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913). For conflicting historical assessments on the importance of Glacier to the Piegan, see C. W. Buchholtz, Man in Glacier, 1-3, and Mark David Spence, "Crown of the Continent, Backbone of the World: The American Wilderness Ideal and Blackfeet Exclusion from Glacier National Park," Environmental History, 1/3 (July 1996), 29-49. 6 "Old Man and the Wolves" printed in Schultz, Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park, 112-27. 7 McClintock, The Old North Trail, 434. 8 Ibid., 476. 9 "Indians Saw Kindred Spirit in the Wolf," Great Falls Tribune, 10 May 1990. 10 In 1893, William Cody contended that, "the Bullet is the pioneer of civilization, for it has gone hand in hand with the axe that cleared the forest, and with the family Bible and school book." See James R. Grossman, ed., The Frontier in American Culture: Essays by Richard White and Patricia Nelson Limerick (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), xiv.

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11 The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) received its royal charter from Charles II in 1670, gaining land and trading rights from the St. Lawrence River to the Rockies in return for two elk and two black beaver skins per year. For nearly a century, the HBC confined its fur trade to eastern Canada, working from an outpost at York Factory on Hudson Bay. However, competition with French traders, together with the depletion of resources from eastern trapping grounds, encouraged expansion into the Canadian interior during the 1700s. HBC trappers also penetrated American territory, working in the Rockies and the Columbia River drainage. The alternative translation of the HBC acronym is cited in Clark C. Spence, Montana: A Bicentennial History (New York: Norton, 1978), 16. 12 James K. Hosmer, ed., History of the Expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark 1804-5-6, vol. 2 (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1902), 357, 364-6, 374-8. Lewis and his party left the Marias region following an incident with the Piegan, during which two braves were shot. The Native Americans tried to steal a rifle from the Corps. The encounter denoted the only hostile incident between the Corps of Discovery and local tribes during the entire transcontinental venture. 13 The origin of Monroe's lupine alter ego remains disputed. Schultz suggested that the title was granted to the trapper after bravery in battle against the Crow. Travel author Clifton Johnson posited that Monroe "always appeared to be listening and alert while he slept, and when he was suddenly awakened he got up quickly on his hands like a wolf," while Robert Scharff recounted how Monroe frequently made "guttural sounds out of his throat." See Schultz, Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park, 4; Clifton Johnson, What to See in America (New York: Macmillan, 1919), 344; Robert Scharff, Glacier National Park and Waterton Lakes National Park (New York: David McKay, 1967), 5. 14 Schultz, Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park, 147, 148. 15 Scharff, Glacier National Park, 5; Buchholtz, Man in Glacier, 27. 16 Buchholtz, Man in Glacier, 27. 17 From Joseph Henry Taylor, "Twenty Years on the Trapline," reprinted in War Against the Wolf: America's Campaign to Exterminate the Wolf, ed. Rick Mclntyre (Stillwater, Minnesota: Voyageur Press, 1995), 57. 18 James Willard Schultz, "The Eagle Creek Wolfers," in War Against the Wolf, 67. 19 Quoted in Francis J. Singer, History and Status of Wolves in Northern Glacier National Park, Glacier National Park Scientific Paper No. 1, West Glacier, Montana, 1975, Box 7, George C. Ruhle Library, Glacier National Park, Montana (hereafter cited as GNPL).

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20 'Carl,' "Montana Wolves and Panthers," reprinted in War Against the Wolf, 86. 21 Hosmer, History of the Expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark, 366. 22 Morning Eagle quoted in War Against the Wolf, 476. The fate of the Native Americans in Glacier proved similar to that of their wolf brothers. Chief White Calf poignantly referred to the Rockies as their "last refuge." See Spence, "Crown of the Continent," 32. 23 While prevalent both sides of the Continental Divide in prior years, wolf packs were uncommon in Glacier by the 1880s. See Stanley Young and Edward Goldman, The Wolves of North America: Part 1, Their History, Life Habits, Economic Status and Control (New York: Dover Publications, 1944), 46. 24 Schultz, "Eagle Creek Wolfers," 61. 25 Quoted in Buchholtz, Man in Glacier, 45. 26 Grinnell quoted in Spence, "Crown of the Continent," 33. 27 Buchholtz, Man in Glacier, 49. 28 Hetchy Hetchy Valley was incorporated into Yosemite National Park in 1890, when the reserve acquired national park status. Subsequent plans by municipal authorities in San Francisco to dam the valley prompted ardent debate among conservationists, notably from members of the San Francisco-based Sierra Club. The wrangle continued until 1913, when the federal government finally approved the project. See: Michael P. Cohen, The History of the Sierra Club, 1892-1970 (Sun Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988), 22-9; Stephen Fox, The American Conservation Movement: John Muir and his Legacy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981), 139-47. 29 Buchholtz, Man in Glacier, 48. 30 Carver's comments can be found in Scharff, Glacier National Park, 1. 31 In congressional debate, Senator Thomas Carter asserted that "two hundred million dollars of the good money of the people of the United States are paid out annually by Americans who visit the mountains of Switzerland and other parts of Europe ... I would say that our own people might direct their course to our own grand mountains, where scenery equal to that to be found anywhere on this globe may be seen and enjoyed." Quoted in Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 93. Runte further suggested that arguments for Glacier's establishment were the first to "dwell at length on the need to market American scenery," ibid. 32 John Ise, Our National Park Policy: A Critical History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press/Resources for the Future, 1961), 174. 33 "Act Approved May 11,1910, to establish 'the Glacier National Park' in the Rocky Mountains south of the international boundary line, in the state of

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Montana, and for other purposes," printed in Laws, Regulations and General Information relating to Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910 (Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office, 1911), 4-5, Box 300, Folder 15: Law and Legal Matters, Glacier National Park Records 1910-84, Glacier National Park Archives, Glacier National Park, Montana (hereafter cited as GNPA). 34 Carter argued that a national park would provide asylum for animals in an area where no laws existed to preserve resident fauna. See Joseph W. Gamertsfelder, "A Study of Glacier National Park," MA thesis (Ohio University, January 1947), 43. 35 Rinehart's comments quoted in Runte, National Parks: The American Experience, 110. 36 "The Proposed Glacier National Park," The Outlook, 94 (16 April 1910), 826. 37 "Rules and Regulations of the Glacier National Park, Montana," printed in Laws, Regulations and General Information relating to Glacier National Park, 6. 38 John Muir, Our National Parks (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981 [1901]), 17-19. 39 For Muir's appreciation of animals as "fellow mortals," see John Muir, "Anthropocentrism and Predation," in Muir Among the Animals: The Wildlife Writings of John Muir, ed. Lisa Mighetto (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1986), 192. 40 W. R. Logan, "Report of the Superintendent of the Glacier National Park to the Secretary of the Interior - 1911" (Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office, 1911), 6, GNPL. 41 Francis J. Singer, "Status and History of Timber Wolves in Glacier National Park, Montana," in The Behavior and Ecology of Wolves: Proceedings of the Symposium on the Behavior and Ecology of Wolves, 23-4 May 1975, at the Annual Meeting of the Animal Behavior Society, Wilmington, N.C.^cd. Erich Klinghammer (New York: Garland Press, 1975), 28. 42 Letter from Acting Superintendent, Glacier National Park, to the Secretary of the Interior, 19 February 1912, Box 262, Folder 10: Natural and Social Sciences, Management of Natural Resources and Areas; Wildlife; Predator Control, Glacier National Park Records, 1910-84, GNPA. 43 Ranger regulations were quoted in a letter from the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Washington, DC, to E. J. Cramer, Somers, Montana, 20 February 1912, following Cramer's call for measures against predators, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. In February 1912, Superintendent Hutchings noted that authorities had granted permits to settlers for trapping in Glacier in the past. See letter from Acting Superintendent, Glacier National Park, to the

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Secretary of the Interior, 19 February 1912. However, the permit system was withdrawn by the Assistant Secretary of the Interior that month, not because of concern for predators, but rather that "no supervision can be exercised over them and those so inclined might undertake to kill other wild animals in the park under the authority to kill predatory animals." See letter from Assistant Secretary of the Interior to H. W. Hutchings, Acting Superintendent, Glacier National Park, 24 February 1912, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 44 Letter from Lieutenant Colonel L. M. Brett of the First Cavalry, Acting Superintendent, Yellowstone National Park to H. W. Hutchings, Acting Superintendent, Glacier National Park, 6 March 1912, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 45 Letter from Acting Superintendent to the Secretary of the Interior, 19 February 1912. 46 Letter from Assistant Secretary of the Interior to H. W. Hutchings, 24 February 1912. 47 Letter from the Superintendent to the Secretary of the Interior, 30 December 1912, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 48 Letter from Stephen Mather, Assistant to the Secretary, to S. F. Ralston, Supervisor, Glacier National Park, 11 December 1915; Letter from Secretary of the Interior, Washington, DC, to S. F. Ralston, Supervisor, Glacier National Park, 21 November 1916, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 49 A1924 letter from Superintendent Charles Kraebel referred to the established practice in Glacier of employing one or two "special ranger hunters." See letter from Superintendent Kraebel to the Director, National Park Service, 19 December 1924, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 50 The word 'apartheid' derived from the Afrikaans word for separateness, and was used to describe the segregation of Europeans from non-Europeans in South Africa. The phrase comprised a central doctrine of D. F. Malan's National Party program in the elections of 1948. 51 Schultz, Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park, 2. 52 Ibid., 7. 53 Ibid. 54 For the National Park Service's relations with indigenous peoples, see Robert Keller and Michael Turek, American Indians and National Parks (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998); Mark David Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Meaning of National Parks (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Louis S. Warren, The Hunter's Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth Century America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 126-82.

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55 R H. Chapman, "Report of the Superintendent of the Glacier National Park to the Secretary of the Interior - 1912" (Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office, 1912), 10; J. L. Galen, "Report of the Superintendent of the Glacier National Park to the Secretary of the Interior - 1913" (Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office, 1913), 11-2, GNPL. 56 Letter from the Superintendent to the State Veterinarian, Helena, Montana, 11 October 1913, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 57 For details of the Montana program, see Edward E. Curnow, "The History of the Eradication of the Wolf in Montana," MA thesis (University of Montana, 1969), 75-83. 58 Although the plethora of Old World viruses transmitted to the tribes of the New World was not a deliberate introduction in the way that Galen envisaged infecting Glacier's wolves, Euro-American explorers swiftly recognized the advantage it offered them in conquering the continent. Smallpox and other afflictions were passed from tribe to tribe in much the same way that Galen anticipated mange dissipating through lupine society. For the export of diseases to the Americas, see Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900 -1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) and The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Conn.: Greeenwood Press, 1972). 59 Letter from W. J. Butler to J. L. Galen, 14 October 1913, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 60 The message was wired by ex-state veterinarian, M. E. Knowles, who had masterminded the 1905 program. See telegram from M. E. Knowles to James Galen, 10 November 1913, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 61 Knowles used the tern "food producing animals" in correspondence with the Federal Bureau of Animal Industry following agency concerns over the infection program. For details of growing worries over the project, together with allegations that Knowles disregarded evident risks, see Curnow, "Eradication of the Wolf," 77-82. 62 Letter from the Superintendent to M. E. Knowles, Helena, 10 November 1913, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 63 Letter from B. Galloway, Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, to Secretary of the Interior, 11 November 1913; Letter from Assistant Secretary of the Interior to J. L. Galen, 14 November 1913, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 64 The poisonous qualities of the vegetable alkaloid known as strychnine were discovered in the early 1800s. The substance passed into general usage in the American West during the 1850s, and was commonly used to poison wolves. 65 For example, Supervisor Ralston's report for 1915 noted that predator numbers were kept down in Glacier by "the regular park ranger force and

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by the settlers in the park." See S. F. Ralston, "Report of the Supervisor of the Glacier National Park to the Secretary of the Interior - 1915" (Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office, 1915), 11, GNPL. 66 R. H. Chapman, "Report of the Superintendent," 10. 67 S. F. Ralston, "Report of the Supervisor - 1915"; Vernon Bailey, Wild Animals of Glacier National Park (Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1918), 82-3. 68 Schultz, Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park, 84. 69 Letter from Alexander Vogelsang, Acting Secretary of the Interior to the Secretary of Agriculture, 3 July 1918, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 70 Bailey, Wild Animals of Glacier National Park, 83. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid. 73 Letter from H. Albright, Acting Director, National Park Service, to Edward Nelson, Chief, Bureau of Biological Survey, 7 June 1918, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. Secretary Vogelsang agreed that the "splendid work" of the BBS elsewhere warranted their presence in Glacier, "where the predatory animal situation needs immediate attention." See letter from Vogelsang to Secretary of Agriculture, 3 July 1918. 74 Walter W. Payne, "Report of the Superintendent of the Glacier National Park to the Secretary of the Interior - 1918" (Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office, 1918), 15, GNPL. 75 The original plan had been to permanently station BBS hunters in the park, but draft calls from the U.S. military for service in World War I thwarted the plans, and necessitated instead a rapid training program in Glacier for local wolf hunters led by the BBS. 76 Payne, "Report of the Superintendent - 1918,"16. 77 Letter from L. Craig, Belton, to Mr. Payne, Superintendent, Glacier National Park, 14 October 1918, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 78 Payne, "Report of the Superintendent - 1918," 16. Similar ideas were articulated by BBS hunter Goldman, who agreed that "the Park can never be cleared while adjoining territory remains infested." See letter from S. J. Goldman, Biological Assistant, Bureau of Biological Survey, Pendleton, Oregon, to W. W. Payne, Superintendent, Glacier National Park, 5 October 1918, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 79 Payne, "Report of the Superintendent - 1918," 16. 80 Letter from Horace Albright, Acting Director, National Park Service, to W. Payne, 8 November 1918, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 81 Albright to Payne, 8 November 1918. 82 Chief Ranger Brooks, while "not in favor of allowing outsiders to do this"

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nonetheless advised that Beebe be employed due to the perceived increase in numbers of wolves and coyotes in Glacier during 1924. His suggestion was authorized. See letter from Chief Ranger Brooks to the Superintendent, Glacier National Park, 26 May 1924, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 83 See Letter from Horace Albright to W. Payne, 6 December 1918, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 84 Statistics for control are only available for 1919, during which only $627.43 was obtained from the sale of seventy-nine predator hides at auction. See G. Goodwin, "Report of the Superintendent of the Glacier National Park to the Secretary of the Interior - 1919" (Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office, 1919), 22, GNPL. 85 Records cited in Singer, "Status and History of Timber Wolves in Glacier," 28. 86 Circular letter to all ranger stations, 16 October 1926, from the Chief Ranger, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 87 J. R. Eakin, "Report of the Superintendent of the Glacier National Park 1930" (Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office, 1930), 22, GNPL. 88 Naturalist Francis Singer suggested that the actual death rate in Glacier was twice as high. See Singer, History and Status of Wolves, 17. 89 Letter from Acting Director Arno Cammerer to Superintendent Chas Kraebel, 6 November 1924, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 90 Letter from Superintendent Kraebel to the Director, National Park Service, 19 December 1924, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 91 Letter from Chas Kraebel to the Director, National Park Service, 6 January 1927, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 92 Letter from Kraebel to the Director, 19 December 1924. 93 Letter from Kraebel to the Director, 6 January 1927. 94 Kraebel to Director, 19 December 1924. 95 Letter from Aldo Leopold, Madison, Wisconsin, to Chas Kraebel, Superintendent, Glacier National Park, 18 January 1927. Kraebel subsequently forwarded Leopold's comments to the Director, see letter from Chas Kraebel, Superintendent, Glacier National Park to the Director, National Park Service, 27 January 1927, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA. 96 Letter from Chas Kraebel, Glacier National Park, to George Grinnell, New York, 28 January 1927, Box 262, Folder 10, GNPA; Letter from Kraebel to the Director, 27 January 1927. 97 Letter from H. C. Bryant, Assistant Director, National Park Service, to the Superintendent, Glacier National Park, 24 February 1932, Box 262, Folder 11:1931 - 59, Natural and Social Sciences: Management of Natural Resources and Areas; Wildlife; Predator Control, Glacier National Park Records 191084, GNPA.

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98 Memo from Arno B. Cammerer, Acting Director, "To All Superintendents and Custodians," 10 September 1931, Box 262, Folder 11, GNPA. 99 Over the marten trapping incident, Bryant noted that Scoyen was "perhaps a little prejudiced on the side of control." See letter from Bryant to the Superintendent, 24 February 1932. 100 E. T. Scoyen, "Report of the Superintendent of the Glacier National Park to the Secretary of the Interior - 1932" (Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office, 1932), 19, GNPL. 101 E. T. Scoyen's comments from the Minutes of the 1936 Superintendents Conference, "Exhibit B: Extracts from Minutes of Superintendent's Conference Predator Policy Statements," Memo from Victor Cahalane, Acting Chief Wildlife Division, to Dr Carl Russell, 22 March 1939, Box N17: Research Division: Animals, Predators, Correspondence and Sightings 1936-8, chronological record of correspondence 1926-38, Folder 719: Predatory Animals, Yellowstone National Park Archives, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming (hereafter cited as YNPA). 102 E. T. Scoyen, "Report of the Superintendent of the Glacier National Park to the Secretary of the Interior - 1937" (Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office, 1937), 16, GNPL. 103 Letter from E. T. Scoyen, Superintendent, to the Director, 14 February 1935, Box 262, Folder 11, GNPA. 104 Letter from H. E. Anthony, Curator, American Museum of Natural History, New York, to George Wright, Wildlife Division, 26 March 1935, Box 262, Folder 11, GNPA. 105 The phrase "ammunition" was used in a letter from Frank A. Kittredge, Regional Director, NPS, to E. T. Scoyen, 14 September 1937, Box 262, Folder 11, GNPA. 106 W. J. Hamilton's "The Value of Predatory Mammals," Bulletin of the New York Zoological Society, March-April 1937, in "Exhibit F: Abstracts of recent literature pertaining to predator protection," Memo from Victor Cahalane, Acting ChiefWildlife Division, to Dr Carl Russell, 22 March 1939, Box N17: Research Division: Animals, Predators, Correspondence and Sightings 19368, chronological record of correspondence 1926-38, Folder 719: Predatory Animals, YNPA; Paul Errington's "What is the Meaning of Predation?," Smithsonian Report for 1936, enclosed in letter from Carl Russell, Supervisor of Research & Information, National Park Service, to Superintendent, Yellowstone National Park, 12 December 1939, Box N17, Folder 719, YNPA. 107 Memo from Perry Gage, Acting Regional Director, to the Superintendent, Glacier National Park, 8 December 1938, Box 262, Folder 11, GNPA.

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108 Albert M. Reese, "The Destruction of Vermin," reprinted from Scientific Monthly (October 1937), Box 262, Folder 11, GNPA. 109 See figures in Scoyen, "Report of the Superintendent - 1932," and E. T. Scoyen, "Report of the Superintendent of the Glacier National Park to the Secretary of the Interior - 1933" (Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office, 1933), 14, GNPL. 110 Singer, History and Status of Wolves, 39. 111 Letter from Ben Thompson, Wildlife Division, Berkeley, California, to George Ruhle, Glacier National Park, 25 May 1934, Box 262, Folder 9: 1934-53 Natural and Social Sciences -Animal and Plant Life (observations and studies) - Mammals, Wolf: General Correspondence, Glacier National Park Records 1910-84, GNPA. 112 Letter from E. T. Scoyen, Superintendent, to Director, National Park Service, 14 February 1935, Box 262, Folder 9, GNPA. 113 See Letter from George Wright to Scoyen, 23 February 1935; Letter from Scoyen to Director, 10 March 1935; Letter to Wright from Scoyen, 15 March 1935; Letter from Wright to Scoyen, 13 May 1935, Box 262, Folder 9, GNPA. 114 Letter from Anthony to Wright, 26 March 1935. 115 Wolf observations were reported in Logging Creek, Kintia Ranch, Quartz Creek, Sullivan's Meadow and Bowman Lake, see Singer, History and Status of'Wolves, 40-2. 116 Ibid., 38. 117 M. Brittain, "A Note Concerning Wolves in Glacier National Park, Montana," Journal of Mammalogy, 34/1 (February 1953), 128. 118 Singer, History and Status of Wolves, 13. 119 In explaining her vigilance, Cooper noted that: "two years ago the Canadian radio broadcast warnings that the northern black wolves were getting starved out and coming south and for all to be on the alert for them." Letter from Madge Cooper, Moose City, Trailcreek, Montana, to Mr. Emmert, Superintendent, Glacier National Park, 7 February 1948, Box 262, Folder 9, GNPA. 120 Letter from R. R. Vincent, Acting Superintendent, Glacier National Park, to Mrs Madge Cooper, Trailcreek, Montana, 9 February 1948, Box 262, Folder 9, GNPA. 121 Letter from C. F. Kearns, Inspector, British Columbia Game Dept, to Mrs Cooper, Moose City, 10 February 1948, Box 262, Folder 9, GNPA. 122 Cited in Singer, The History and Status of Wolves, 45. 123 Memo from Lawrence C. Merriam, Regional Director, for the Director, 3 February 1949, Box 262, Folder 11, GNPA. 124 Ibid.

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125 "2.14 Wolves," Glacier National Park Management Plan 1979, Box 263, Folder 6: Natural and Social Sciences: Management of Natural Resources and Areas; Wildlife - Wolf: Management Plan, Glacier National Park Records 1910-84, GNPA. 126 The incident was described in a memo from Superintendent Emmert, to the Regional Director, 29 May 1950, Box 262, Folder 9, GNPA, and in Brittain, "A Note Concerning Wolves," 128. 127 The census report for 1951 listed eight wolves in the park, see "1951 Annual Game Census Report" 27 September 1951, Box 262, Folder 9, GNPA. 128 R. R. Lechleitner, Mammals of Glacier National Park, Bulletin No. 6 (West Glacier: Glacier Natural History Association, 1955), 21. 129 Singer, History and Status of Wolves, 18. 130 Referred to in letter from Donald H. Robinson, Park Naturalist, to Martin Brittain, San Diego State College, San Diego, 30 January 1952, Box 262, Folder 9, GNPA. 131 Marshall related his grandfather's prophecy to Mclntyre in War Against the Wolf, 475. 132 Mark Kaley, "Summary of Observations Since Spring 1975," 23 August 1976, Box 10, GNPL. 133 Ibid. 134 Singer, History and Status of Wolves, 13. 135 "Glacier National Park Management Plan 1979." 136 "Hunters Cautioned to Avoid Shooting Wolves," 1975 News Clipping. Box 252, Folder 10: 1974 Natural and Social Sciences: Animal and Plant Life (observations and studies), Mammals - Wolf: General Correspondence, Glacier National Park Records 1910-84, GNPA. Researcher Gary Day also noted that "a combination of space, cover and human attitudes ... act to limit wolf numbers and distribution in the Northern Rockies," and expressed concern over mining in the area. See Gary L. Day, "The Status and Distribution of Wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains of the United States," MSc thesis (University of Montana, Missoula, 1981), 105, 38. 137 Clifford Martinka, "A Plan to Protect and Preserve Northern Rocky Mountain Wolves in Glacier National Park" (draft copy), 18 September 1975, 1-3, Box 252, Folder 10, GNPA. 138 Ibid., 2. 139 Wolf Ecology Project, "Current Status of the Gray Wolf in the Rocky Mountain Front," July 1978, 15, University of Montana Library, Missoula (hereafter cited as UML). 140 "Glacier National Park Management Plan 1979." 141 Report to the Superintendent, from Clifford Martinka, Supervisory Research

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Biologist, 14 May 1980, Box 252, Folder 14: 1980 Natural and Social Sciences, Animal and Plant Life - Mammals: Wolf, General Correspondence, Glacier National Park Records 1910-84, GNPA. 142 Memo from the Superintendent, Glacier National Park, to the Director, United States Fish & Wildlife Service, 18 August 1980, Box 252, Folder 14, GNPA. 143 "2.14 Wolves," Resource Management Plan, Glacier National Park, 27 March 1980, 50, Box 257, Folder 7:1980 Natural and Social Sciences: Management of Natural Resources and Areas - Resource Management Plan, Glacier National Park Records 1910-84, GNPA. 144 The Kootenay legend was described in John Farrell, "The Woman and the Wolf," Denver Post Magazine, 15 December 1985. 145 For Kishinena's movements see Robert R. Ream, Diane K. Boyd and R. Harris, "Movement Patterns of a Lone Wolf in Unoccupied Wolf Range, South-Eastern British Columbia," [undated], Box 252, Folder 16: 197778 Natural and Social Sciences, Animal and Plant Life (observations and studies), Mammals - Wolf: General Correspondence 1983, Glacier National Park Records 1910-84, GNPA. 146 For details of wolf movements, see Robert R. Ream, Michael K. Fairchild, Diane K. Boyd and Daniel H. Pletscher, "Wolf Monitoring and Research in and Adjacent to Glacier National Park: Section 6 Final Report (1984-7)," Missoula: School of Forestry and Montana Co-operative Wildlife Research Unit, University of Montana, September 1987, Folder: Population Dynamics and Movement of Recolonizing Wolves in Glacier National Park, Annual Reports 1987-90, GNPL. 147 Letter from Robert Ream, Wolf Ecology Project, Missoula, to Robert Haradan, Superintendent, Glacier National Park, 14 September 1983, Box 252, Folder 16, GNPA. 148 Farrell, "The Woman and the Wolf." 149 Ream et al., "Wolf Monitoring and Research ... Final Report." 150 Scott Crandell, "Sage: Tale of a Lone Wolf," from 'Wolves: Pawprints in the Park,' Hungry Horse News, March 1986 feature, Box 1, GNPL. 151 Ibid. 152 For details of the Magic Pack's movements see Ream et al., "Wolf Monitoring and Research ... Final Report," and Robert Ream, Michael Fairchild, Diane Boyd and A. Blakesley, "First Wolf Den in Western United States in Recent History," Northwestern Naturalist, 70 (Autumn 1989), 39. 153 Douglas Chadwick, "Comeback or Final Exit? The Timber Wolf's Last Chance in Montana," Defenders, 50/5 (October 1975), 3. 154 Crandell, "Sage: Tale of a Lone Wolf."

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155 Letter from H. Gilbert Lusk, Superintendent, to Dr. John Craighead, Wildlife-Wildlands Institute, Missoula, 2 February 1987, Box 11, Folder 3: N22 Research Programs (Studies by species found in N14), Glacier National Park Central Files 1987, GNPA. 156 Jim Robbins, "Wolves Across the Border," Natural History, 95/5 (May 1986), 6. 157 "Glacier Park Wolf Comeback Delights Researcher," Daily Inter Lake, 24 January 1986. 158 "Park Sees Unique Chance," from 'Wolves: Pawprints in the Park.' 159 Memo from C. J. Martinka, to the Superintendent, 31 January 1985, Box 15, Folder 2: 1985 Natural and Social Sciences: Management of Natural Resources and Areas; Wildlife: General Correspondence (cont.), Glacier National Park Central Files 1985, GNPA. 160 Lusk quoted in "Wolf Research, Radio-Collaring Approved in Park," Hungry Horse News, 13 August 1986. Researchers caught wolves using a Newhouse No. 4 steel trap, which had been modified to prevent severe injury by smoothing off its toothed jaws. The spring mechanism was also changed to preclude smaller species from being captured. The use of traps for research purposes was allowed in Glacier on the condition that the program would be discontinued if serious injury to any animals occurred. See letter from H. Gilbert Lusk, Superintendent, to Dr. Robert Ream, Wolf Ecology Project, University of Montana, 6 August 1986, Box 11, Folder 2: N22 Research Programs (studied by/found inN14), 1986, Glacier National Park Central Files 1986, GNPA. Between 1984 and 1987, 10 different wolves were captured 15 times, 31% received no visible injuries, 63% obtained small cuts, 19% larger cuts or fractures, and 6% (one wolf) had toes broken. See Ream et al., "Wolf Research and Monitoring ... Final Report." 161 "Protecting Wolves From Researchers," Hungry Horse News, 20 August 1986. 162 Frank Evans, "Up the North Fork," Hungry Horse News, 17 April 1980. 163 "Wolves Add Interest to Backwoods Juggling Act," Daily Inter Lake, 14 May 1986. 164 "Wolves Blockade of Park Road Shouldn't Last Past End of May," Daily Inter Lake, 14 May 1986. 165 "Wolves Add Interest." 166 Ibid. 167 Kevin Pederson, "Get this wolf closure nonsense stopped dead," Hungry Horse News, 14 May 1986. 168 "Wolf to Whelp with some Help," Hungry Horse News, 7 May 1986. 169 "Public Attitude Changing Toward Wolf," Kalispell News, 24 September 1986.

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170 Missoulian, 27 November 1986. While wolves impacted on grazing animals, other predators, harsh winters and humans also killed ungulates in the region. In such an environment, wolves could not be singled out as a particular threat. 171 "Residents Air Wolf Concerns," in 'Wolves: Pawprints in the Park.' 172 Great Falls Tribune, 5 June 1990. 173 Kalispell News, 19 March 1986. 174 Great falls Tribune, 4 June 1990. 175 For example, Al Reed, of Kalispell, wrote to the Hungry Horse News asserting that wolves kill deer, and "they kill children also," Hungry Horse News, 19 March 1986. Tom Ladenburg argued that wolves would "eat dogs, cats, livestock and each other," Hungry Horse News, 26 February 1986. 176 Hungry Horse News, 14 May 1986. 177 Hungry Horse News, 5 March 1986; 19 March 1986. 178 Hungry Horse News, 19 March 1986. 179 "Public Attitudes Changing Toward the Wolf." 180 "Going, Going, Gone," Montana, Magazine, July/August 1995, 72; Interview with Steve Gniadek, Glacier National Park, 24 September 1997. 181 "Game Impacts Uncertain," in 'Wolves: Pawprints in the Park.' 182 Pat Tucker and Daniel H. Pletscher, "Attitudes of Hunters and Residents Towards Wolves in Northwestern Montana," Wildlife Society Bulletin, 17/4 (1989), 513. 183 Glacier's status as an acceptable 'wolf zone' was highlighted in 1989, when a pack of wolves caught preying on cattle in Marion, Montana, was relocated to the southern part of the preserve. However, the two adults and two pups did not fare well. After relocation, the adults abandoned their young, who subsequently starved. The alpha male died following a trapping injury. The surviving female ranged south, to the Ninemile Valley, where she forged another pack. In April 1991, three animals from the Ninemile Pack killed steers near Dixon, Montana, and were subsequently relocated in Glacier. One was caught preying on sheep a month later, and placed in a captive facility at Wolf Haven, Washington State. For details of the relocation program, see U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, "Wolf Recovery in Montana," First Annual Report, 1989, Box 6, GNPL; 1991 & 1992 Annual Reports of the Montana Interagency Wolf Working Group, GNPL. In the early 1990s, Tennessean Samuel Obert tried to leave his pet wolves in Glacier, but his plans were foiled when the canines dutifully followed his tracks out of the park. Obert claimed he was "trying to find a good home for the animals." He received a thousand-dollar fine. See Great Falls Tribune, 12 June 1991. 184 Gilbert quoted in Jim Robbins, "Return of the Wolf: Can Montana Recapture its Special Wilderness?," Montana Magazine, January 1982, 61.

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185 The Superintendent noted that "we do not feel that the entirety of Glacier National Park could in itself protect a wolf population because shallowest snows during winter and wintering ungulates are concentrated near Park boundaries. Here wolf movements would tend to take them outside of the Park boundaries. Therefore, wolf recovery in the Park region is a necessity." See "Comments on Habitat Needs," Memo from Superintendent, Glacier National Park through Regional Director, Rocky Mountain Region, to the Director, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, 30 June 1980, Box 252, Folder 14: 1980 from Natural and Social Sciences - Animal & Plant Life; Mammals, Wolf: General Correspondence, Glacier National Park Records 1910-84, GNPA. 186 Wolf. Magazine (Spring 1986), 21. 187 "Hunt May Cut Short Return of Wolves to the American West," The New Tork Times, 20 September 1987; "Report on Wolf Control Activities in Montana, 1987," enclosed with memo from State Supervisor, Montana State Office, Fish & Wildlife Enhancement, Fish & Wildlife Service, Helena, to the Superintendent, Glacier National Park, 7 January 1988, Box 13, Folder: Threatened and Endangered Species, (plants and animals) (grizzly and wolf), 1988, Glacier National Park Central Files 1988, GNPA. 188 Letter from Joyce Weldon, Dogwood Elementary School, New York, to Gary Gregory, Resource Management, Glacier National Park, Montana, 15 October 1987, Box 11, Folder 2: Threatened and Endangered Species (plants and animals), 1987 Wolf/Grizzly Bear, Glacier National Park Central Files 1987, GNPA. 189 Edmonton Journal, 24 July 1987. 190 Changes documented in Ream et al., "Wolf Monitoring and Research ... Final Report." 191 "Hunt Puts Wolf Recovery Off Schedule," Daily Inter Lake, 3 December 1987. 192 "North Fork Wolf Numbers Increase," Daily Inter Lake, 20 January 1988. 193 "Roaming Camas Pack Returns to British Columbia," Daily Inter Lake, 19 June 1988. 194 "Wolves Await Fate," The Province, 13 May 1988. 195 Letter from Richard Spotts, Sacramento, California, to Premier William Vander Zalm, Victoria, British Columbia, 10 September 1987, Box 11, Folder 2, GNPA. 196 "Wolf Kill Insults United States," Missoulian, 29 November 1988. 197 Daily Inter Lake, 18 November 1988. 198 U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, "Wolf Recovery in Montana: First Annual Report, 1989, Box 6, GNPL.

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199 Diane K. Boyd, Daniel H. Pletscher and Wayne G. Brewster, "Evidence of Wolves, Canis Lupus, Burying Dead Pups," Canadian Field Naturalist, 10 (1993), 230-1, GNPL. 200 "North Fork Wolf Packs Show Net Loss of 6 Animals," Daily Inter Lake, 26 December 1989. 201 "Two Wolf Litters Are Unusual Situation in North Fork," Daily Inter Lake, 5 August 1990. 202 "Wolf Report: 7 Park Area Wolves Die in 1991," Hungry Horse News, 2 April 1992. 203 "New Wolf Pack May be Starting in North Fork Area," Daily Inter Lake, 11 March 1991. 204 Interview with Steve Gniadek; Interview with Jay Pogue, Glacier National Park, 22 September 1997. 205 Glacier's wolf population was still low at the end of 1999. After a harsh winter, and the death of the alpha female from the South Camas Pack, the park wolf population was estimated at five animals. See Yellowstone Net Newsletter, 16 November 1999. 206 Letter from C. Martinka to Assistant Superintendent, 8 August 1985, Box 15, Folder 1: 1985 Natural and Social Sciences: Management of Natural Resources and Areas; Wildlife: General Correspondence, Glacier National Park Central Files 1985, GNPA. 207 "Lions & Gray Wolves & Bears ... Oh My?," Montana Magazine, April 1994,32. 208 Gary Ferguson in "A Last Fierce Paradise," Sierra, 70/4 (July/August 1985), portrayed Glacier as "America's wildest mountain country," 36. 209 Interview with Jay Pogue. 210 Interview with Diane Boyd, Missoula, 17 September 1997. 211 Interview with Steve Gniadek. 212 Missoulian, 14 October 1990. 213 Diane K. Boyd, Robert R. Ream, Daniel H. Pletscher and Michael W. Fairchild, "Prey Taken by Colonizing Wolves and Hunters in the Glacier National Park Area," Journal of Wildlife Management, 58/2 (1994), 289.

263

Notes to Chapter 3 1 "Wolf Country," Cray and, Canyon, 4 December 1978. 2 Ian McTaggart Cowan, "The Timber Wolf in the Rocky Mountain National Parks of Canada," Canadian Journal of Research, 25/Section D (October 1947), 143. 3 Native hunters were forced to travel large distances tracking herds that moved between alpine slopes in summer months and milder valleys in the winter. The Kootenay thus followed grazing herds out of the mountains with the passing seasons, setting up camp in the foothills and on the rolling prairie, where food and shelter were easier to find. 4 For information on Banff's early human residents, see Sid Marty, A Grand and Fabulous Notion: The First Century of Canada's Parks (Toronto: N.C. Press, 1984), 9; A. Roger Byrne, Man and Landscape Change in the Banff National Park Area Before 1911, Studies in Land Use History and Landscape Change, National Park Series No. 1 (Calgary: University of Calgary, 1968), 33-9; B. Reeves, "Man and His Environment, the Past 10,000 Years: An Approach to Park Interpretation," in The Canadian National Parks Today and Tomorrow, Studies in Land Use History and Landscape Change, ed. J. G. Nelson and R. C. Scace, National Park Series No. 3, Vol. 1: Introduction Other Alternatives (Calgary: University of Calgary, 1968), 243-61. 5 J. G. Nelson, L. D. Cordes and J. Masyk, "The Proposed Master Plans for Banff National Park: Some Criticisms and an Alternative," Canadian Geographer, 16/1 (1972), 33. 6 Cowan, "The Timber Wolf in the Rocky Mountain National Parks of Canada," 141. 7 Henday related many hunting trips in his diary, including occasions where his Cree scouts, killed a large number of bison, removed their tongues, and "left the remains to the Wolves." That the scouts killed more than they needed could be taken as an indication of their colonization. Alternatively, their behaviour might point towards a need to revise, or at least qualify, the historical image of the Native American treading lightly on the land. See Lawrence J. Burpee, ed., "York Factory to the Blackfeet Country: The Journal of Anthony Hendry, 1754-5," Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 3rd Series, Section 2, Part 5 (1907), 332, 336. For revision of the traditional image of Native peoples as consummate environmental stewards, see Shepard

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Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999). 8 Burpee, "York Factory to the Blackfeet Country," 336, 333. 9 Ibid., 337-8. 10 Ibid., 344, 350. 11 Richard Glover, ed., David Thompson's Narrative: 1784-1812 (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1962), 47. 12 Ibid., 237. 13 Alexander Ross, The Fur Hunters of the Far West, ed. Kenneth Spaulding (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956 [1855]), 113-4. 14 Isaac Cowie, Company of Adventurers: A Narrative of Seven Tears in the Service of the Hudson's Bay Company During 1867-1874 On the Great Buffalo Plains (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993 [1913]), 252. 15 Ibid., 250-1. 16 Ibid., 251. 17 Thompson noted how the Piegans "watched us to prevent our crossing the Mountains and arming the Natives on that side." See Glover, David Thompson's Narrative, 273. Thompson only managed to cross Howse Pass (a favoured southern route over the Canadian Rockies) once in 1806, when the Piegan ventured south into present-day Montana on a crusade to avenge the deaths of two Blackfeet at the hands of the Lewis and Clark party. 18 The Blackfeet plied their wares at U.S. forts Piegan, Brule, Benton, and Lewis. 19 Palliser viewed four mountain passes (North Kootenay, Kananaskis, Vermillion, and Kicking Horse) as possible short-haul wagon routes, but deemed a transcontinental route unfeasible. For details of Palliser's explorations, see William F. Lothian, A History of Canada's National Parks, vol. 1 (Ottawa: Parks Canada, 1976), 13-15. 20 Irene Spry, ed., The Papers of the Palliser Expedition: 1857-1860 (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1968), 22, 248. 21 Earl of Southesk, Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains: A Diary and Narrative of Travel, Sport and Adventure During a Journey Through the Hudson's Bay Company's Territories in 1859 & 1860 (Edmonton: M. G. Hurtig, 1969), 79, 123, 135. 22 North Piegan brave Siksikakoan told trapper Walter McClintock that, "When wolves howl like that, it is the sign of a coming storm. This morning when the sun rose, I saw two large sun dogs in the eastern sky, that resembled enormous crosses, and at midday there was a huge circle around the sun,— nature's warning signs of a big storm." See Walter McClintock, The Old North Trail: Life, Legends and Religion of the Blackfeet Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992 [1910]), 56.

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23 Their traditional way of life decimated by the traders' willingness to exchange firewater for fur, Native peoples often attacked and burned the forts. Wolfers, in turn, castigated traders for selling repeating rifles to aboriginal groups. Antagonism between wolfers and Native peoples was renowned. Native fury frequently proved a direct response to the wolfers' proclivity to scatter liberal amounts of poison across the landscape. When Native dogs succumbed to poison baits, angry braves sought out the offending wolfer looking for revenge. Wolfers John Evans and Harry 'Kamoose' Taylor, meanwhile, formed an organization known as the Spitzee Cavalry in an attempt to force traders from the region. For details of the conflicts, see Paul Sharp, WhoopUp Country, The Canadian-American West: 1865-1885 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955), 50-3. 24 The Cypress Hills Massacre prompted an international incident with distinct patriotic undertones. Canadians portrayed the wolfers, led by Spitzee member John Evans, as 'American Gangsters,' while south of the border the men were seen as free-spirited frontiersmen. The wolfers faced trial in Canada and gave urgency to official attempts to organize the North West Mounted Police, yet received a hero's welcome in their hometown of Fort Benton, Montana. See Ibid., 55-76. 25 For discussions of comparative frontier history, see Dietrich Gerhard, "The Frontier in Comparative View," Comparative Studies in Society and History, March 1959, 205-29, and Marvin Mikesell, "Comparative Studies in Frontier History," Annals: Association of American Geographers, 1960, 6274. 26 John G. Stelfox, "Wolves in Alberta: A History 1800-1969," Alberta Lands, Forests, Parks, Wildlife,W'mter 1969, 19, Box 6: Canidae - Wolves, Warden Service Library, Jasper National Park Library, Jasper, Alberta (hereafter cited as JNPL). 27 As quoted in Stanley Young and Edward Goldman, The Wolves of North America Part 1: Their History, Life Habits, Economic Status, and Control (New York: Dover, 1944), 264-5. 28 Lothian, A History of Canada's National Parks, vol. 1, 16. 29 Ibid. 30 The project experienced a setback in 1873, following disclosures concerning sizeable political contributions to the Conservatives by the company awarded the railroad contract. Macdonald resigned following the 'Pacific Scandal' and the Department of Public Works took over the project. Workers laid the first tracks in June 1875. After five years, progress remained slow and finance hard to secure, so Macdonald (who regained the premiership in 1878) transferred responsibility for the railroad to a private company once more.

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The Canadian Pacific Railway Company received a grant of $25 million and twenty-five million acres of land to complete the railway. 31 Byrne, Man and Landscape Change in the Banff National Park Area, 89. 32 Marty, A Grand and Fabulous Notion, 33-4. 33 Historian Fergus Lothian nonetheless doubted that the men immediately recognized the value of their discovery, as the party applied for ownership of the springs in 1885, by which time other railway workers had erected shacks in the area, hoping to secure their own claims to mineral wealth. For an account of the discovery of the Springs, see Lothian, A History of Canada's National Parks, vol. 1, 18 34 Ibid., 20. 35 Janet Foster, Working for Wildlife: The Beginning of Preservation in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998 [1978], rev. edn), 19. 36 Arkansas Hot Springs was established in 1832 as a public reservation for medicinal purposes. See Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 26. 37 Lothian, A History of Canada's National Parks, vol. 1, 23. 38 The Premier asserted that "I do not suppose that in any portion of the world there can be a spot, taken all together, which combines so many attractions." See Ibid., 25. 39 As quoted in Foster, Working for Wildlife, 22. 40 Macdonald's comment cited in Robert Craig Brown, "The Doctrine of Usefulness: Natural Resource and National Park Policy in Canada, 18871914," in The Canadian National Parks Today and Tomorrow, vol. 1, 98. 41 Kevin McNamee, "From Wild Places to Endangered Spaces: A History of Canada's National Parks," in Parks and Protected Areas in Canada, eds. P. Dearden & R. Rollins (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993), 20. 42 Comments made by Samuel Burdett, MP for Hastings. See Marty, A Grand and Fabulous Notion, 62. 43 As quoted in Foster, Working for Wildlife, 25. 44 Ibid. 45 The Rocky Mountains Park Act cited in Lothian, A History of Canada's National Parks, vol. 1, 26. Yellowstone's bill dedicated the preserve as "a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." See Aubrey Haines, The Yellowstone Story: A History of Our First National Park, vol. 1 (Niwot, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 1996 [1977], rev. edn), 167. 46 Marty, A Grand and Fabulous Notion, 62. 47 Lothian, A History of Canada's National Parks, vol. 1, 23. 48 For expenditure figures, see ibid., 25; Foster, Working for Wildlife, 29.

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49 Yellowstone clause cited in Paul Schullery, ed., The Yellowstone Wolf: A Guide and Sourcebook (Worland, Wyoming: High Plains Publishing Co., 1996), 222. For the Banff Act, see William F. Lothian, A History of Canada's National Parks, vol. 4 (Ottawa: Parks Canada, 1981),16. 50 See Canada, Parliament, Sessional Papers (House of Commons) 1887, no. 7, Mr. Whitcher's Report; Byrne, Man and Landscape Change in the Banff National Park Area, 139. 51 Calgary Herald, 6 November 1886. 52 J. G. Nelson, "Man and Landscape Change in Banff National Park: A National Park Problem in Perspective," in Canadian National Parks Today and Tomorrow, vol. 1, 116; Whitcher Report, 86. 53 Great Plains Research Consultants, Banff National Park 1792-1965: A History, Parks Canada Report, 1984, 73, Warden Service Library, Banff National Park, Banff, Alberta (hereafter cited as BNPL); Whitcher Report, 87. 54 Whitcher Report, 92. 55 Marty, A Grand and Fabulous Notion, 58. 56 In 1897, a Toronto resident donated three bison to the compound, while, in the following year, Lord Strathcona added another thirteen animals to the modest herd. 57 Lothian, A History of Canada's National Parks, vol. 4, 17. 58 Ibid., 18. 59 Crag and Canyon, 15 December 1900. 60 Byrne suggested that the popularity of the zoo itself perhaps reflected the scarcity of wild animals elsewhere in Rocky Mountains National Park, see Byrne, Man and Landscape Change in the Banff National Park Area, 124 - 5. 61 Nelson, "Man and Landscape Change," 131; Lothian, A History of Canada's National Parks, vol. 1, 28; William T. Hornaday and John M. Phillips, Camp/ires in the Canadian Rockies (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906), 314. 62 Foster, Working for Wildlife, 78. 63 Ibid., 73. 64 Letter from Lieutenant Colonel First Cavalry, Acting Superintendent, Yellowstone National Park to James Harkin, 11 March 1912, RG84, vol. 35, file U.300, pt. 1, Public Archives Canada, Ottawa (hereafter cited as PAC). 65 Letter from H. W. Hutchings, Acting Superintendent, Glacier National Park, to Commissioner Harkin, 9 March 1912, RG84, vol. 35, file U.300, pt. 1, PAC. 66 Letter from Chief Superintendent Howard Douglas to the Commissioner of Dominion Parks, 19 December 1911, RG84, vol. 35, file U.300, pt. 1, PAC.

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67 Superintendent's Annual Report, 1908, quoted in Clifford White, Wildland Fires in Banff National Park, 1880-1980, Occasional Paper No. 3 (Ottawa: Parks Canada/Environment Canada, 1985), 46. 68 Letter from Douglas to Harkin, 19 December 1911; Letter from Douglas to Game Wardens, 30 January 1912, RG84, vol. 35, file U.300, pt. 1, PAC. 69 Robert J. Burns, "Guardians of the Wild: A History of the Wardens of Canada's National Parks," (1994), 22, manuscript, BNPL. 70 Memo from Maxwell Graham, Chief of the Animal Division, to Harkin, 3 October 1917, RG84, vol. 120, file U.266, pt. 1, PAC. 71 W. N. Millar, "The Big Game of the Canadian Rockies - A Practical Method for its Preservation" in Conservation offish, Birds and Game: Proceedings of a Meeting of the Committee, November 1-2 1915, ed. Commission of Conservation Canada (Toronto: The Methodist Book & Publishing House, 1916), 108, held at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff, Alberta (hereafter cited as Whyte). 72 Nelson, Cordes and Masyk suggested that elk had been eradicated from Banff by 1900 in "The Proposed Master Plans for Banff National Park," 33. The entire elk population of western Alberta in 1915 consisted of between 175 and 365 animals. See Stelfox, "Wolves in Alberta," 20. 73 For details of the relocation, see Eleanor G. Luxton, Banff: Canada's First National Park, A History and Memory of Rocky Mountains Park (Banff: Summerthought, 1975), 17. 74 The Conservation Commission itself described wolves as "dangerous, predatory" animals that "should be exterminated." See Millar, "The Big Game of the Canadian Rockies," 108. 75 Quoted in the Crag and Canyon, 13 August 1948. 76 Letter from the Department of State, Washington, DC, to Sir Cecil Arthur Spring, British Ambassador, 10 May 1915, RG84, vol. 35, file U.300, pt. 1, PAC. 77 Letter from J. S. Jackson, President of the American Cattle Ranchers Association, Ike Prior & Chas Libminder to Hon. W. J. Bryan, Secretary of State, Washington, DC, 23 April 1915, RG84, vol. 35, file U.300, pt. 1, PAC. 78 "Memo re Wolf Extermination Co-operation Plan," Maxwell Graham to the Commissioner, 15 October 1915, RG84, vol. 35, file U.300, pt. 1, PAC. 79 Letter from Jackson, Prior & Libminder to Bryan, 23 April 1915. 80 A farmer, who lived near Wood Buffalo Park in northern Alberta, claimed that coyotes "made a line for the park where they evidently knew they were safe." Comment noted by James Harkin in "Wildlife Sanctuaries," a paper delivered at the Wild Life Convention, Ottawa, 18 February 1919, RG 84, vol. 35, file U.300, pt. 1, PAC.

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81 Predator control activities between 1923 and 1928 did not result in any wolf casualties. Statistics listed 188 coyotes, 14 lynx, 14 wolverines, 4 mountain lions and 2 foxes. Letter from Acting Superintendent, Banff National Park, Arthur Ford to James Harkin, 26 August 1930, RG84, vol. 37, U.300, pt. 5, PAC. 82 Edmonton Journal., 24 January 1923. 83 Calgary Albertan, 29 January 1927. 84 Quebec Telegraph, 16 March 1925; Calgary Herald, 18 March 1925. 85 Ottawa Citizen, 5 February 1923. 86 Edmonton Journal, 6 May 1925. 87 Saskatoon Star, 8 January 1923. 88 Barry Holstun Lopez, Of Waives and Men (New York: Touchstone Books, 1995 [1978]), 180-1. 89 Port Arthur News Chronicle, 17 December 1921. 90 Edmonton Journal, 9 March 1927. 91 According to Harkin, the preserves "should be reservoirs for supplying the surrounding areas with fur bearers, as well as ... wild game." Quoted in Burns, "Guardians of the Wild," 121. 92 Memo sent from Commisioner to all Superintendents, 23 January 1925, RG84, vol. 36, file U.300, pt. 3, PAC. 93 Figure cited in Robert J. Burns, Guardians of the Wild: A History of the Warden Service of Canada's National Parks (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2000), 89. 94 Memo from Hoyes Lloyd to James Harkin, 18 February 1930, RG84, vol. 36, file U.300, pt. 5, PAC. 95 Control figures in Jasper also plunged following the ban on trapping, dropping from fifty-seven in 1928-9 to three the following season. Harkin thus informed his deputies that, "it is important that you impress upon each warden the necessity of his making a success of this predator work. His efficiency in the Service will be judged by what he accomplished this winter." Memo from Harkin to Superintendents, mountain parks, 17 October 1933, RG84, vol. 7, file B.300, pt. 3, PAC. 96 "Summary Asked for Respecting Wild Life Conservation Activities of the Dominion Parks Branch," Memo from C. E. Nagle to H. Lloyd, 13 September 1930, RG84, vol. 37, U.300, pt. 6, PAC. 97 Quoted in "A Policy Statement Respecting Wildlife in the National Parks of Canada," January 1957, RG84, vol. 2140, file U.300, pt. 18, PAC. 98 Edmonton Journal, 9 March 1927. 99 Memo from Commissioner to all Superintendents, 23 January 1925.

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100 Correspondence within the Canadian Parks Branch was littered with references to U.S. scenarios. Hoyes Lloyd, Supervisor of Wild Life Protection in Canada, quoted key portions from Joseph Grinnell's address at the 1928 Mammalogists Conference and noted the relevance of his conclusions as to the minimal impact of wolf predation on deer for Canadian parks. See memo from Hoyes Lloyd to James Harkin, 8 April 1935, RG84, vol. 37, file U.300, pt. 8, PAC. Lloyd was also instrumental in drafting official policy statements regarding ecology, parks and predators. 101 Memo from Harkin to all Superintendents, 23 January 1925. 102 Letter from Harkin to L. E. Wise, President, & G. Spargo, SecretaryTreasurer, Northern Alberta Game and Fish Protection League, 23 March 1934, RG84, vol. 37, file U.300, pt. 8, PAC. 103 Memo from J. Harkin to Mr. Cory, 20 May 1925, RG84, vol. 36, file U.300, pt. 3, PAC. 104 Edmonton Journal, 9 March 1927. 105 Statistics quoted in Hubert Green, The Wolves of Banff National Park (Ottawa: Canadian Dept of Resources and Development, July 1951), 4, held at the Parks Canada Document Centre, Hull, Quebec (hereafter cited as PCDC). 106 Letter from P. Jennings to J. Harkin, 26 April 1934, RG84, vol. 137, file B.266, PAC. 107 Crag and Canyon, 31 May 1935. 108 Mabel B. Williams, Guardians of the Wild (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd., 1936), 70,104. 109 Crag and Canyon, 8 May 1953. 110 Calgary Herald, 22 June 1938. 111 Letter from J. Dymond to the Minister for Mines and Natural Resources, 7 March 1939, RG84, vol. 38, file U.300, pt. 11, PAC. 112 Letter from W. Pratt, Private Secretary to J. Dymond, 13 April 1939, RG84, vol. 38, file U.300, pt. 11, PAC. 113 Changes noted in a letter from staff biologist C. Clarke to Hoyes Lloyd, 19 February 1940, RG84, vol. 38, file U.300, pt. 12, PAC. 114 I. P. Callison, "Wolves and Coyotes are a Major Menace," Game Trails in Canada, November 1945, 18, RG84, vol. 38, file U.300, pt. 14, PAC. 115 Calgary Herald, 20 January 1939. 116 Cited in letter from C. Clarke to F. Williamson, 14 February 1939, RG84, vol. 37, file U.300, pt. 11, PAC. 117 Anderson's report available in RG84, vol. 37, file U.300, pt. 11, PAC. 118 Green, Wolves of Banff National Park, 5.

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119 Letter from Smart to Dymond, 22 January 1942, RG84, vol. 157, file U.266, pt. 3, PAC. 120 For details on the wolf's return, see Green, Wolves of Banff National Park and Cowan, "The Timber Wolf in the Rocky Mountain National Parks of Canada." 121 Letter from C. Clarke to I. McTaggart Cowan, 21 January 1943, RG84, vol. 2141, file U.300, pt. 2, PAC. 122 W. Fisher, "Sabotage in the National Parks," Hunting & Fishing in Canada, October 1942, cited in RG84, vol .38, file U.300, pt. 14, PAC. 123 Reprinted in the Ottawa Morning Journal, 30 June 1945. Beaver were expected to sacrifice their lives for the cause of nationalism, although the paper did not elaborate on the military uses of beaver. They presumably desired rodent pelts to be used for lining military attire or sold to fund the war effort. 124 Manly Miner, "We Must Control the Timber Wolf," RG109, vol. 409, file WLU.266-1,PAC. 125 Fisher, "Sabotage in the National Parks." 126 Letter from George Keltie, Western Canada Fish & Game Council to the National Parks Department, Ottawa (undated, 1949), RG84, vol. 39, file U.300, pt. 17, PAC. 127 Callison, "Wolves and Coyotes are a Major Menace." 128 Letter from P. Jennings to J. Smart, 12 November 1942, RG84, vol. 38, file U.300, pt. 14, PAC. 129 Remark cited in letter from Hoyes Lloyd to C. Clarke, 4 November 1942, RG84, vol. 38, file U.300, pt. 14, PAC. 130 Tony Lascelles, "Should Hunting be Permitted in the National Parks?," Forest & Outdoors, Spring 1943, RG84, vol. 38, file U.300, pt. 14, PAC. 131 Letter from Lewis to Smart, 13 November 1945, RG84, vol. 38, file U.300, pt. 15, PAC. 132 Letter from Clarke to Cowan, 21 January 1943. 133 Tony Lascelles, "Wild Life in National Parks," Edmonton Journal, 14 March 1939. 134 Letter from H. Lewis to J. S. Macdonald, General Tourist Agency, Canadian Railways, 24 November 1948, RG109, vol. 409, file WLU.266-1, PAC. 135 Letter from Gibson to Callison, March 1949, RG84, vol. 409, file WLU.2661, PAC. 136 Letter from Parks Branch to Kenneth Coppock, Secretary-Treasurer, Council of Canadian Beef Producers, 28 May 1946, RG84, vol. 157, file U.266, pt. 3, PAC. 137 Cowan, "The Timber Wolf in the Rocky Mountain National Parks of Canada."

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138 Letter from H. Lewis to J. S. Macdonald, 31 September 1947, RG84, vol. 39, file U.300, pt. 17, PAC. 139 Letter from Smart to Editor, Game Trails in Canada, 17 June 1946. 140 Letter from I. P. Callison to C. Clarke, 26 March 1949, RG109, vol. 409, file WLU.266-1, PAC. 141 In one letter, Controller Smart explained how the wardens were "specially selected for their ability, and most of them have had long experience in the parks ... these men know the wildlife populations in their district far better than any summer visitor might think possible. Their observations are directed and their reports are integrated by our staff of wildlife scientists." See letter from Smart to Editor, Game Trails in Canada, 17 June 1946. 142 Thomas Dunlap, "Ecology, Nature and Canadian National Park Policy: Wolves, Elk and Bison as a Case Study," in To See Ourselves/To Save Ourselves: Ecology and Culture in Canada, eds. Rowland Lorimer, Michael M'Gonigle, Jean-Pierre Reveret and Sally Ross, Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Association for Canadian Studies, 31 May-1 June 1990 (Montreal: Association for Canadian Studies, 1991), 143-4. 143 Letter from Jennings to Smart, 5 December 1944, RG84, vol. 137, file B.266, PAC. 144 Letter from Jennings to Smart, 27 December 1944, RG84, vol. 137, file B.266, PAC. 145 Letter from Smart to Jennings, 5 January 1945, RG84, vol. 137, file B.266, PAC. 146 Letter from Cowan to Smart, 13 January 1945, RG84, vol. 137, file B.266, PAC. 147 Letter from Smart to Jennings, 5 January 1945. 148 Letter from Clarke to Lloyd, 8 March 1939, RG84, vol. 37, file U.300, pt. 11, PAC. 149 Memorandum from Smart regarding the bulletins, 31 December 1946, RG84, vol. 138, file B.300-26, PAC. 150 For Monthly Bulletin Warden Service Reports, see RG84, vol. 138, B.30026, PAC. 151 Calgary Herald, 19 December 1938. 152 "Wildlife Management in the National Parks of Canada" [undated], RG84, vol. 38, file U.300, pt. 15, PAC. 153 Lewis explained that, "we have to decide what proportion of the different wildlife elements should be maintained in our national parks and intervene boldly where necessary by means of modern wildlife management practices to bring about the wildlife status desired." See letter from H. Lewis to G. Keltie, 31 March 1949, RG84, vol. 39, file U.300, pt. 17, PAC.

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154 "Wildlife Management in the National Parks of Canada." 155 Letter from Smart to Soper, 1945, RG84, vol. 38, file U.300, pt. 15, PAC. 156 Letter from Smart to Editor, Game Trails in Canada, 17 June 1946. 157 "Monthly Wildlife Bulletin," November 1947. 158 Letter from Cowan to Smart, 13 January 1945, RG84, vol. 137, file B.266, PAC. 159 Letter from the Controller to Superintendent, Banff, 25 January 1945, RG84, vol. 137, file B.266, PAC. 160 "Resume of Predator Situation in Jasper and Banff Parks," enclosed with letter from Clarke to Cowan, 21 January 1943, RG84, vol. 2141, file U.300, pt. 2, PAC. 161 "Monthly Wildlife Bulletin," November 1947. 162 Letter from A. W. Banfield, to Lewis & Smart, 19 December 1947, RG84, vol. 138, file B.300-26, PAC. 163 Letter from K. Mitchell to Superintendent, 13 August 1948, RG84, vol. 312, file B.266, pt. 1, PAC. 164 Letter from Superintendent to the Controller, 16 August 1948, RG84, vol. 312, file B.266, pt.l, PAC. 165 Letter from H. Fisher to H. Lewis, "Re: Wolves in Jasper and Banff Parks," 18 September 1948, RG84, vol. 512, file B.266, pt. 1, PAC; H. Fisher, "Report on 1948 Wildlife Investigations in Banff National Park," RG84, vol. 39, file U.300, pt. 17, PAC. 166 Letter from Smart to Superintendent, Banff, 22 October 1948, RG84, vol. 512, file B.266, pt. 1,PAC. 167 Cyanide guns had been used since February 1948 in Banff's Saskatchewan Valley as an experimental method of control. The district represented a 'testing ground' for methods of wolf killing and served as a demonstration area where wardens were made "fully conversant with the various means of destroying predators." See letter from J. Smart to R. Gibson, 11 February 1948, RG109, vol. 409, file WLU.266-1, PAC. 168 Letter from Gibson to Callison, 25 March 1949, RG109, vol. 409, file WLU.266-1, PAC. 169 Fisher, "Report on 1948 Wildlife Investigations in Banff National Park." 170 Letter from Smart to Superintendent, Banff, 20 December 1949, RG84, vol. 512, file B.266, pt. 1, PAC. 171 Letter from Gibson to Callison, 25 March 1949. 172 Green, Wolves of Banff National Park, 43. 173 For details of mange incidents, see ibid., 140; Cowan, "The Timber Wolf in the Rocky Mountain National Parks of Canada," 153-54. 174 "Monthly Wildlife Bulletin," March 1948.

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175 Chief Warden's Report 1952, RG84, vol. 512, file B.266, PAC. 176 Calgary Albertan, 5 December 1959. 177 Douglas Pimlott, "Wolf Control in Canada," Canadian Audubon, 23 (NovDec 1961), 147. 178 Crag and Canyon, 13 February 1953. 179 Letter from L. Renders, Calgary Fish & Game Association to J. Coleman, Chief, 5 July 1953, RG84, vol. 2134, file U.266, pt. 3, PAC. 180 Comment by Mr. Pittaway, representative from Banff National Park, at the First Predator Control Conference, Calgary, 1954. See "Minutes of the First Predator Control Conference - August 31 & September 1,1954" (Calgary, Alberta: Canadian Wildlife Service), 92, Whyte. 181 Parks Superintendent J. R. B. Coleman quoted in the Crag and Canyon, 13 February 1953. 182 "Rabies in Alberta-August 1 1953 to July 31 1954," enclosure with letter from E. S. Huestis, Fish & Game Commissioner to W. Mair, Chief, Canadian Wildlife Service, 4 October 1954, RG109, vol. 409, file WLU.266-2, PAC; Lopez, Of Wolves and Men, 195. 183 Letter from J. Coleman, Chief, to L. Menders, Calgary Fish & Game Association. 17 July 1953, RG84, vol. 2134, file U.266, pt. 3, PAC. 184 1952-4 figures cited in "Rabies in Alberta-August 1 1953 to July 31 1954." In total, the Albertan program (1952-6) killed an estimated 5,461 wolves. See John R. Gunson, "Status and Management of Wolves in Alberta," in Wolves in Canada and Alaska, Canadian Wildlife Service Report Series No. 45, ed. Ludwig N. Carbyn (Edmonton: Canadian Wildlife Service/ Environment Canada, 1983), 26. 185 Stelfox, "Wolves in Alberta," 21. 186 Letter from Coleman to Renders, 17 July 1953; Letter from Renders to Coleman 5 July 1953. 187 Pittaway, "Minutes of the First Predator Control Conference," 92. 188 "A Policy Statement Respecting Wildlife in the National Parks of Canada." Similar tenets were expressed in the United States six years later in the influential Leopold Report. 189 Ry Edwards, "'Wildlife Management in Parks,' A Paper Given April 3,1965 in Calgary at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Wildlife and Fisheries Biologists," 1, RG84, vol. 2140, file U.300, pt. 20, PAC. 190 Memorandum from D. R. Flook to Canadian Wildlife Service, 9 July 1959, RG84, vol. 2140, U.300, pt. 18, PAC. 191 Ibid. 192 W. Lowry, Capacity for Wonder: Preserving National Parks (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994), 101.

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193 John Theberge, "Wolf Management in Canada Through a Decade of Change," Nature Canada, 2/1 (Jan/March 1973), 3. 194 Ibid. 195 Bruce Hampton, The Great American Wolf (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 169. 196 Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf(Toronto: Seal Books, 1963), v. 197 Ibid., 33, 146. 198 Official correspondence regarding the book can be found in RG109, vol. 30, WLT.200-7, PAC. 199 Edmonton Journal, 13 December 1963. 200 Edmonton Journal, 7 January 1964. 201 Edmonton Journal, 14 January 1964. 202 Ibid. 203 Mowat, Never Cry Wolf, 164. 204 Letter from N. S. Novakowski, staff mammalogist, Canadian Wildlife Service to Mrs Edward Noyes, Brooklyn, New York, 22 October 1968, RG109, vol. 30, file WLT.200-8, PAC. 205 Ibid. 206 Intensive predator control measures between 1953 and 1959 resulted in the deaths of 5,166 wolves. Thereafter, caribou numbers increased, and activities against wolves were scaled down. For details of the Keewatin program, see "The effect of wolves on barren ground caribou: a report by the Canadian Wildlife Service to the Commissioner in Council of the Government of the Northwest Territories - October 1967," RG109, vol. 30, file WLT.200-8, PAC; letter from David Munro, Chief, to Kai CurryLindahl, Director, Zoological Department, Nordiska, Mureet & Skansen, Stockholm, Sweden, 18 November 1965, RG109, vol. 30, file WLT.200-7, PAC; letter from David Munro to F. Bacher, 10 December 1969, RG109, vol. 30, file WLT.200-7, PAC. 207 Letter from W R. Wolley Dod, Secretary Calgary Fish & Game Association, to Winston Mair, 14 April 1958, RG109, vol. 30, file WLT.200-7, PAC. 208 Crag and Canyon, 17 June 1987. 209 For figures on wolf sightings, 1955-85, see D. Mickle, G. Fortin and R. Kunelius, "Status ofWolves in Banff National Park" (Ottawa: Parks Canada, 1986), PCDC. 210 Sightings and movements described in Stelfox, "Wolves in Alberta," 25-6. 211 Letter from John Kelsall to Dr. Monroe, 7 March 1967, RG109, vol. 384, file WLU.200-3, PAC. 212 Ludwig Carbyn, "Project Plan: Ecological Studies on Wolves in the Western National Parks," 9 May 1968, RG84, vol. 2134, file U.266, pt. 5, PAC.

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213 Crag and Canyon, 4 May 1994. 214 Crag and Canyon, 4 December 1978. 215 For details of the project, see Paul Paquet, David Huggard and Shelley Curry, "Banff National Park Canid Ecology Study: First Progress Report April 1989April 1990," Prepared by John/Paul Associates for Canadian Parks Service, 1990, Barry Hughson personal files, Parks Canada, Hull, Quebec (hereafter cited as BH). 216 Crag and Canyon, 17 June 1987; Crag and Canyon, 13 August 1948; Crag and Canyon, 19 April 1989. 217 Ottawa Citizen, 31 January 1990. 218 DickDekker, Wolves of the Rocky Mountains from Jasper to Yellowstone (Surrey, BC: Hancock House, 1997), 130. 219 Phrase used by Dekker to describe head biologist John Elliott boarding his "helicopter gunship" to the Muskwa. Ibid., 134. 220 Bruce Obee, "Wolves of British Columbia: Predator or Prey?" Special Report in Wildlife Review, 10/10 (Summer 1984), 6, held in records of the Alberta Wilderness Association, Calgary Office, Alberta (hereafter cited as AWA). 221 Watson had been involved in initial Greenpeace protests in 1971, and two years later visited South Dakota to offer support to the American Indian Movement at the Wounded Knee siege. In 1973, Watson was initiated as a spiritual brother by the Sioux, and named Grey Wolf Clear Water after a vision he experienced in a sweat lodge. In the vision, Watson looked into a pool and saw his reflection as a wolf. For details of Watson's campaigns, see David B. Morris, Earth Warrior: Overboard with Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum, 1995), 64-5, 189. 222 Authorities received 8,764 letters regarding the program, of which only 112 were supportive. See Obee, "Wolves of British Columbia," 6. 223 Sierra Club of Western Canada, "The (Other) Wolf Story," [undated], AWA. 224 Calgary Herald, 27 February 1984. Watson's belittling of the 'too many wolves' principle of the predator control enterprise appeared justified when prominent wildlife biologists also disputed the 'facts' behind the hunt. In March 1984, the Wildlife Society of Canada and the Canadian Society of Zoologists added their voices to those opposing the program. 225 Missoulian, 7 April 1988. 226 Edmonton Journal, 20 October 1989. 227 Ibid. 228 Crag and Canyon, 7 February 1990. 229 "Alberta's Hunters to Pay Bounty of $150," Alberta Naturalist, 19/2 (Summer 1989), Whyte.

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230 Mabel B. Williams, ed., The Origin and Meaning of the National Parks of Canada: Extracts from the Papers of the Late Jas. B. Harkin, First Commissioner of the National Parks of Canada (place of publication unknown: H. R. Larson, 1957), 9. 231 Parks Canada, "State of the Parks 1994 Report" (Ottawa: Parks Canada, 1995), 15-7. 232 Parks Canada, "Guiding Principles and Operational Policies" (Ottawa: Parks Canada, 1994), 24. 233 The study reported: "Banff National Park, with two communities, three commercial ski facilities, a 27-hole golf course attached to the Banff Springs Hotel, a four-lane divided Trans-Canada Highway and a rail corridor, does not conform with the intent of the Act and policy." See Robert Page, Suzanne Bayley, J. Douglas Cook, Jeffrey E. Green and J. R. Brent Ritchie, "BanffBow Valley: At a Crossroads, Technical Report," Report of the Banff-Bow Valley Taskforce to Hon. Sheila Copps, Minister of Canadian Heritage, October 1996, 8. 234 Four million people visited Banff in 1994, see "Canadian Parks Service Environmental Scan Vol.1," June 20 1994, Coopers & Lybrand Consulting Group, 30, BNPL. 235 Ibid., 16. 236 The Planet, May 1996. 237 In the Bow Valley watershed, human infrastructure and intensive usage effectively deemed seventy-nine per cent of prime wolf habitat off limits. See Page et al., "Banff-Bow Valley: At a Crossroads," 114. 238 Wolves travelling north-east into the Cascade Valley took an alternative route around Stoney Squaw Mountain rather than use the preferable route across the corral, bison paddock and air strip. In addition, residential development and the golf course near Sulphur Mountain deterred animals from travelling south-east into the Spray Valley. For details of wildlife corridor restrictions, see Page et al., "Banff-Bow Valley: At a Crossroads," 127; Ecology Base Research, "Large Carnivore Movements Around the Town of Banff: Progress Report," Prepared for Parks Canada for Submission to the Inter-Jurisdictional Wildlife Corridor Task Force (28 January 1994), BNPL. 239 Rick Kunelius, "Wolves are Part of Our Town," Crag and Canyon, 9 April 1997. 240 Crag and Canyon, 4 May 1994. 241 Crag and Canyon, 8 December 1993. 242 Williams, Guardians of the Wild, 66.

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243 Charlie Pacas, David Bernard, Nancy Marshall and Jeffrey Green, "State of the Banff- Bow Valley: A Compendium of Information," Banff-Bow Valley Study, Banff, Alberta (January 1996), 3-30. 244 Calgary Herald, 14 January 1990. 245 Page et al., "Banff-Bow Valley: At a Crossroads," 90. 246 Pacas et al., "State of the Banff-Bow Valley," 3-30. 247 Ry Edwards, "Wildlife Management in Parks," 3. 248 Page et al., "Banff-Bow Valley: At a Crossroads," 132. 249 Behaviour varied between packs and individual wolves. When the alpha female of one pack died, the rest of the group ceased usage of the Healy Creek underpass. For details, see P. C. Paquet, "Summary Reference Document, Ecological Studies of Recolonizing Wolves in the Central Canadian Rocky Mountains, Final Report, April 1989-June 1993," Prepared for Parks Canada, Banff National Park Warden Service, 1993, 52, BNPL. 250 Page et al., "Banff-Bow Valley: At a Crossroads," i. 251 Helen Purves, Clifford White and Paul Paquet, "Wolf and Grizzly Bear Habitat Use and Displacement By Human Use in Banff, Yoho & Kootenay National Parks: A Preliminary Analysis" (Banff: Canadian Parks Service, November 1992), 26, PCDC. 252 For details on wolf movements, see Paquet, Huggard and Curry, "Banff National Park Canid Ecology Study"; Paquet, "Summary Reference Document," 80. 253 Page et al., "Banff-Bow Valley: At a Crossroads," 116. 254 Alberta Fish and Wildlife Division, Management Plan for Wolves in Alberta, Wildlife Management Planning Series No. 4 (Edmonton: Forestry, Lands and Wildlife, Fish and Wildlife Division, 1991), 65-6. 255 Brian Horejsi, "Growing Suspicion Over Wolf Exports and Management in Alberta," WMlands Advocate: The News Quarterly of the Alberta Wilderness Association, 3/4 (October 1995), 4, AWA. 256 Crag and Canyon, 7 April 1993. 257 Parks Canada, Banff National Park Management Plan 1997 (Ottawa: Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, 1997) 8, BNPL. 258 Ibid., 9. 259 Between 1986 and 1993, people caused ninety-six percent of all wolf deaths in the Central Rockies, see P. Paquet, J. Wierczhowski and C. Callaghan, "Summary Report on the Effects of Human Activity on Gray Wolves in the Bow River Valley, Banff National Park, Alberta," Prepared for the Banff Bow Valley Study (Ottawa: Department of Canadian Heritage, 1996), 45, BNPL.

279

Notes to Chapter 4 1 J. Dewey Soper, The Mammals of Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canadian Wildlife Series Report No. 10 (Ottawa: Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, 1970), 49. 2 Legend cited in Robert Busch, The Wolf Almanac (New York: Lyons & Burford, 1995), 99. 3 DickDekker, Wolvesof the Rocky Mountains from Jasper to Yellowstone (Surrey, British Columbia: Hancock House, 1997), 67-8. 4 The Sarcee were an Athabascan tribe related to the Beaver Indians of the Peace River region. According to Beaver legend, the Sarcee split from the Beaver tribe following a disagreement between two chiefs, during which one of the chief's dogs was shot. The Sarcee instead attributed the divide to the work of a giant sea monster, who separated the tribe while they crossed an expanse of ice. The Sarcee moved south, whereas the Beaver remained in the Peace River district of northern Alberta. Story recounted in Edward Sheriff Curtis, The North American Indians, available online at "The Curtis Collection," http://www.curtis_collection.com. 5 Mabel B. Williams, Jasper National Park (Ottawa: Dept. of Interior, 1928), 159. 6 Harmon related, "when on the west side, they dare not... visit those places, where fish are plenty, and when on the east side, they are frequently afraid to visit those parts where animals abound. They are compelled, therefore, oftentimes to subsist upon the roots, which they find in the mountains." See Arthur Morton, A History of the Canadian West to 1870-71, Being a History of Rupert's Land (the Hudson's Bay Company's Territory) and of the North-West Territory (Including the Pacific Slope) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973 [1939], 2nd edn), 360. 7 The Cree named the major river in Jasper 'Athabasca' or 'where there are reeds,' while the Chaba (or Beaver) River owed its title to Assiniboine travellers and rodent enterprise. 8 Recounted by James Hector during his foray into Jasper in 1859. See Irene Spry, ed., The Papers of the Palliser Expedition, 1857-1860 (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1968), 373.

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9 See Isaac Cowie, Company of Adventurers: A Narrative of Seven Tears in the Service of the Hudson's Bay Company During 1867-1874 On the Great Buffalo Plains (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993 [1913]), 250. 10 Alexander Mackenzie, Voyages from Montreal on the River St. Laurence, Through the Continent of North America, to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans; in the Tears 1789 and 1793, With a Preliminary Account of the Rise, Progress, and Present State of the Fur Trade of that Country (London: n. p., 1801), 163, 183. 11 Ibid., 144, 184. 12 Ibid., Ixix. 13 Morton, A History of the Canadian West, 463. 14 Mackenzie, Voyages from Montreal, Ixiv. 15 In previous decades, Thompson had plied his trade further south, working the drainages of the Bow and Columbia rivers. However, when Blackfeet hostility effectively sealed the southern passes in the early 1800s, the explorer looked north for a suitable route across the Rockies. After hearing rumours of a pass near the source of the Athabasca River, reputedly used by bands of free trappers, Thompson led an expedition to the area in 1811. 16 Richard Glover, ed., David Thompson's Narrative: 1784-1812 (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1962), 321. 17 "Powerful and active as he is," Thompson observed that "[the wolf] is not known to attack mankind, except in a rare case of something like canine madness." Surmising that "there is something in the erect form of man, while he shows no fear, that awes every animal," Thompson inferred that humans were in some way superior to the rest of the animal kingdom. Ibid., 71. 18 Ibid., 320. 19 Ibid. 20 Williams, Jasper National Park, 155. 21 Ibid., 1-2. 22 Ibid., 21. 23 Ibid. 24 Alexander Ross, The Fur Hunters of the Far West, ed. Kenneth A. Spaulding (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956 [1855]), 114. 25 Ibid., 48-9. 26 Ibid., 49-50. 27 Spry, Papers of the Palliser Expedition, 373. 28 Ibid., 373-4. 29 Ibid., 374. 30 A. Dickson of Ontario cited in Stanley Young and Edward Goldman, The Wolves of North America: Part 1, Their History, Life Habits, Economic Status, and Control (New York: Dover Publications, 1944), 122.

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31 Ross, Fur Hunters of the Far West, 52. 32 Bridget's tale cited in Barry Holstun Lopez, Of Wolves and Men (New York: Touchstone, 1995 [1978]), 177. 33 Ibid. 34 Klyne's comments noted in Dekker, Wolves of the Rocky Mountains, 69; Hector noted the demise of ungulates in the region compared with reports of abundant grazers by Alexander Mackenzie, see Spry, Papers of the Palliser Expedition, 373. 35 Ian McTaggart Cowan, "The Timber Wolf in the Rocky Mountain National Parks of Canada," Canadian Journal of Research, 25/Section D (October 1947), 142. 36 Soper, The Mammals of Jasper National Park, 49. 37 George Simpson, Narrative of a Journey Round the World, During the Tears 1841 and 1842, vol. 1 (London: Henry Colburn, 1847), 107-8. 38 Comments by Reverend George Grant, cited in Williams, Jasper National Park, 33. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Descriptions of the grand and unsurpassed magnificence of Yosemite Valley abounded following its discovery by Euro-Americans in 1851. Thomas Starr King, an early Yosemite publicist, mused that "nowhere among the Alps, in no pass of the Andes, and in no Canyon of the mighty Oregon range, is there such stupendous rock scenery," while Albert D. Richardson remarked that "in grand natural curiosities and wonders, all other countries fall far below it." The gorges and cataracts of Yosemite Valley were preserved for "public use, resort and recreation" on June 30, 1864. For details on Yosemite's celebrators, its acquisition as a State Park and American cultural nationalism, see Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 11-32. 42 Grant's comment cited in Williams, Jasper National Park, 33. Thomas Hill's famous landscape painting, Yosemite Valley, illustrated the Merced River meandering along the lush valley floor, the whole scene framed by imposing cliffs either side, with a camping party in the foreground. Hill painted the work between 1867 and 1870, while residing in Boston, Massachusetts. 43 Williams, Jasper National Park, 33. 44 Brenda Gainer noted that "transportation and conservation are the two basic themes linking Jasper's past to Canada's national development." Brenda Gainer, The Human History of Jasper National Park, Alberta (n.p., 1981), 184, held at Jasper Public Library, Jasper, Alberta (hereafter cited as JPL).

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45 The idea for a preserve originated with Minister of the Interior Frank Oliver, who called on Superintendent of Forestry Robert Campbell to design a national park bill, see William F. Lothian, A History of Canada's National Parks, vol. 1 (Ottawa: Parks Canada, 1976), 52. 46 Ibid., 53. 47 The Dominion Forest Reserves and Parks Act (1911) set new park boundaries ten miles either side of the Grand Trunk line, reducing Jasper from five thousand square miles to one thousand square miles in area. Jasper Forest Park was also transferred to the authority of the newly formed Parks Branch. After protests by the Alpine Club of Canada and the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, legislators restored the preserve to forty-four hundred square miles in 1914. Commissioner Harkin invoked the spectre of rail profits in his campaign to restore Jasper's boundaries, arguing that "the enlargement of Jasper will be to the Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Northern, what Banff was to the Canadian Pacific Railway." The current boundaries of Jasper National Park, encompassing forty-two hundred square miles of land, were established by the 1930 National Parks Act. For details on the bureaucratic history of parks and forest reserves in Alberta, see Janet Foster, Working for Wildlife: The Beginning of Preservation in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998 [1978], rev. edn), 74-8, 83-6; Lothian, A History of Canada's National Parks, vol. 1, 52-4. 48 Laurier quoted in Foster, Working for Wildlife., 34. 49 Lothian, A History of Canada's National Parks, vol. 1, 53. 50 Great Plains Research Consultants, Jasper National Park: A Social and Economic History (1985), 233, unpublished report for Parks Canada, JPL. 51 Frank Camp, Roots in the Rockies (n. p., 1993), 46. The Jasper Park Warden is also quoted in Alan MacEachern, "Rationality and Rationalization in Canadian National Parks' Predator Policy," in Consuming Canada: Readings in Environmental History, eds. Chad and Pam Gaffield (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1995), 152. 52 Williams, Jasper National Park, 8. 53 Camp, Roots in the Rockies, 40. 54 Cowan, "The Timber Wolf in the Rocky Mountain National Parks," 144. 55 Roy's exploits relayed by Jack Hargreaves to biologist John Stelfox. Cited in John Stelfox, "Wolves in Alberta: A History 1800-1969," Alberta Lands, Forests, Parks, Wildlife, Winter 1969, 20, Box 6: Canidae - Wolves, Warden Service Library, Jasper National Park, Jasper, Alberta (hereafter cited as JNPL). 56 W. N. Millar, "The Big Game of the Canadian Rockies - A Practical Method for its Preservation" in Conservation offish, Birds and Game: Proceedings of a Meeting of the Committee, November 1-2 1915, ed. Commission of

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Conservation Canada (Toronto: The Methodist Book & Publishing House, 1916), 108, held at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff, Alberta (hereafter cited as Whyte). 57 Great Plains Research Consultants, "Jasper National Park," 234. 58 The pair of wolves observed by Roy Hargreaves in 1914 evidently found hidden sanctuary in a secluded spot in the park, and raised a pack over the next few seasons. The Whirlpool Pack numbered seven or eight individuals by 1916, all of which succumbed to poison. Their demise is cited in Cowan, "The Timber Wolf in the Rocky Mountain National Parks," 144. 59 Memo from Maxwell Graham, Chief of the Animal Division to James Harkin, 3 October 1917, RG84, vol. 120, file U.266, pt. 1, Public Archives Canada, Ottawa (hereafter cited as PAC). 60 Rogers wrote "I think you will agree with me that Wardens, especially at outlying places, absolutely require a dog to assist them in their work as well as being company for them in the lonesome life they lead, far from any company whatever, and by careful training a good dog can be made very useful in Warden's work." Letter from Superintendent Maynard Rogers, Jasper Park, to Commissioner Harkin, 21 March 1918, RG84, vol. 81, file U.3, pt. 5, PAC. 61 Letter from Superintendent Maynard Rogers, Jasper Park, to Chief Warden J. James, 9 May 1919, RG84, vol. 14, file J.210, pt. 1, PAC. 62 As biologist A W. Banfield noted in the 1970s, "the wild wolf possesses all of the behavioural characteristics of its domestic relative with the possible exception of the trait of fawning for man's favours." See A. W. Banfield, The Mammals of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), 290. 63 Williams suggested that a hundred animals made the trip from Yellowstone by rail, but only eighty-five survived, see Williams, Jasper National Park, 136. A report by Warden Wes Bradford cited the release of eighty-eight animals in 1920. See Wes Bradford, "A History of Elk in Jasper National Park with a Reflection on the Wolf History, the History of Elk in the Willow Creek Area and the History of Elk/Human Encounters" (Jasper National Park: February 1995), JNPL. 64 Cited in Robert J. Burns, Guardians of the Wild: A History of the Warden Service of Canada's National Parks (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2000), 78. 65 1921 edition of the Edmonton Journal cited in Robert J. Burns, "Guardians of the Wild: A History of the Wardens of Canada's National Parks" (1994), 115, manuscript, Warden Service Library, Banff National Park, Banff, Alberta (hereafter cited as BNPL). 66 Williams, Jasper National Park, 134.

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67 Ibid., 3. 68 Ibid. 69 Edward Hicks' Peaceable Kingdom illustrated and discussed in Robert Hughes, American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America (London: Harvill Press, 1997), 2, 38. 70 Williams, Jasper National Park, 139. 71 Great Plains Research Consultants, Jasper National Park, 236. 72 Edmonton Journal, 13 January 1940. 73 Kindle's survey cited in Ludwig N. Carbyn, "Wolf Population Fluctuations in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada," Biological Conservation, 6/2 (April 1974), 96. 74 Williams noted that wolves inhabited the "extreme northern areas which they have recently entered, attracted it is believed, by the large increases of game in those sections." See Williams, Jasper National Park, 139. 75 Stelfox, "Wolves in Alberta," 21. 76 Edmonton Journal, 19 December 1927. 77 "Wolves cause depletion of Jasper Game" read the Edmonton Journal, 29 September 1934. 78 Edmonton Journal, 6 May 1939. 79 L. E. Wise, President of the Northern Alberta Game and Fish Protection League, and G. Spargo, Secretary-Treasurer, to J. B. Harkin (undated, but Harkin's reply dated 23 March 1934), RG84, vol. 37, file U.300, pt. 8, PAC. 80 Warden Wells' report of 14 April 1932, cited in MacEachern, "Rationality and Rationalization," 155. 81 Ibid. 82 Burns, "Guardians of the Wild," 200. 83 Ibid., 123. 84 Letter from F. H. Williamson to Hoyes Lloyd, 25 November 1937, RG84, vol. 37, file U.300, vol. 10, PAC. 85 Burns, Guardians of the Wild, 95. 86 Burns, "Guardians of the Wild," 312. 87 Burns, Guardians of the Wild, 95. 88 C. V. Phillips, "Regarding Dr. Anderson's Report on Jasper Park" (1939), RG84, vol. 38, file U.300, pt. 11, PAC. 89 Soper, Mammals of Jasper National Park, 49-50. 90 Williamson cited in Burns, Guardians of the Wild, 94. 91 Wood had recently moved west from Prince Albert, where he had worked as superintendent for several years. During his prairie tenure, Wood had gained a reputation as an advocate of control, championing the use of poison and

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traps. On one occasion, Wood even anticipated reduced visitor numbers due to the threat posed by lurking lupines. 92 Letter from C. W. Clarke to Hoyes Lloyd, 30 January 1942, RG84, vol. 186, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 93 Wardens received a further two hundred snares two years later, when Smart judged that efforts to capture wolves had not proved successful, see letter from Controller Smart to Superintendent, Jasper National Park, 17 February 1944, RG84, vol. 186, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 94 Letter from Controller Smart to Superintendent, Jasper National Park, 3 February 1942, RG84, vol. 186, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 95 Ibid. 96 Data on Jasper published in Cowan, "The Timber Wolf in the Rocky Mountain National Parks." 97 Burns, Guardians of the Wild, 96. 98 Cowan, "The Timber Wolf in the Rocky Mountain National Parks," 153. 99 Letter from Controller to Director Gibson, 18 January 1944, RG84, vol. 186, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 100 Cowan, "The Timber Wolf in the Rocky Mountain National Parks," 153. 101 Toronto Globe and Mail, 6 May 1944. 102 Letter from Smart to Director Gibson, 11 May 1944, RG84, vol. 186, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 103 Letter from Smart to Superintendent, Jasper National Park, 12 May 1944, RG84, vol. 186, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 104 Superintendent Wood to Smart, 18 May 1944, RG84, vol. 186, file J.266, pt. 1,PAC. 105 Letter from J. A. Rogers to Smart, 5 June 1944, RG84, vol. 186, file J.266, pt. 1,PAC. 106 Letter from Smart to Rogers, 9 June 1944, RG84, vol. 186, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 107 Letter from J. Smart to the Editor, Game Trails in Canada, Vancouver, 17 June 1946, RG84, vol. 157, file U.266, pt. 3, PAC. 108 Cowan's final report offered one such circumstantial approval of lupines, his conclusion that "wolves are not detrimental to the park game herds" tempered by a terse warning: "should the wolf turn to heavy predation upon mule deer, caribou, or moose, it may become necessary to attempt more intensive control." Cowan, "The Timber Wolf in the Rocky Mountain National Parks," 174. 109 Memo from Harrison Lewis, regarding interview with James Smart, James Wood and Victor Solman, 15 January 1947, RG84, vol. 1629, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC.

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110 Letter from Smart to Superintendent, Jasper National Park, 12 March 1947, RG84, vol. 1629, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 111 Superintendent Wood's December 1947 report quoted in letter from Harrison Lewis to Director Gibson, 23 January 1948, RG84, vol. 1629, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 112 Ibid. 113 Letter from Smart to Gibson, 31 January 1948, RG84, vol. 1629, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 114 Letter from Lewis to Gibson, 23 January 1948. 115 Letter from Superintendent, Jasper National Park, to Controller, 13 July 1948, RG84, vol. 1629, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 116 Letter from H. Fisher to Harrison Lewis, 3 September 1948, RG84, vol. 1629, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 117 Letter from Smart to Superintendent, Jasper National Park, 22 October 1948, RG84, vol. 1629, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 118 Controversy erupted in September 1949, when senior officials discovered that Jasper wardens had been engaging in control activities beyond the winter season due to unfulfilled quotas. Biologist Victor Solman insisted that no authorization had been given for a summer program, and drew attention to the Manual for Guidance of Field Officers in the National Parks of Canada, Chapter 4, Regulation 7: "No predatory mammals or birds are to be destroyed without authorization from Head Office." A subsequent letter from Smart to Lewis mentioned the misunderstanding, noting that Jasper wardens had been authorized to kill twenty wolves last winter, and thought they could continue (letter from Victor Solman, Dominion Wildlife Service, to Harrison Lewis, 21 September 1949; letter from Smart to Lewis 24 September 1949). The cyanide program continued through winter 1949, approved by biologist John Kelsall. Kelsall offered a detailed account of killing in Jasper, and noted that wardens had killed thirteen wolves last winter, and eight in the summer. However, because five of the summer kills were pups, and hence could not be counted as part of last year's quota, Kelsall concluded the quota was short by four animals. He duly authorized a quota of twenty wolves for the upcoming 1949-50 winter season (letter from John Kelsall, Mammalogist to H. Lewis, 9 October 1949). In December 1950, Smart raised the kill to twenty-five animals based on concern about bighorn sheep (letter from Smart to Superintendent, Jasper National Park, 15 January 1951). All correspondence found in RG84, vol. 1629, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 119 Memo from Winston Mair, Chief of Dominion Wildlife Service to the Director, Parks Bureau, 3 November 1952, RG84, vol. 512, file B.266, pt. 1, PAC.

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120 Warden reports from the snaring program contained in "Wolf Control Jasper National Park," RG84, vol. 1629, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 121 Memo from Superintendent Dempster to Controller, 21 April 1949, RG84, vol. 1629, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 122 Ibid. 123 Report from Chief Biologist, 5 February 1952, cited in letter from Victor Solman (for H. Lewis) to the Canadian Trading Post, Oshawa, Ontario, 14 February 1952, RG109, vol. 409, file WLU.266, pt. 2, PAC. 124 Letter from C. W. Forde, Manager, Canadian Trading Post, to Victor Solman, 20 February 1952; Solman to Canadian Trading Post, 14 February 1952, RG109, vol. 409, file WLU.266, pt. 2, PAC. 125 For detailed results of animal responses to the warden's snaring activities, see "Wolf Control - Jasper National Park." 126 Memo from Dempster to Controller, 21 April 1949. 127 The term "monkey-wrenchers" is commonly used to describe individuals engaged in acts of eco-sabotage, such as placing spikes in old-growth trees to dissuade logging efforts or damaging plant machinery. The phrase derived from The Monkey Wrench Gang (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1975), Edward Abbey's renowned novel on the sabotaging efforts of a group of ecoprotesters in the American south-west. 128 Letter from J. R B. Coleman, Assistant Controller to Superintendent, Jasper National Park, 16 May 1950; Memo from J. Smart to Superintendent, Jasper National Park, 24 February 1950, Box 5: Warden Files Jasper: Shipping Animals to Zoos, Warden Records, Jasper Yellowhead Museum and Archives, Jasper, Alberta (hereafter cited as JYA). 129 Smart to Superintendent, Jasper National Park, 24 February 1950. 130 For wolf history in the British Isles, see Bruce Hampton, The Great American Wolf (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 64 and Oliver Rackham, The History of the Countryside: The Full Fascinating Story of Britain }s Landscape (London: J. M. Dent, 1986), 34-6. 131 Letter from Smart to Superintendent, Jasper National Park, 17 February 1953, RG84, vol. 1629, file J.266, pt. 1, PAC. 132 For details of the strychnine and 1080 sets, and results, see Report from Warden McGuire, "Minutes of the First Predator Control Conference August 31 & September 1, 1954" (Calgary, Alberta: Canadian Wildlife Service), 93, Whyte. 133 Winston Mair, ibid., 94. 134 McGuire, ibid., 93. 135 E. Huestis, ibid., 57. 136 Pittaway, ibid., 94.

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137 Letter from Chief Warden P. Brodie to Superintendent, Jasper National Park, 20 December 1955, RG84, vol. 181, file U.300, pt. 1, PAC. 138 G. M. Wells, "Notes on Predator Control Course - November 7-19 1955," RG84, vol. 181, file U.300, pt. 1, PAC. 139 Mair, "Minutes of the First Predator Control Conference," 94. 140 Lobay, ibid., 58. 141 Memo from F. H. Williamson to Director Gibson, 9 February 1939, RG84, vol. 157, file U.266, pt. 3, PAC. 142 "Summary of Discussion on Wolves and Wolf Control at the 10th Conference of Provincial and Dominion Wildlife Officials, Ottawa, February 23,1945," 2, RG84, vol. 157, file U.266, pt. 3, PAC. 143 In 1959, biologist D. Flook reported that "wolves are scarce in the park with the exception of the north end where they have been reported fairly frequently over the past two winters." Memo from D.R. Flook to the Canadian Wildlife Service, 9 July 1959, RG84, vol. 2140, file U.300, pt. 18, PAC. 144 Dekker, Wolves of the Rocky Mountains, 11. 145 Dekker recalled that the warden shot the coyote "before my unbelieving eyes." Dick Dekker, "The Wolves of Jasper National Park," Park News, 19/ 3 [undated], 10, Barry Hughson personal files, Parks Canada, Hull, Quebec (hereafter cited as BH). 146 14 December 1959 Directive, cited in letter from W.E. Stevens, Chief Mammalogist to J.H. Atkinson, Superintendent, Jasper National Park, 23 December 1960, RG109, vol. 409, file W266, pt. 2, PAC. 147 Letter from Stevens to Atkinson, 23 December 1960. 148 Sightings quoted in Stelfox, "Wolves in Alberta," 26. 149 Ludwig N. Carbyn, "Progress Report on (I) Status of Wolves in Prince Albert and Jasper National Parks (II) Preliminary Results from Investigations in a Specific Study Area," Progress Report No. 1, May 29, 1970, JNPL. 150 Carbyn, Wolf Population Fluctuations in Jasper," 100. 151 Between 1961-71, the number of vehicles entering the park increased from 91,357 to 470,106. Ibid., 98. 152 Ibid., 100. 153 For the history of wildlife film-making, see Alexander Wilson, The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1992), 117-55, and Gregg Mitman, Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). 154 Munro argued that a documentary on Canis lupus should impress on the viewer three essential points: the importance of wildlife in the historical

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development of Canada, the contemporary role of animals as consumptive and non-consumptive resources, and the necessity for a scientificenvironmental agenda in species protection. Memo from David Munro, Director, Canadian Wildlife Service, 15 December 1967, RG84, vol. 2134, file U.266, pt. 4, PAC 155 Ibid. 156 The Wolf, 2, RG84, vol. 2134, file U.266, vol. 4, PAC. 157 Ibid., 2-4. 158 Ibid., 3. 159 Ibid. 160 Letter from Bill Mason to Darrell Eagles, 22 November 1967, RG84, vol. 2134, file U.266, vol. 4, PAC. 161 "A Policy Statement Respecting Wildlife in the National Parks of Canada" (January 1957), RG84, vol. 2140, file U.300, pt. 18, PAC. 162 Letter from Alex Reeve, Assistant Director of National Parks, to Regional Director, Western Region, 24 January 1968, RG84, vol. 2134, file U.266, pt. 4, PAC. 163 "Film Probes 'Bad Guy' Reputation of Wolves," Saturday Citizen, 25 September 1971, RG109, BoxlO, vol. 2, file W.2, pt. 2, PAC. 164 L. David Mech, The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1970), 264. 165 Bradford, "A History of Elk in Jasper National Park." 166 Dick Dekker, Wesley Bradford and John R. Gunson, "Elk and Wolves in Jasper National Park, Alberta, From Historical Times to 1993," in Ecology and Conservation of Wolves in a Changing World: Proceedings of the 2nd North American Symposium on Wolves, Edmonton, 25-27 August 1992, eds. L. Carbyn, S. Fritts and D. R. Seip (Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, 1995), 87. 167 Ibid., 93. 168 Ibid., 89. 169 Dekker, Wolves of the Rocky Mountains, 189. 170 Ibid., 190. 171 Interview with Wes Bradford, Jasper National Park, Alberta, 14 October 1997. 172 Williams, Jasper National Park, 4. 173 Ed Struzik, "Wildlife Key in Jasper Plan," Edmonton Journal, 15 March 1999. 174 Fifty to eighty percent of Jasper's elk concentrated in areas of high human habitation, with the majority of the 1995 herd, containing 1,000 to 1,200 animals, grazing in the Athabasca Valley. See Bradford, "A History of Elk in

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Jasper National Park" and Dekker, Bradford and Gunson, "Elk and Wolves in Jasper National Park," 91. 175 Bradford, "A History of Elk in Jasper National Park." 176 Ibid. 177 Ed Struzik, "Elks Ignore Call of the Wild," Edmonton Journal, 19 April 1999. 178 A subspecies of woodland caribou, mountain caribou followed a unique migration route, moving from summer range in Willmore and Jasper to forest lands near Grande Cache further north. 179 Dick Dekker, "Wolves Play Vital Role," Nature, Parks & People (Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society Newsletter), 3/4 (Winter 1986), 6, Whyte. 180 Calgary Herald, 8 November 1986. 181 The Wolf, 3. 182 "The Alberta Wolf Kill Proposal: Its Rise and Fall in the Media," Wolf News (Canadian Wolf Defenders Newsletter), 5/1 (March 1987), 2, held at the Alberta Wilderness Association, Calgary, Alberta (hereafter cited as AWA). 183 On 8 November 1986, the Edmonton Journal reported "Critics Howl Over Wolf Kill Plan," noting that the proposal had sparked "national media attention and the mounting anger of environmental groups." 184 "The Alberta Wolf Kill Proposal," 2. 185 "Farley Mowat in Calgary," Wolf News, 5/1 (1987), 6, AWA. 186 "The Alberta Wolf Kill Proposal," 3. 187 Donald Worster, The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 210. 188 Statistics that showed only six out of twenty-nine radio-collared caribou had been killed by wolves between 1979 and 1983. Wolves represented keystone predators in the Willmore-Jasper system, but six registered kills over five years did not suggest that they were exacting a dangerous toll on the caribou. Twelve of the twenty-nine collared caribou died in total during the study. Meanwhile, only one out of a total thirty-one uncollared caribou deaths over the period was due to wolf predation. Thirty were attributable to humans. Data cited in Wolf News, 8/2 (1990), 6, Box 6a, JNPL. 189 Bloomington quoted in "The Alberta Wolf Kill Proposal," 3. 190 "Jasper Park Wolves in Danger from Provincial Kill Proposal," Edmonton Journal, 14 November 1986, Box 6: The 1986/87 Provincial Caribou Management/Wolf Control Debate, JNPL. 191 Dick Dekker, "The Proposed Wolf Kill in Willmore Park - Alberta, A Step Backward in Wildlife Management?," Canadian Wolf Defenders Bulletin [undated], AWA. 192 Edmonton Journal, 9 January 1987, Box 6: The 1986/7 Provincial Caribou Management/Wolf Control Debate, JNPL.

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193 Alberta Fish and Wildlife Division, Management Plan for Wolves in Alberta, Wildlife Management Planning Series No. 4 (Edmonton: Forestry, Lands and Wildlife, Fish and Wildlife Division, 1991), 50. 194 Dekker, Wolves of the Rocky Mountains, 156. 195 Interview with Wes Bradford. 196 According to local author Ed Struzik, investors envisaged a "complete city," with "several churches, a hospital, community hall, theatre, library, billiard parlour, playing card and reading rooms, and a number of restaurants." See Ed Struzik: "Too Close for Comfort," Nature Canada, 26/1 (Winter 1997), 17. 197 Dennis Hryciuk, "Mines and Mountain Goats," Edmonton Journal, 14 January 1997. 198 Edmonton Journal, 8 February 1997. 199 Struzik, "Too Close for Comfort," 21. 200 Edmonton Journal^ 20 September 1997. 201 The old tires at Cadomin had comparatives throughout the corporate world, a 1980s advertisement for petroleum giant Chevron showing shoals of exotic fish swimming above "coral colored cylinders that used to be gas station storage tanks." The artificial reefs provided retreats for local sealife, or, in the words of the article, a "little house at the bottom of the sea." See advertisement in William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), 227. 202 Edmonton Journal^ 14 January 1997. 203 Struzik, "Too Close for Comfort," 21. 204 The CNF explained that "the project's impact upon large carnivores such as grizzly bears and wolves, and the ecological integrity of the park, are among the conservation organization's major concerns," see Kevin McNamee, Director CNF Wildlands Campaign, "CNF Intervenes in Cheviot Mine Hearings," Nature Canada, 26/1 (Winter 1997), 23. 205 Dekker, Bradford and Gunson, "Elk and Wolves in Jasper National Park," 89. 206 "The Cheviot Mine Action Alert," 2. Pamphlet contained in the Wildlands Advocate: The News Journal of the Alberta Wilderness Association^ 5/2 (March 1997), AWA. 207 Winnipeg Free Press, 13 January 1923. 208 "Wolf Exports to U.S. Opposed," Calgary Herald [undated], AWA. 209 Edmonton Journal, 18 September 1994. 210 Michael Milstein, "Not Much Fuss Over Wolves in Canada," High Country News, 27/2 (6 February 1995).

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211 Jill Seaton, "Free Trade in Canada's Wolves?," AnimalKind, 15/4 (1994), 8, AWA. Dekker and Bradford also expressed anxieties about the effect of wolf removal on the Jasper ecosystem, see Don Thomas, "Plan to Transplant Wolves Stirs Howls of Protest," Edmonton Journal [undated], BH. 212 Brian Horejsi, "Growing Suspicion Over Wolf Exports and Management in Alberta," Wildlands Advocate: The News Quarterly of the Alberta- Wilderness Association, 3/4 (October 1995) 4, AWA. 213 Ibid. 214 Seaton, "Free Trade in Canada's Wolves?," 8. 215 "Alberta Wolves Trapped for U.S. Restoration," Calgary Herald [undated], AWA. 216 "Bounty May be Slapped on Alberta's Wolves," Edmonton Journal [undated], BH. 217 Seaton, "Free Trade in Canada's Wolves?," 8. 218 Seaton's comment cited in "Yellowstone Wolf Recovery Plan: A 'Wolf in Sheep's Clothing,'" Wolf News, 9/3 (November 1991), 6, Box 6, JNPL. 219 Calgary Herald, 31 January 1995. 220 Jack Kisling, "America, Land of Many Sheep," Denver Post, 1 December 1994. 221 Ed Struzik, "Cry Wolf," Edmonton Journal, 15 June 1998. 222 Geoff O'Gara, "To: Mom, From: Wolf 3, Somewhere in Yellowstone National Park," High Country News, 27/20 (30 October 1995). 223 Interview with Wes Bradford.

293

Notes to the Conclusion 1 William Wood, "New England's Prospect," in War Against the Wolf: America's Campaign to Exterminate the Wolf, ed. Rick Mclntyre (Stillwater, Minnesota: Voyageur Press, 1995), 37. 2 Figure quoted on the Yellowstone National Park website, http://www.nps.gov/ yell/nature/animals/wolf/wolfrest.html. 3 See "Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report," http://www.forwolves.org/ralph/; "The Total Yellowstone Page," http://www.yellowstone-natl-park.com/wolf.htm. 4 Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 41. 5 Stegner quoted in Michael Milstein, Yellowstone: 125 Tears of 'America's Best Idea (Billings, Montana: The Billings Gazette, 1996), 8. 6 Dave Foreman, "Yellowstone to Yukon and the Wildlands Project," Opening Address, The First Conference of the Yellowstone to Yukon Initiative, Waterton Lakes, Canada, 2 October 1997. Printed in Stephen Legault and Kathleen Wiebe, Connections: Proceedings From the First Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (1998), 18. 71.3 million vacationers frequented Jasper in 1994, whereas four million visited Banff. In 1995, Glacier hosted 1,839,518 visitors, while Yellowstone attracted three million people in 1992. Figures cited in "Canadian Parks Service Environmental Scan Volume 1" 20 June 1994, Coopers & Lybrand Group, 30, 35, Warden Service Library, Banff National Park, Banff, Alberta (hereafter cited as BNPL); Glacier National Park web-site, http://www.nps.gov/glac; Milstein, Yellowstone, 66. 8 Thomas Dunlap noted that natural history institutions developed more slowly in Canada than the United States in the 1800s, due to a lower population and political dependence. Canada duly relied on the United States and Britain for ecological expertise in the early twentieth century. See Thomas Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 38-40. Alan MacEachern further suggested that when the Canadian Wildlife Service was formed in the late 1940s as an agency specifically mandated to deal with wildlife management issues, wildlife science continued to lag twenty years behind the United States. See Alan MacEachern, "Why Do Canadians Care What Americans Think? Why Don't

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Americans Care What Canadians Think?," Paper Delivered at the American Society for Environmental History biennial conference, Tucson, Arizona, April 1999, 7, courtesy of author. 9 Letter from W. E. Stevens, Ottawa, to Arnold Rautiola, Michigan, 15 September 1961, RG109, vol. 409, file WLU-266, pt. 2, Public Archives Canada, Ottawa (hereafter cited as PAC). 10 "A Policy Statement Respecting Wildlife in the National Parks of Canada," January 1957, RG84, vol. 2140, file U.300, pt. 18, PAC. 11 Quoted in Lary M. Dilsaver, ed., America's National Park System: The Critical Documents (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 1997 [1994]), 51. 12 Copies of Cowan's study were requested by eminent individuals working in wildlife management such as Stanley Young, from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Carl Russell, Superintendent of Yosemite National Park. 13 In the 1930s, Dominion officials proffered statistics on wildlife preservation to German General Goering and to Australian officials planning new Antipodean reserves. See correspondence in RG84, vol. 37, file U.300, pt. 10; RG84, vol. 38, file U.300, pt. 11, PAC. 14 James Smart to Director Newton Drury, Chicago, 31 May 1946, RG84, vol. 157, file U.266, pt. 3, PAC. 15 Doggett quoted in Jim Robbins, "Wolves Across the Border," Natural History, $ (1986), 12. 16 "Discussion of Service Predator Policy," Exhibits from memo from Victor Cahalane to Carl Russell, 22 March 1939, Box N17, folder 719, Yellowstone National Park Research Library, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. 17 Wallace Stegner, Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier (London: Heinemann, 1963), 85. 18 Milstein, Yellowstone, 60. 19 Aldo Leopold, "Review of The Wolves of North America,37 reprinted in The Yellowstone Wolf: A Guide and Sourcebook, ed. Paul Schullery (Worland, Wyoming: High Plains Publishing Co., 1996), 97-8. 20 For discussion of the outside threats rendering U.S. national parks as isolated, ecological islands, see John Freemuth, Islands Under Siege: National Parks and the Politics of External Threats (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1991). 21 Waterton Lakes National Park was established in 1895, protecting just 202.8 square miles of alpine lakes and peaks. In 1932, the reserve was symbolically joined to its neighbour across the international border, Glacier, to become the Waterton/Glacier International Peace Park. The two units, however, remained under the separate management of their respective national park agencies.

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22 For details on Waterton's recent wolf history, see Kevin Van Tighem, "Dead on Arrival," Outdoor Canada., October 1997,22-7, 50-2. Correspondence on early control measures held in RG84, vol. 2221, file W.266, PAC and RG84, vol. 162, W.266, PAC. 23 See William Newmark, "A Land-bridge Island Perspective on Mammalian Extinctions in Western North American Parks," Nature, 325/29 (January 1987), 430-2. The Banff Canid Study Report also concluded that "the extent of protected wilderness in the Rocky Mountains is too limited, too fragmented, and too insufficiently connected to permanently sustain populations of large carnivores." See P. C. Paquet, "Summary Reference Document, Ecological Studies of Recolonizing Wolves in the Central Canadian Rocky Mountains, Final Report, April 1989-June 1993," Prepared for Parks Canada, Banff National Park Warden Service, 1993, 88, BNPL. 24 John Theberge, "Ecology, Conservation and Protected Areas in Canada," in Parks and Protected Areas in Canada, eds. P. Dearden and R. Rollins (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993), 143. 25 Harvey Locke, "The Yellowstone to Yukon Vision," Keynote Address, First Yellowstone to Yukon Conference, Waterton Lakes, 3 October 1997. Printed in Legault and Wiebe, Connections, 41 -2. 26 David Maywood and Michael Sawyer, "Yellowstone to Yukon: Real or Imagined?," in A Sense of Place: Issues, Attitudes and Resources in the Yellowstone to Yukon Bioregion, Summary of the Interim Draft, Prepared for the Y2Y Connections Conference, October 2-5, 1997, 6. 27 Joseph Marshall III, "The Wolf: A Native American Symbol," in War Against the Wolf, 287. 28 "Discussion of Service Predator Policy." 29 As quoted in Richard W. Etulain, "Western Stories for the Next Generation," Western Historical Quarterly, 31/1 (Spring 2000), 18. 30 Bill Devall and George Sessions, eds., Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 1985), 67. By situating humans neither separate from, nor superior to, the rest of nature, deep ecology advocates the development of a broader definition of self to encompass the needs of other species. Deep ecologists propound a principle of biocentric equality, namely that all species have intrinsic values beyond human requirements. Prominent exponents Devall and Sessions nonetheless recognize the necessity for species to 'use' each other for food and shelter as part of the natural process of existence, but stress that humans should satisfy only their vital needs, thereby exerting minimal (rather than maximum) pressure on the ecosystem. 31 Ibid., 8.

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32 Aldo Leopold, "The Land Ethic," in A Sand County Almanac: With Essays on Conservation from Round River (New York: Ballantine Books, 1970 [1949]), 239. 33 The science of ecology is imbued with a holistic philosophy that tends to remove species hierarchies. All living things thus have rights, or needs, as integral members of the ecological system. Although a human-designed law, the Endangered Species Act (1973) enshrined a wider legal community by granting rights to non-humans to reside in their native habitats. Environmental historians have listed the U.S. Endangered Species Act as part of a trend in progressive legislation, beginning with the revolutions of the eighteenth century, and including movements for civil rights and women's rights. See Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, And the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), 293-4 and Roderick Frazier Nash, The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 3-12, 175-9. For discussions of extending rights, see Mike Roselle, "Rights for all Species," in Call to Action: A Handbook for Ecology, Peace and Justice, ed. Brad Erickson (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990), 131-8, and Christopher D. Stone, Should Trees Have Standing?: Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects (Los Altos: William Kaufmann, 1974 [1972]). Lively debate has also occurred between biocentric philosophers and animal liberationists concerning ethical obligations towards other species. See J. Baird Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic (New York: State University of New York Press, 1989); Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: Towards an End to Man's Inhumanity to Animals (Wellingborough: Thorsons, 1983 [1975]). 34 Joseph Marshall III, On Behalf of the Wolf and the First Peoples (Santa Fe: Red Crane, 1995), 67. 35 Yellowstone Net Wolf Report, 17 April 2000. 36 In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx asserted that "Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past." In the history of the wolf, canine spheres of action were frequently demarcated by humans. Marx's essay reprinted in Karl Marx: Selected Writings, ed. David McClellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 300-25. 37 In The Maine Woods (1864), Thoreau recalled that, "When camping in such a wilderness as this, you are prepared to hear sounds from some of its inhabitants which will give voice to its wildness. Some idea of bears, wolves, or panthers runs in your head naturally... Some friends of mine, who two

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years ago went up the Caucomgomoc River, were serenaded by wolves while moose hunting at midnight. It was a sudden burst, as if a hundred demons had broke loose ... they heard it twice only, and they said that it gave expression to the wilderness which it lacked before." See Henry David Thoreau, Three Complete Books (New York: Gramercy Books, 1993), 140. 38 Leopold, "Thinking Like a Mountain," in A Sand County Alma mac, 137. 39 Numerous authors have put forward the possibility of inter-species communication as part of a discourse expounding the similarities between humans and animals. Advocates stress the possibility of dialogue with other species through a variety of psychic, empathic and non-verbal gestures. While the intelligence and behavioural characteristics of mammals resemble those of humans—witness beaver crafting lodges using aspen branches, the elaborate social etiquette of wolf society, and the complex cultural interactions of marine mammals—the possibility of debating with faunal companions proves more elusive. See Ted Crail, Apetalk and Whalespeak: The Quest for Interspecies Communication (Los Angeles: J. P. Tardier, 1981) and Penelope Smith, Animal Talk: Interspecies Telepathic Communication (Hillsboro, Oregon: Beyond Words, 1999). A plethora of sites relating to interspecies dialogue can also be found on the Internet. See Marty Meyer: Telepathic Animal Communicator, http://www.talktoanimals.com and Animal Connection, http://www.cyberark.com/animal/telepath.htm.

298

Notes to the Epilogue 1 Federal judges joined court cases brought by the Wyoming Farm Bureau, who sued against the reintroduction citing irreparable harm to ranchers, and the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund (representing environmental groups the National Audubon Society, Predator Project, Sinapu and the Gray Wolf Committee), who argued for full protection for wolves under the Endangered Species Act. 2 Figures taken from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Nez Perce Tribe, the National Park Service, and USDA Wildlife Services, Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery, Annual Report, 2000 (Helena, Montana: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2000). 3 The experimental scheme undertaken by the NPS and the Turner Endangered Species Fund operates at Ted Turner's ranch near Bozeman, Montana. The project involves placing wolves in an acclimation pen and fitting them with training collars designed to emit an electric shock when they come within one metre of a calf (also placed inside the pen). The scheme began in 2000, and is designed to run for two to three years with the aim of exploring nonlethal methods of managing depredating wolves. For details, see Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery, Annual Report, 2000. Mortality figures taken from Ralph Maughan's wolf update, available at http://www.forwolves.org/ralph/. 4 Quotes throughout epilogue by Jamie Rappaport Clark and Bruce Babbitt, taken from "Gray Wolves Rebound; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Proposes to Reclassify, Delist Wolves in Much of the United States," U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Mountain-Prairie Region, News Release 11 July 2000. Sue Consolo-Murphy, "Yellowstone Wolf Restoration: An Ecological and Cultural Milestone," available at http://www.nps.gov/yell.

299

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Bradford, Wes. "A History of Elk in Jasper National Park with a Reflection on the Wolf History, the History of Elk in the Willow Creek Area and the History of Elk/Human Encounters." Jasper National Park: February 1995. Carbyn, Ludwig N. "Progress Report on (I) Status of Wolves in Prince Albert and Jasper National Parks (II) Preliminary Results from Investigations in a Specific Study Area." Progress Report No. 1, May 29, 1970. . "Progress Report on Studies of Wolves Within a Specific Study Area, Jasper National Park." Progress Report No. 2, March 1972. . "Progress Report on Studies of Wolves Within a Specific Study Area, Jasper National Park." Progress Report No. 3, May 1972. Dekker, Dick. "Wolf, Canis Lupus, Numbers and Colour Phases in Jasper National Park, Alberta: 1965-1984." In press. Gunson, J. R. "Review of Management and Research of Wolf-Big Game Predation in Alberta." Alberta Energy and Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife Division [undated]. Hoffos, Robin. "Wolf Management in British Columbia: The Public Controversy." Wildlife Bulletin No. B-52. Victoria, BC: Wildlife Branch, Ministry of Environment and Parks, May 1987. Seaton, Jill. "Will Wolf-Killing Save the Threatened Alberta Caribou?" Wolf News 8, no. 2 (1990): 6-8. Stelfox, John G. "Wolves in Alberta: A History 1800-1969." Alberta Lands, Forests, Parks, Wildlife (Winter 1969): 18-27. Stevens, S., C. Callaghan, and R. Owchar. "A Survey of Wildlife Corridors in the Bow Valley of Banff National Park, Winter 1994/95." Callaghan and Associates, Canmore, Alberta, May 1996. "Yellowstone Wolf Recovery Plan: A 'Wolf in Sheep's Clothing'." WolfNews9, no. 3 (1991): 5-6.

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Newspapers Billing Gazette

Missoulian

Canary Albertan Canary Herald

New Tork Times

Crag and Canyon Daily Inter Lake Denver Post Edmonton Journal Globe and Mail Great Falls Tribune High Country News Hungry Horse News Kalispell News

Ott "™ Citizen rthur NewsportChronicle Lake Arthur News Chronicle The Province Saskatoon Star Washington Times Winnipeg Free Press Yellowstone Journal Yellowstone Today: Official Newspaper of Yellowstone National Park

Ott

™a Morning Journal port

Quebec Telegraph

Films A Howling in America's National Parks. Zion Natural History Association Video Production, 1989. Dances With Wolves. Majestic Films International, 1990. Never Cry Wolf. Disney, 1983. Wolves and Buffalo: An Ancient Alliance. Jeff Turner, 1996.

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Internet/E-mail Animal Connection, http://www.cyberark.com/animal/telepath.htm The Curtis Collection, http://www.curtis-collection.com Glacier National Park, http://www.nps.gov/glac Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report, http://www.forwolves.org/ralph/ Marty Meyer: Telepathic Animal Communicator, http://www.talktoanimals.com The Total Yellowstone Page, http://www.yellowstone-natl-park.com/wolf.htm Yellowstone National Park, http://www.nps.gov/yell

Yellowstone Net Newsletter

Interviews Boyd, Diane. 17 September 1997, Missoula. Bradford, Wes. 14 October 1997, Jasper National Park. Brewster, Wayne. 9 September 1997, Yellowstone National Park. Consolo-Murphy, Sue. 11 September 1997, Yellowstone National Park. Gniadek, Steve. 24 September 1997, Glacier National Park. Guernsey, Deb. 12 September 1997,Yellowstone National Park. Hipwell, Bill. 25 May 1997, Ottawa. Hughson, Barry. 27 May 1997, Hull, Quebec. Kurd, Tom. 7 October 1997, Banff National Park. Pletscher, Daniel. 18 September 1997, Missoula. Pogue, Jay. 22 September 1997, Glacier National Park. Roy, Michael. 6 September 1997, Missoula. Smith, Douglas. 11 September 1997, Yellowstone National Park. Varley, John. 15 September 1997, Yellowstone National Park.

Conference Proceedings, Unpublished Papers and Theses A Sense of Place: Issues, Attitudes and Resources in the Yellowstone to Yukon Bioregion, Summary of the Interim Draft. Prepared for the Y2Y Connections Conference, October 2-5, 1997. Curnow, Edward. "The Eradication of the Wolf in Montana." MA thesis, University of Montana, Missoula, 1969. Day, Gary L. "The Status and Distribution of Wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains of the United States." MSc thesis, University of Montana, Missoula, 1981. Gamertsfelder, Joseph W. "A Study of Glacier National Park." MA thesis, Ohio University, January 1947.

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Stegner, Wallace. Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier. London: Heinemann, 1963. Steinbeck, John. Travels with Charley: In Search of America. London: Arrow Books, 1997 [1962]. Steinhart, Peter. The Company of Wolves. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. Stone, Christopher D. Should Trees Have Standing?: Toward Legal Rightsfor Natural Objects. Los Altos: William Kaufmann, 1974 [1972]. Summers, Montague. The Werewolf. New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1912. Swain, Donald. Wilderness Defender: Horace M. Albright and Conservation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. Thiel, Richard P. The Timber Wolf in Wisconsin: The Death and Life of a Majestic Predator. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993. Thoreau, Henry David. Three Complete Books. New York: Gramercy Books, 1993. Thwaites, Reuben G. Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 18041806, 8 vols. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1904. Turbak, Gary. Twilight Hunters: Wolves, Coyotes and Foxes. Flagstaff, Arizona: Northland Press, 1987. Wagner, Frederic. Wildlife Policies in the U.S. National Parks. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1995. Warren, Louis S. The Hunter's Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth Century America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. White, Richard. "It's Tour Misfortune and None of My Own": A New History of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. Whittlesey, Lee. Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park. Boulder: Roberts Rhinehart, 1995. Williams, Mabel B. Guardians of the Wild. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd., 1936. . Jasper National Park. Ottawa: Dept. of Interior, 1928. Williams, Mabel B., ed. The Origin and Meaning of the National Parks of Canada: Extracts from the Papers of the Late Jas. B. Harkin, First Commissioner of the National Parks of Canada. N.p.: H. R. Larson, 1957. Wilson, Alexander. The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez. Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 1992. Wirth, Conrad L. Parks, Politics, and the People. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980. Worster, Donald. An Unsettled Country: Changing Landscapes of the American West. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994. . The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Wright, R. Gerald. Wildlife Research and Management in the National Parks. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

323

WOLF MOUNTAINS

Wright, R. Gerald, ed. National Parks ana Protected Areas: Their Role in Environmental Protection. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996. Wrobel, David M., and Michael C. Steiner, eds. Many Wests: Place, Culture and Regional Identity. Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1997. Yard, Robert Sterling. National Parks Portfolio. Washington, DC: Govt. Printing Office, 1917 [1916] 2nd edn. Young, Stanley P. The Wolf in North American History. Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 1946. Young, Stanley P., and Edward A. Goldman. The Wolves of North America, Part 1: Their History, Life Habits, Economic Status, and Control. New York: Dover Publications, 1944.

324

Index A Abundant Wildlife Society, 49 Alberta Fish and Game Association, 123-4, 146 Alberta Fish and Game Department, 180 Alberta Naturalist, 146 Alberta Outfitters Association, 190 Alberta Wilderness Association, 193, 195, 197 Albright, Horace, 36, 38-9, 42, 73, 74 Albright Visitor Center, 43, 68 Algonquin Provincial Park, 137 American Cattle Ranchers Association, 117 American Society of Mammalogists, 37, 38, 120 Anderson, Colonel George, 27, 32 Anderson, Henry, 33, 34 Anderson, Jack, 46 Anderson, R., 123, 172 Animal Damage Control (ADC), 92 Animal Division, 114, 167 antelope, 16, 17, 24, 27, 37, 63, 76, 122 Anthony, H. E., 77, 79 Arkansas Hot Springs, 108 Arnold, Marguerite, 43 -4 Askins, Renee, 49 Assiniboine (Stoney), 16, 105, 154-5,156 Atkinson, J., 183

Audubon, John James, 20

B Babbitt, Bruce, 56, 222 Bailey, Vernon, 28-30, 72-3, 77, 81, 212, 233n9 Banff Hot Springs Reserve, 107-8 Banff National Park changes in predator policy, 119-21,123,126-7,136, 205-6,208-10,216 commercialization of, 147-9, 204 as compared to Yellowstone, 109-10 establishment of, 107-11, 207, 214 exploration of, 100-7, 211-2 historic wolf population, 99-100 predator control, 112-7, 119-21, 129-32,207-8 scenery, 108-9 topography, 100, 107 tourism in, 108-10, 113, 136-7 wildlife policy, 109-12, 122, 125, 129-30,150-1 wolf eradication, 116 wolf recolonization, 123-4, 130, 140-3, 147-51, 213, 217-8 wolf sightings, 111, 114, 121, 130, 140, 141-2 zoo, 113,117,121-2,148, 179, 204 Banff Park Museum, 112 Banff Wildlife Bulletin, 129, 132

325

WOLF MOUNTAINS

Banfield,A. W., 128, 130 Bannock, 16 Bartram, William, 8 bears, 1, 27, 28, 96, 150, 157, 163, 168,179, 193,204 Beasts of Gevaudan, 4 beaver, 3, 12, 17, 62, 63, 84, 101, 124,156, 161, 179, 272nl23 Beebe, Chance, 74 Belton, 67-8 Bendell, J. F., 138 bighorn sheep, 24, 68, 72, 148, 154 Billings Gazette, 54 biocentrism, 217 bison, 162 abundance of, 17, 18, 26, 33, 63, 101,155, 156 hunting of, 24 Thundering Herd, 36, 161 as wolf prey, 3, 15, 17-8 Blackfeet, 59-61, 62, 64-5, 67, 68, 73,74,92-3,100,101-2, 103-4, 105 Bloomington, Michael, 191 Boutelle, Captain Frazier, 27, 30 Bowman, Elbert, 34 Bow River, 204, 218 Bow Valley, 106, 116, 141, 148, 149, 164 Bow Valley Naturalists, 146 Boyd, Diane, 85, 86, 97 Bradford, Wes, 187, 188, 189, 192-3 Brett, Lloyd, 28-9 Brewster, Wayne, 56 Bridger, Jim, 16, 161, 169 Bring Em Buck Alive., 185 British Columbia Wildlife Department, 93-4 Brorby, Wade, 220 Brown, Kootenai, 63

326

Brummett, Tony, 143-4, 145 Bryant, Dale, 90 Bryant, Harold, 36, 40-1, 76 buffalo. See bison Bureau of Biological Survey (BBS), 28-30, 32, 40, 72-3, 117, 212 Burns, Conrad, 49 Burroughs, John, 41 Butler, W. J., 70-1

C Calgary Albertan, 117, 133 Calgary Fish and Game Association, 134,140 Calgary Herald, 111, 118, 122, 124, 144, 149,196,198 Callison, I. P., 123, 125 Cammerer, Arno, 75-6 Camp, Frank, 166 Campbell, Robert, 165 Canadian Conservation Commission (1916), 116, 167 Canadian Forestry Convention (1906), 164 Canadian Nature Federation, 193, 195 Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), 106, 107-8,110, 148-9, 162, 164, 204 Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, 191, 193 Canadian Parks Branch. See Canadian Parks Service Canadian Parks Service (CPS), 31, 81, 118,123, 126,135,137,147, 171,189,206,208 animal transfers to zoos, 179 dialogue with United States, 114, 116-7, 127,205 wildlife policy, 181-2, 191-2

INDEX

Canadian Wilderness Committee, 198 Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS), 138-9,181,183-5 Canadian Wolf Defenders, 137, 146, 197 Caras, Roger, 22 Carbyn, Ludwig, 141, 183-4 Cardinal River Coals (CRC), 193-5 caribou, 3, 84, 137, 139,190,191, 192,196 Carter, Thomas, 65, 66 Carver, Jonathan, 65 Catlin, George, 26 cattle, 26, 71, 106 losses to wolves, 28 Central Rockies Wolf Project, 142 Chadwick, Douglas, 87 Chapman, Robert, 70 Chase, Alston, 10, 16, 46, 233 n9 Cherokee, 6 Cheviot Mine, 193-5 Cheyenne, 6 Chief Brings Down the Sun, 60 Christianity, 7, 118-9, 153, 168 Clark, Jamie Rappaport, 221-2 Clarke, C.H.D., 4, 124, 126, 138, 172,173 Clawson, C. C., 20 Cody, Buffalo Bill, 61 Cole, Glen, 44-6 Coleman, J.R.B., 134 Colter, John, 17, 22, 235n36 Compound 1080, 81, 133, 180 Comstock, Theodore, 24 Connor, John, 112 conservationists and wolves, 25, 66, 216-7 Console-Murphy, Sue, 222 Cooper, Madge, 80, 94

Corps of Discovery. See Lewis and Clark Cottenoir, Leo, 44 cougars, 176 Cowan, Ian McTaggart, 99, 126-7, 128,132,174,182,208 Cowie, Isaac, 103 Cox, Ross, 157 coyote-getter, 131, 133, 177-8, 180 coyotes, 2, 9, 199, 210, 212 antipathy towards, 25, 44, 76, 122,170 appreciation of, 37, 82, 176 control of, 28, 30, 36, 40, 68, 70-1,73,77,112,116,119, 169,178,180,183 and rabies, 135 study of, 42-3, 149 and wolves, 53, 56, 96 Crag and Canyon, 99, 113, 122, 140, 141, 143, 148 Craighead, John, 45 Cree, 101-2, 153, 154-5, 156 Crow, 16 Curran, James, 4 Custer Wolf, 22 cyanide gun. See coyote-getter

D dall sheep, 3 Dances with Wolves, 8 Death of a Legend, 187, 190 Decker, Dick, 11, 183, 192 deep ecology, 217 deer, 3, 16, 27, 37, 72, 77, 96, 123, 130, 148,161, 162, 168, 190, 216 abundance of, 17, 171 Defenders of Wildlife, 50 DeLacy, Walter, 18 De Marchi, Ray, 94

327

WOLF MOUNTAINS

Dempster, Seth, 178 Denver Post, 198 De Santo, Jerry, 85, 88 Devall, Bill, 217 Dicky, Robert, 109 dire wolf, 15, 99, 157 Disney, 1, 194 Dixon, Joseph, 39 Dominion Parks Branch. See Canadian Parks Service Dominion Wildlife Service. See Canadian Wildlife Service Drinkwater, Charles, 107 Doggett, Steve, 210 dogs, 1, 2, 9, 180 and rabies, 133, 135 as wolf hunters, 66, 167-8 Douglas, Howard, 113, 115, 165 Downes, Lee, 90 Downes, William, 220 Drury, Newton, 208 Dymond, Jay, 122-3 g

attacks on humans, 189 destruction of, 24, 25, 116 effect of reintroduction on, 50, 53 transplant of, 55,116,124, 168, 189-90 as wolf prey, 3, 15, 37, 135, 203 Elliott, John, 145 Ellis, Ken, 145 Emmert, John W., 80 Endangered Species Act (USA, 1973), 47, 50, 94, 217, 297n33 environmentalism, 136 and wolves, 8, 48-9, 90-1, 94, 137, 144-6, 150,191, 194-5, 197-9, 203, 215-6, 217, 218, 219-21 Errington, Paul, 40, 78 exceptionalism American, 12, 163, 201-3, 205-6,220 Canadian, 12, 198, 199, 206-7 questioned, 207-10 Everglades National Park, 10 E European wolf stories, 6-7. See also Eagles, Darrell, 185 Romulus and Remus Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, 220 Evans, Frank, 88-9 ecological science, 10, 39-43, 48, Everts, Truman, 19 76-8,120-1,126-9,171-2, p 174-5, 177, 181-2, 183, 205, ' 208-10, 216, 217, 220-1 Fairchild, Mark, 90 Edmonton House, 104 fire Edmonton Journal, 117,119, 120, in Banff, 115, 164 121, 138, 139,169,170, 190, in Glacier, 84 196, 198-9 in Jasper, 162, 188 Edwards, Janet, 192 Native American use of, 16 Edwards, Ry, 136, 149 in Yellowstone, 27, 56 elk, 16, 27, 72, 121, 130, 148, 149, fire and game guardians. See wardens Fish and Wildlife Advisory Council, 161, 162, 169, 175, 183, 184, 187,194,196,204,209,220-1 1 92 1 abundance of, 32-3, 155, 176

328

INDEX

Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), 50,54,81,197,221 Fisher, H., 131,177 Fisher, W., 123, 124, 126 Fleming, Sandford, 106, 162-4 Flook, D. R., 136 Folsom, David, 19 Foreman, Dave, 203 Forest and Stream, 26 Forest Reserves Act (1906), 164 Fort Augustus, 156 Fort Benton, 62, 105 Fort Edmonton, 156 Fort McLeod, 105 Foundation for North American Big Game, 145 fox, 27, 53, 133, 156,178 Franchere, Gabriel, 159, 163 Fredericks, John, 91 Friends of the Wolf, 145 frontier, 8, 63, 161, 230n47 and wolf identity, 17, 18-9, 28, 56, 101,105,117-9, 149, 196, 213 Fuller, W. A., 138 fur trade, 186 in Banff, 100-4 in Glacier, 61-4 in Jasper, 155-62, 166, 204-5 in Yellowstone, 17, 18, 20-1

G Gadd, Ben, 194 Galen, James, 70-1 game protection of, 23-5, 27, 67-8, 72,76,166,210,212,213 as wolf prey, 3-4, 18, 32, 44, 55, 90,111-2,125,130,143-4, 184,207,219-21 Gates, Marshall, 44

Garvey, Dick, 90-1 Gilbert, Bob, 91 Gibson, R. A., 132 Glacier National Park changes in predator policy, 76-8, 80-1,205,208-10,216 establishment of, 65-6, 207 exploration of, 62-4, 211-2 predator control in, 67-8, 70-5, 80-1,92,93-4,207-8 scenery, 64, 97 tourism, 65-6 wildlife policy, 66, 97 wolf eradication, 74-5 wolf recolonization, 83-97, 203-4,213,217-8 wolf relocations to, 261nl83 wolf sightings, 67, 71-2, 78-80, 82,83,87,96 Glacier National Park Act (1910), 65-6 Globe and Mail, 174-5 Gniadek, Steve, 97 Going to the Sun Road, 78, 92, 203 Goldman, Edward, 5, 40-1, 47 Goldman, S. J., 73 Graham, Maxwell, 114, 115, 117, 167 Grand Trunk Pacific, 164-5 Grant, George M., 163-4 Great Northern Railroad (GNR), 65, 67 Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, 44 Green, Hubert, 125, 126, 129,130, 132 Grinnell, George, 25-6, 64, 65, 66 Grinnell, Joseph, 79, 120 Gros Ventre, 16 Gunson, John, 198

329

WOLF MOUNTAINS

H Hamilton, W. J., 78 Hargreaves, Jack, 167 Harkin, James, 114, 115, 116, 119, 120-1,147,167, 170,171 Harmon, Daniel, 155 Harris, Captain Moses, 27, 114 Hathaway, Stanley, 46 Hawse, Jasper, 158 Hector, James, 159-60 Hedges, Cornelius, 203 Heller, Edmund, 36-8, 41 Hemming, Arthur, 118 Henday, Anthony, 101-2, 103 Henders, L., 133 Henderson, A. Bart, 20 Henry, Robert H., 220 Henry, William, 158, 159 Herrig, Frank, 66 Hesson, Samuel, 109 HetchHetchy Valley, 65 Hicks, Edward, 168 High Country News, 196, 199 Hill, Lewis, 65 Hill, Thomas, 163 Holloway, William J., Jr., 220 Horejsi, Brian, 197 Hornaday, William, 25, 28, 114 Howe, Charlie, 63 Howell, Edgar, 27 Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), 61, 101-4, 156, 159, 162, 218, 249nll Huestis, E., 180 Hungry Horse News, 87, 88, 89 hunters: views of wolves, 3, 34, 38, 42, 78, 90-1, 94, 104-5, 123-4, 125, 127, 145-6, 170,177, 180, 190, 209, 221 Hurd, Tom, 150

330

Hutchings, Henry, 67-8, 114 Hutchison, J. A., 130, 131

I Ickes, Harold, 43 Iverson, Philip, 84

J Jackson Hole, 120 James, Ronda, 90 Jasper Environmental Association, 193 Jasper Fish and Game Association, 170-1 Jasper Forest Park. See Jasper National Park Jasper House, 158, 159, 161-2, 166, 188,199,204-5 Jasper National Park changes in predator policy, 170-2, 183,205-6,208-10,216 commercialization of, 184, 188-9 establishment of, 164-5, 207, 283n47 exploration of, 155-62, 211-2 persistence of wolves, 182, 205 predator control, 166-8, 172-3, 176, 181-2, 207-8, 287nll8 scenery, 153, 159, 163 topography, 163 tourism, 168, 189 wildlife policy, 168 wolf recolonization, 124, 169-70, 183-4,199,213,217-8 wolf sightings, 162, 167, 172, 177, 183 Jeck, Leonard, 169 Jennings, P., 121, 128 Johnson, Martin and Osa, 185 Jones, Gray, 198 Judas wolves, 51

INDEX

I* ^ Kaibab Plateau, 40, 120, 171, 216 Kaley, Mark, 83 Kearns, C. F.,80-1 Kelsall, John, 141 Keltic, George, 125 Kindle, E., 169 Klyne, Michael, 161 Kootenay, 59, 85, 87, 100, 104 Kraebel, Chas, 75-6 Kwakiutl, 6 •" Lacey Act (1894), 27-8 Ladenburg, Tom, 90 Lakota, 16 Lamar Valley, 15, 23, 29, 44, 52, 55, 202, 218, 219 Lane, Franklin, 208 Langford, Nathaniel, 23-4 Lascelles, Tony. See Hubert Green Laurier, Wilfrid, 165 Lawless, Frank, 90 Lemhi, 16 Leopold, Aldo, 15, 47, 76, 212, 217, 218, 244nl63 Leopold Report, 10, 47, 226n26 Lewis and Clark, 17-8,61-2,63 Lewis and Clark National Forest, 65, 92 Lewis, Harrison, 125-6, 127, 176, 177 Liebig, Frank, 66 'Little Red Riding Hood,' 6 Lloyd, Hoyes, 125, 173 Locke, Harvey, 214 Logan, William, 67 Long, William, 41 Lopez, Barry, 3

Loring, J. Alden, 162 'loupholes,' 179 lupocentrism, 13, 218-9 Lusk, H. Gilbert, 87, 88

M MacDonald, John, 106, 108, 109 Mackenzie, Alexander, 155-6 MacLaggan, J. W., 165 Mader, Tom, 90 Mader, Troy, 49, 233n9 Madsen, David, 41-2 Mair, W. Winston, 177, 180,181 Mallette, Calvin, 196 Mammoth Hot Springs, 22, 23, 27, 34, 43, 201 mange, 70-1, 82, 132, 133 Marlenee, Ron, 49 Marriott, John, 141-2 Marshall, Joseph, 215, 217 marten, 76 Martinka, Cliff, 84-5, 87, 88, 96 Marty, Sid, 107 Marx, Karl, 218 Mason, Bill, 185, 187 Massachusetts Bay Colony, 7 Mather, Stephen, 9, 31, 32, 37, 208 McCabe, Franklin, 107 McCardell, Thomas, 107 McCardell, William, 107 McCaughey, Gerald, 138 McDougal, John, 106 McGowan, D., 106 McKay, Eaton, 138-9 McKittrick, Chad, 54 Mech, L. David, 4, 45, 187 Merriam, Lawrence, 81 Metis, 105 Miner, Manly, 124-5

331

WOLF MOUNTAINS

mining, 17, 106-7, 190, 193-5 impact on game species, 18 Mitchell, K., 130, 131, 132 Moberly, Walter, 162 Monroe, Hugh (Rising Wolf), 62, 203 Montana Fish and Game Commission, 42 Montana Stockgrowers Association, 210 Montana Woolgrowers Association, 42, 91 moose, 3, 16, 72, 84, 96, 124, 154, 162, 174-5 Morning Eagle, 64 Mott, William B., 48 mountain lions, 28, 30, 68, 71, 76, 96, 119, 121-2, 204 mountain men, 17. S^fur trade Mountain Park, 190, 193-5 Mount McKinley National Park, 79, 210 Mowat, Farley, 8, 137-40, 141, 144 145, 191 Muir, John, 67, 208 Munn, Bob, 194 Munro, David, 185 Murie, Adolph, 3, 4, 39, 42-3, 233n9 aI ™ Napi (Old Man), 59, 60, 95 Nardini, Tim, 94 Nash, Roderick, 12 national parks as breeding grounds for wolves, 29, 32, 49, 72-3, 80-1, 123, 125, 170, 174, 179-80, 212 Canadian and United States policy compared, 12, 108, 110-11, 120-1, 196-9, 201-10

332

end of predator control inside, 10, 38, 42, 75-8, 136, 183, 208-10 establishment of, 9,203, 207, 213 historiography, 10-11 and nationalism, 22, 48, 65-6, 108-9,163,206 as protected islands, 212, 213, 214 scenery, 9, 31, 64-6, 97, 108-9, 162-4,207 wildlife policy, 9, 31, 36, 39-41, 49-50, 66 and wolf restoration, 47-8, 55-7, 83, 87-8, 94, 96-7, 141, 149-51, 171, 196-9, 212-4 National Parks Act (1930), 120 National Park Service (NPS), 31, 38, 205, 208, 210, 211, 216, 219, 221 National Park Service Act (Organic Act) (1916), 31, 38, 48 Native Americans, tribes, Assiniboine (Stoney), 16, 105, 154-5, 156; Bannock, 16; Blackfeet, 59-62, 64-65, 67-8, 73-4, 92-3, 100, 101-5; Cherokee, 16; Cheyenne, 6; Cree, 101-2, 153-6; Crow, 16; Gros Ventre, 16; Kootenay, 59, 85, 87, 100, 104; Kwakiutl, 6; Lakota, 16; Lemhi, 16; Salesh, 104; Sarcee, 154-5; Sekani, 155; Sheepeater, 16; Shoshone, 16; Shushwap, 161; Sioux, 6; Snake, 104, 154; Tona Xa, 100 and environmental change, 15-6, 186 and wolves, 6, 16, 59-60, 101-2 natural balance, 37, 40-1, 48, 55-6, 75-6, 77, 84, 88, 120, 122, 128, 131-2, 142, 172, 174-6, 185-6, 216, 221, 242nl30

INDEX

Nesbit, Archie, 145-6 Never Cry Wolf, 8,137-40, 144,191, 216 Nobles, Harry, 118-9 Norris, Philetius, 24, 25, 26 North Fork, 79-82, 84-7, 90-1, 92, 93-4, 96, 204, 218 North Fork Preservation Society, 91 Northern Alberta Game and Fish Protection League, 170 Northwest Company, 61, 102,

103-4,156,160 North West Mounted Police, 105 Novakowski, N. S., 139 Noyes, Mrs. Edward, 139 f^ ^ Old Faithful, 22, 24 Operation Wolfstock, 51 Ottawa Citizen, 143 p ' packrats, 169 Palliser, John, 104, 112 Paquet, Paul, 142, 143 Parks Branch. See Canadian Parks Service Parks Canada. See Canadian Parks Service Payne, Walter, 73-4, 208 Pearce, William, 108 Pembina Institute, 193 Peyto, Bill, 115 Piegan. See Blackfeet Piilonen, Toivu, 117,118 Pilgeram, Bertha, 90 Pitcher, lohn, 28 poaching, 24, 67, 114, 166 Pogue, lay, 97 Power, Lawrence, 109

Predator and Animal Rodent Control (PARC), 32, 43 predator control. See wolves, control of Proctor, J. W., 63 Project Wolf, 144 Pryor, Nathaniel, 17, 20 ** ^ Quebec Telegraph', 117

R R rabies, 4, 133-5, 179-80, 182, 206, 212 Raby, Jim, 122 radio collaring, 51, 85, 142-3, 220 railroads, 63-5, 67,106-7,148-9, 162 - 5 ranching interests, 28, 32, 42, 43, 44, 48-9,63,71,72-3,80,81-2, 90-1,106,117,180,181,196, 212, 215, 219-21 Rausch, Robert, 45 Reese, Albert, 78 Rinehart, Mary Roberts, 66 Rising Wolf. See Hugh Monroe Rocky Mountain goat, 68, 72 Rocky Mountain House, 102, 104 Rocky Mountains, 11 -12, 45, 92, 155,201,207,210-11,214, 217-8, 219, 221-2 Rocky Mountains National Park. See Banff National Park Rocky Mountains Park Act (18 8 7), 110, 164 Rogers, Edmund, 42 Rogers, I. A., 175 Rogers, Maynard, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171

333

WOLF MOUNTAINS

Romulus and Remus, 2, 6 Roosevelt, Theodore, 25, 212 Ross, Alexander, 103, 159, 160, 161, 178 Russell, Carl, 40 Russell, Osborne, 17, 18-9, 20 Q ^ Salesh, 104 Sanson, Norman, 112 Sarcee, 154-5 Schultz, James Willard, 19, 64, 69, 72 Scoyen, Eivind, 76-7, 79 Seaton, Jill, 197-8 Sekani, 155

Sergeant,Gary, 146 Sessions, George, 217 Seton, Ernest Thompson, 8, 41 settlers, 7, 8 sheep, 26, 106, 220 Sheepeater, 16 Shoshone, 16 Shuswap, 161 Sibbald, Howard, 115 Sierra Club, 144,147,191 Siksikakoan, 59, 265n22 Simpson, Dave, 190 Simpson, George, 159, 162, 163 Singer, Francis, 82, 83 Sioux, 6 Skinner, Milton, 29, 37, 41, 233n9 Smart, James, 128, 131, 173, 175, 176, 180, 208 Smith, Donald, 108 Smith, Douglas, 54, 56, 199 Smith, Joe, 85 Snake, 104, 154 Soper, J. Dewey, 153 Southesk, Earl of, 104-5 Spargo, G., 170

334

Sparrow, Don, 191 Special Advisory Board on Wildlife Management. See Leopold Report Spotts, Richard, 94 Stegner, Wallace, 203, 211, 217 Steinbeck, John, 1, 5, 9, 13 Steinhart, Peter, 45-6 Stelfox, John, 140, 183 Stevens, W. E., 183, 206 Stevenson, Donald, 30, 33 Stewart, George, 108, 111 strychnine, 20, 24, 26, 33, 71, 114, 133, 180, 253n64 Swift, Lewis, 162, 165 Switzer Park, 51, 198

T Tail-Feathers-Coming-Over-the-Hill, 68 Taverner, P. A., 40 Taylor, Joseph Henry, 63 taxidermy, 43, 112 Teller, H. M., 25 Theberge, John, 136-7 Thompson, Ben, 79, 225n25 Thompson, David, 61, 102, 103, 156-7 Thoreau, Henry David, 218 'Three Little Pigs, The,' 6, 8 Thundering Herd, 36 Toll, Roger, 32, 37, 42 Tona Xa, 100 Trans-Canada Highway, 149, 204 trapping. See fur trade Turner, Kenneth, 90 II " Ulrich, Gordon, 194-5 United Mineworkers of America (UMA), 193

INDEX

U.S. Calvary, 27-30

V Win ipegFre Pres ,196 Van Orsdale, John, 64 Varley, John, 55 Vilna, 117-8, 122 Vogelsang, Alexander, 72 ... •* Waldt, Ralph, 91 wardens, 29-30, 33-4, 68, 73-4, 113, 115, 119-20, 126, 127-9, 131, 132,133, 165, 166, 167, 170, 173, 174, 177-8, 181,183, 209 Washburn Expedition, 19 Waterton Lakes National Park, 66, 213-4 Watson, Paul, 144, 145 Weaver, John, 46 werewolves, 7, 60 West, Duane, 192 Western Canada Fish and Game Council, 125 Western Canadian Wilderness Committee, 145 Whitcher, W. R, 110, 111 White, Thomas, 108 Whoop-Up Trail, 12, 99, 105 Wilbur, Ray, 39 Wild Kingdom, 185 wildlife biology, 5, 36, 49-50, 83-5, 88-9, 125-9, 131,136-7, 142-3,172-5,186, 208-9, 216, 220-1 Wildlife Division, 79 wildlife film-making, 184-5 Williams, Mabel, 122, 148, 168-9, 189 Williamson, F. H., 123, 172,182

Willmore Wilderness Park, 190-3

Winnipeg Free press, 196 Winthrop, John, 7 Wise, L., 170 Wolf, The, 185 Wolf Ecology Project (WEP), 83-8, 92-3 wolfers, 20-1, 24, 63, 105, 266n23, 266n24 Wolf Fund, 49 Wolf Lake, 36 wolverine, 24, 119, 193 wolves abundance of, 17-8, 104 aerial hunting of, 143-6 appreciation/advocacy, 8, 37-8, 43-4, 56, 79, 90-1, 105, 122, 136-7, 139-40, 143, 179, 195, 196-8, 201, 216-7, 219, 244nl66 attitude towards humans, 4, 103 bounty, 7, 26, 80, 113, 144-5, 166, 179, 213 burying dead pups, 95 as competitors to humans, 7-8, 104, 117-8, 215 control of, 9-10, 25-30, 32-6, 67-8, 70-5, 80-1, 92, 93-4, 112-7, 119-21, 129-32, 143-4, 159-60, 166-8, 172-3, 176-8, 181-2, 207-8, 213 distribution of, 2, 16, 45 domestication of, 2,16 eating of, 103 and endangered species protection, 54, 83, 94, 192, 196-8, 210, 221-2 eradication of, 7-9, 34-6, 48-9, 179, 239n80

335

WOLF MOUNTAINS

European,44,5,179 fictional treatment of, 5-7 folklore, 7-8, 117-9, 159-61, 215-6 howl, 2, 19-20, 38, 52, 137, 143, 149, 191, 218, 265n22 hybrids, 4, 9 intelligence of, 2, 103, 160, 161 legal issues, 47-50, 197-8, 213, 219-22,246nl80 pack structure, 2-3 pack territory, 94-6, 211 -2, 220-1 physical characteristics, 1-2 prey, 3 public concern over, 48-9, 89-91, 124-5,170, 209 reappraisal of, 36-8, 42 recolonization, 83-97 reintroduction of, 45-6, 47-57, 203,206-7 scientific thought on, 5, 25, 36-43,48,75-8,120,126-7, 171-2, 184 sport hunting of, 20, 105 symbolism, 3, 17, 48-9, 90, 96-7, 185, 190, 195, 203, 215, 219-22 trapping of, 20-1, 24, 62-3, 101-4, 143,156, 159-60 Wood, James, 172, 173, 175, 176 Wood, William, 201 Woodring, Sam, 34 Worster, Donald, 13, 191 Wright, George, 39, 79, 225n25 Wyoming Farm Bureau, 220

336

Y Y Yaha Tinda Ranch, 131 Yellowstone National Park army period, 27-30 changes in predator policy, 37-8, 40,205,208-10,216 destruction of game, 24, 39 establishment of, 22-3, 26, 207, 214,236n41 exploration of, 16-22, 211-2 historic wolf population, 16, 26, 232n2,233n9 predator control, 25-30, 32-6, 207-8 symbolism, 1, 48, 55-7, 201-3 tourism, 24, 56 wolf eradication, 34-6 wolf reintroduction, 45-6, 47-57, 190, 196-9, 203, 206-7, 213, 217-8, 219-20, 247nl88 wolf sightings, 19-20, 43, 44-6, 201 Yellowstone Park Act (1872), 22-23, 26, 38, 48, 110 Yellowstone River, 18 Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y), 214 Yellow Wolf, 69 Yosemite National Park, 65, 163, 282n41 Young, Stanley, 5, 47 Yount, Harry, 25