THROUGH THE EYES OF A WOLF
Author probes politics of conservation
It’s was a love triangle worthy of a Hollywood romance.
When O-Six, the world-famous alpha female wolf who lived in Yellowstone Park, was searching for a mate, she managed to attract the attention of two young brothers from a nearby pack. The smaller one was dubbed 755 by wolf-watchers, while the bigger one was named 754. Unexpectedly, she chose 755, who became the alpha male. His brother, while bigger, was also more “puppyish.” But he was allowed to stay in the pack, becoming a sort of uncle figure and beta male while continuing to suffer from the unrequited love of O-Six.
“754 never gave up this candle he had burning for O-Six,” says Nate Blakeslee, author of The Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West. “Every chance he got, he would cover her with affection. She wouldn’t encourage him much, but she wouldn’t reject him either. So there was this love triangle that went on for years in the pack.”
As far as wolves go, O-Six was about as big a celebrity as they come. So perhaps it’s not too surprising that she had a complicated romantic life.
It’s estimated that more than 100,000 visitors to Yellowstone Park would have seen the large grey alpha female and her pack first-hand. Many more followed her exploits on social media, thanks to a group of observers who likened her to a “rock star” and recorded her every move. Tourists and scientists alike were taken by her strength as a hunter and her compassion as a mother. When she was killed by a hunter in 2012, The New York Times wrote both a news story and an obituary about the loss. Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company has apparently already picked up the film rights to her story.
Her relationship with her mate and his infatuated big brother was one of many tidbits Blakeslee uncovered while studying the detailed notes of devoted “wolf-watchers,” which made up the basis of his research for the book. Laurie Lyman, a retired school teacher from San Diego, lent the Texas-based journalist 2,500 pages of notes she obsessively took over the years while observing O-Six and her family from the Lamar Canyon Pack on Yellowstone’s Northern Range. Rick McIntyre, a passionate naturalist and wildlife expert who has been a tireless crusader in the campaign to return wolves to Yellowstone and protect them, also gave Blakeslee his copious notes.
It allowed the writer-at-large for Texas Monthly, who has investigated everything from small town police corruption to Ted Cruz’s battle against immigration reform, to write about politics and policy in a way he never has before.
“It was like reading the diary of a wolf pack and made it possible to write the book as though it were a non-fiction novel in which the characters were wolves,” says Blakeslee, who will be in Calgary for a WordFest event on Nov. 10. “The prospect of doing that was really exciting as a new kind of writing for me.”
The Wolf follows the story of OSix, chronicling her complex relationships with her family and pack and other wolves in the area. As with many queens in epic tales, she is surrounded by enemies. There were the hunters who were bitter about the wolves’ re-entry into Yellowstone, who felt the animals would greatly reduce the elk population. There were ranchers who feared they would lose livestock. There were also rival Yellowstone wolves who resented her power. Those who followed the highly publicized story of O-Six know that it all led to a tragic end.
One reviewer referred to Blakeslee’s book as “the Game of Thrones story of modern western wolves.”
“I didn’t realize how rich the social lives of wolves were,” he says. “We all know they have this sort of hierarchical structure in which they live, a pack in which the wolves rank themselves. But it’s much more complex than that. They are, of course, fearsome creatures. They are amazing hunters. Their ability to kill elk is celebrated in some circles and notorious in other circles. But their capacity for empathy is really amazing, too. Because they are pack animals and do everything in the pack, including hunting and raising their pups collectively and defending their den collectively, it becomes imperative that they are able to get along with one another, that they are able to understand each other’s emotional state and respond accordingly. It’s a trait that has been selected for over the millennia, just like speed and endurance and the marvellous sense of smell that they have.”
But while Blakeslee wanted the story of O-Six to be at the heart of The Wolf, he also knew it pointed to a much larger one about conservation and the battle over who controls management of public lands such as Yellowstone. He had written a story about the reintroduction of bighorn sheep in West Texas and discovered that wildlife management was anything but straightforward.
In 1995, conservationists introduced wolves from Western Canada back to Yellowstone Park. For wolf advocates, it was the “greatest wildlife conservation success story of the last 50 years,” Blakeslee says. On the other hand, it angered hunters, ranchers and professional guides who felt the move would impact their livelihoods. Blakeslee gives voice to both sides of the debate. He even scored an interview with the hunter who killed OSix, who agreed to talk with him if Blakeslee didn’t use his name. Still, the author has no problem acknowledging that the book, as Kirkus Reviews pointed out, is “even-handed but clearly and rightly on the side of the wolves.”
Blakeslee said telling the intimate story of O-Six became a key part of the book’s message. He points out that legislators and game managers in Yellowstone’s three states — Montana, Wyoming and Idaho — spend much of their time calculating how many wolves they can afford to lose through trapping and hunting before the federal government steps back in and puts them back on the endangered species list. His book asks a different question.
“What does it mean to lose any one wolf?” he says. “What is any one wolf’s life worth? Which is something you don’t often hear in the conversation. That’s what her story meant to me. If every wolf’s life is this amazing adventure story, how should we take that into account when we are making policy around wolf hunting?”