Wolves and Human Communities: Biology, Politics, and Ethics. Virginia A. Sharpe, Bryan Norton, and Strachan Donnelley, editors. Island Press, Washington DC, 2001. 321 pp., $65.00 (ISBN 1-55963-828-1 cloth).
Pity the wolf and those who wish to expand the range of this apex predator. Consider the following:
A handful of wolves can dramatically alter the structure of a community.
Wolves are perceived by many as highly endangered, but in much of their current range, wolf populations are doing just fine.
The main reason for the decline of wolves in North America was not habitat alteration but direct persecution. In the absence of persecution, wolf populations can expand dramatically wherever food is ample.
Wolves are big predators—big enough to bring down bison, musk ox, and moose, and big enough to drive mountain lions away from a carcass.
Wolves eat what humans eat, including deer and livestock. Many people see wolves as competitors, as an economic threat, and as a risk to personal safety.
People will pay money to be near wolves, to see them, to hear their howls. Many equate the presence of wolves with a sense of wildness and may seek out areas with wolves. Because wolves can bring economic gains to a region, many people want the animals in areas where they no longer naturally exist.
Given that wolf reintroduction efforts in the continental United States have the potential for spectacular success (as in Yellowstone National Park, for example) or failure (Smoky Mountain National Park), and given that such efforts are expensive, the question becomes this: Is there a need for additional wolf reintroduction efforts?
There are currently no wolf populations in the northeastern United States, where robust populations once probably existed. Should a wolf reintroduction take place? A possible region for the effort might be the Adirondack State Park of northern New York, a huge and diverse mix of landscapes that is three times the size of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Although wolves exist in eastern Canada, geographic and geopolitical barriers make it unlikely that they will reach the Adirondacks under their own power in the near future. If we want wolves in the Adirondacks, we will have to put them there.
Wolves and Human Communities is the result of a 1999 symposium held at the American Museum of Natural History to address a variety of basic questions:
Should wolf reintroduction into the Adirondacks be a high priority?
Is such an effort even feasible?
Who makes the decision to commence the effort?
What biological, economic, spiritual, philosophical, administrative, and political hurdles must be overcome to make any such introduction successful?
The volume brings together a fascinating mix of wolf biologists, politicians, representatives of nongovernmental organizations, local stakeholders, sociologists, wildlife agency personnel, lawyers, and ethicists with agendas as diverse as their backgrounds—those with pro- and anti-reintroduction positions, ostensibly skeptical independents, and those who simply lay out the cold facts of federal and state laws, jurisdictions, and funding priorities.
This book makes fascinating reading. Many of the authors have been involved in various aspects of carnivore conservation for decades, and having their thoughts in a single volume exploring the successes and limitations of wolf restoration will provide remarkable insights to those with little direct experience in dealing with carnivores. Other chapters, however, are written by authors who lack the carnivore expertise that should have gone into a volume like this. Indeed, even the editors are not known for their previous work with wolves, and their inexperience shows. Several chapters contain discussions of wolf biology and conservation that are distractingly vague and could have benefited immensely from a review by an expert on wolves.
And yet, if one can plow through the pages of fuzzy thoughts in some of these chapters, real insights can be unearthed. In the opening chapter, for instance, former Missoula mayor and Montana legislator Daniel Kemmis put forth the idea, echoed by others in this volume, that national opinion means little when it comes to species reintroductions. If local opinion is against something, said Kemmis, “there are and always will be endless opportunities for locals to undermine and sabotage any centrally devised and imposed recovery” (p. 12). This is an extremely important point, to which most conservation biologists and environmental activists have given insufficient thought.
This diversity of opinion, the conflicting information presented by different authors, and even the variable quality of each chapter serve to make this volume all the more significant. The opinions expressed by the various authors were occasionally at odds with one another and expressed so strongly as to give startling insights into how practitioners in different environmental fields prioritize reintroduction efforts and underscore the difficulty of reaching consensus on issues as contentious as wolf reintroductions. I am aware of no other volume quite like it—an edited work that so clearly displays the dramatically differing philosophical views, agendas, and even self-revealed naiveties of stakeholders. Nonetheless, two subtexts run through many of the chapters in the volume. One asks what we have learned from wolf conservation and reintroduction efforts elsewhere in the world. The other suggests that returning wolves to the Adirondacks will repair damage done by past generations and restore wildness to the region.
For those wondering if there is more to this book than simply wolves and human views of wolves, I would suggest that indeed there is. For instance, excellent chapters by Mech and by Clark and Gillesberg show how environmental organizations can compromise their own cause by obfuscating facts and failing to confront internal conflicts. Sax presents an overview of the difficulties that property rights law poses for environmental restoration efforts, including a fascinating discussion of the relevance to conservation biologists of US Supreme Court arguments over the landmark status of New York City's Grand Central Station. In addition, many of the chapters, though couched in terms of wolf reintroduction, have clear relevance to other reintroduction efforts in that they outline the biological, administrative, and ethical issues that must be resolved to ensure success.
As an ecologist studying carnivores in the Adirondacks, I have often wondered about the past influences of wolves in the region. Yet I have been unable to decide whether a wolf reintroduction effort is desirable. After reading this volume, I am no closer to an answer, and I suspect most readers will be left equally uncertain. But this is not necessarily a bad thing, and readers will come away with a greater appreciation of the complexity of seemingly simple issues.
