Excerpts

Introduction My pickup banged and rattled along the potholed Inside Road in the northwest corner of Glacier National Park. Boxes of wolf traps and jars of bait slid across the truck bed. I was in a hurry, my mind focused on the wolf caught in a trap somewhere ahead in the lodgepole pine forest. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed motion in my rearview mirror. I looked up to catch the glassy reflection of vivid yellow eyes framed by a wolf 's black face looking over my shoulder from the back seat. How did I get here? It was a warm June evening, with the lingering pink light of a long, northern summer twilight. The nighthawks had started their evening hunts, swooping through the banquet of mosquitoes above the river. I had just finished checking my wolf trapline along fifteen miles of a rough dirt road and was about to fix a late supper. I was staying at the ranger station at the Polebridge Entrance, which leads into the undeveloped, primitive part of Glacier National Park. A car pulled up to me and an anxious woman jumped out, running toward me and shouting, "Somebody is illegally trapping wolves in the park. There's a gray wolf in a trap along the road. It needs help!" Thanking her for the report, I explained that I had set the trap for research purposes to learn more about the wolves' ecology and survival. I addressed her concerns and assured her that I had no intention of harming wolves. This calmed her down. "How far up the road is the wolf from here?" I asked. "I don't know. Quite a ways." "Okay. Would you like to follow me to help fit the wolf with a radio collar and release it on-site?" The woman regretfully replied that she would love to, but she had a long drive that night and had to keep traveling to make her connections. I thanked her for her time, apologized for any discomfort she felt, and assured her that I'd go find the wolf immediately and take care of the situation. The woman left, and I jumped into my truck, heading up the road as fast as conditions would allow.  While looking for the gray wolf, I checked all the traps that I had inspected just an hour before. On the left side of the road, in the fourth trap, was a coal-black wolf, hopping around with a front foot caught. It was going to be a long night. I readied the tranquilizing drugs, jab stick, capture kit, and radio collar and approached the wolf. Knowing that I still had a gray wolf ahead, I decided to drug this handsome black wolf quite lightly so he would be able to wake up and walk away sooner. Down he went into sedated slumber. I measured his vital signs to make sure he was handling the sedative well, took my samples, fitted him with a radio collar, and stood back. He was limp--definitely not ready to get up and walk away. I couldn't leave him unattended and defenseless in the forest in case a bear, mountain lion, or another wolf came along and attacked him. And I still had the gray wolf to find, where I would repeat this whole scenario and hopefully finish before it grew dark. I had no time to waste. I loaded the drugged wolf onto the back seat of my pickup. As I maneuvered his lean, athletic body into the truck, I noticed that he was beginning to jerk and make small movements with his head. I jumped into the front seat and started to drive, looking at my watch, figuring the wolf would be waking up soon. What I had not counted on was that the more the truck jolted and banged along, the more stimulated the wolf became, waking him early out of his narcotic stupor. I didn't realize this because I was concentrating on slaloming around potholes, looking for my traps, and watching out for oncoming cars on the narrow one-lane road. The wolf sat up abruptly in the back seat, awake and alarmed to find himself in a Ford F-150 on the way to Kintla Lake with some distracted blond woman driving a bit roughly. When I saw his face suddenly in the rearview mirror, he was sitting up like a big German shepherd, looking over my right shoulder. I hit the brakes and swerved to the side of the road. I grabbed my catchpole from the back of the truck, cautiously opened the rear door, slipped the noose around the wolf 's neck, and gently pulled. He resisted a bit but finally stumbled out onto the dirt road as I released the catchpole. He wove his way through the willows and was gone. I jumped back into the truck and drove to the end of the road at Kintla Lake, checking all my traps as I went. No second wolf. I was relieved but puzzled. Then I realized that the woman had said "gray wolf " to describe the species and not the color of its fur; she had definitely seen this black "gray wolf." Communication! When it comes to wolves, it's all about communication in so many ways. My dad once told me that with me as his daughter, he always had something interesting to write in his Christmas cards. Likewise, my brothers, Jeff and Terry, and many friends have long told me I should write up my stories about the early years of wolf recovery in the North Fork. I kept copious field notes and journals and published many scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. I loved what I did, and I loved talking to people about my unusual profession, but I didn't know if I had the wherewithal to write it all down. However, the story of the North Fork wolves is unknown to 99.9 percent of the world, and many of the early researchers who found and followed these wolves have since passed and cannot speak of our hope and our hardship. I feel it is up to me to tell how a few adventurous Canadian wolves trotted south into the northwestern corner of Montana, filling the landscape with their howls and progeny fifteen years before wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone. This story is about me, my friends, my mentors, and--most importantly--the special wolves whose paths I crossed. It is also about following my dreams no matter how difficult the path, about fighting against stereotypes while pursuing my passion for wolves, and about finding home--for the wolves and for myself. The more I thought about sharing this story, however, the more I realized that it is much bigger than just the North Fork and Glacier National Park--the area of Montana where I got my start and blossomed as a young woman and professional biologist. In the 1970s, after the Endangered Species Act was passed in the U.S., wolves began recolonizing landscapes across North America and Europe from which they had been extirpated a hundred years earlier. Our wolf research in the North Fork was just the beginning of global wolf recovery. Now, at this point in my career, I want to open the minds of a wide variety of readers to consider the challenges involved when wolves appear on the landscape. I want you to be there with me as I make icy river crossings, get my butt chewed out by angry hunters and ranchers, hear wolf howls reverberate around the mountains, ski along wolf tracks to find their feast of deer, and learn about the science and ecology of wolves. I want you to share my laughter, tears, frustrations, and pure joy. I hope these stories, spanning more than four decades of traveling the rocky road of wolf recovery, inspire conservation dreams and actions in the next generations, who will make critical decisions and craft solutions for future wildlife-human interactions. Finally, I hope that this story provides a nuanced understanding of wolf recovery that will make someone who is contemplating killing a wolf pause--and then decide not to pull the trigger. Excerpted from A Woman among Wolves: My Journey Through Forty Years of Wolf Recovery by Diane K. Boyd All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. 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