While we finally had some much needed, long awaited rain, lightning knocked out the electricity for most of Saturday. Sorry to be late — no internet.
TV viewing didn’t widely exist in Germany (where I grew up) until the mid-fifties, and even then the offering was limited to a couple of hours in the afternoon and an evening program that ended at midnight. ONE channel only! No endless cartoons for kids! So, I grew up with fairy tales, and not the watered-down Disney versions either – what I listened to until I was old enough to read myself were the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, Andersen’s fairy tales, and those by other German romantic writers, such as Ludwig Bechstein and Wilhelm Hauff.
Some of Grimm’s fairy tales might end up on a banned-books list these days, they’re not for the fainthearted. A BBC article from 2014 asks: “Are Grimm’s Fairy Tales too twisted for children?”, describing them as “bedtime stories complete with mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide and incest”. The evil stepmother of Snow-white, for example (and yes, stepmothers are always evil), had to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she fell down dead. Other evil stepmothers were put into a barrel with lots of spiky nails inside and rolled down a hill. Or a horse was tied to each arm and each leg, and then the four horses were driven apart. Sounds pretty gruesome, right? But you have to remember: children listened to these tales, somebody would read them to you when you were little. There were no movies, no cartoons, and the books were sparingly illustrated. Which means that the images were entirely left to the listener’s imagination.
There was a sense of justice to fairy tales: those who did something evil and hurtful would be punished. When I was a child, this seemed right and appropriate. I never felt traumatized by excessive violence.
There are several archetypal characters one meets in a fairy tale. There is the wise king, the innocent maiden/princess, the hero on his journey – often the youngest of three brothers – , the evil witch or stepmother. And then there's the bad wolf, deceptive, conniving, and murderous. As a kid I accepted this, but now that I’ve learned more about wolves, about their character, relationships, family life, I am wondering: Why is the wolf always a menacing, aggressive, predatory animal in European fairy tales and fables?
Evertbody knows Little Red Riding Hood, but another Grimms fairy tale might be less familiar: The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats. A deceiving, conniving wolf tricks the kids into believing he’s their mother and eats them up. Of course, they’re rescued just in time and the wolf gets punished. But he always gets a bad rap.
Native American tribes, on the other hand, had an entirely different relationship to wolves. They were respected and were associated with strength, courage, and loyalty. To hunt and kill a wolf was a despicable act, and the person who committed such a deed would face exile1. Humans and wolves co-existed peacefully in North America before the advent of the Europeans. The numbers are not certain, but at least 250,000 and maybe as many as two million wolves roamed across the continent.
Until the European settlers arrived. To them, “the wolf was almost categorically represented as a ravening, bloodthirsty killer in the Christian tradition and in Western culture as a whole.” Even before the foundation of the United States, the immigrants organized wolf bounties. For 350 years, the animals were mercilessly hunted down until they were all but extinct.
Husbandry of sheep and cattle would be one obvious reason for farmers and ranchers to be weary of wolves and similar predators such as coyotes. While livestock would be the obvious victims of hungry wolves, the real number of killed sheep and especially cows was probably much lower than what the animals were blamed for. And there’s also the prevailing myth that they attack and kill humans. The actual occurrence of such deadly attacks is minimal, often involved wolves that carried rabies, and can’t be the cause for the negative image they have.2
The New Testament robbed the wolf of any positive associations European peoples may still have felt (Romulus and Remus, for example, the mythical founders of Rome, were raised by a female wolf). They became symbols for everything demonic and hostile to Jesus Christ.
The apostles are sent out ‘as sheep in the midst of wolves’ (Matt. 10:16); false prophets are ‘ravenous wolves’ in ‘sheep’s clothing’ (Matt. 7:15); and those who persecute true believers are cast as ‘savage wolves’ (Acts 20:29).3
This intensified the hostility people had felt already and led to ferocious and extensive wolf-hunts throughout the Roman Empire and other parts of Europe. Killing wolves was the Christian thing to do. By 1500, they were virtually extinct in Britain, and by the late 18th century they were driven out of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Low Countries.
The first European settlers brought this irrational hatred to what would become the United States. Because wolves were perceived as evil killers that threatened the livestock and the lives of American people, the U.S. government introduced a nationwide policy of wolf control.
President Theodore Roosevelt, a man who is generally renowned for his environmental activism, declared the wolf “the beast of waste and desolation” and called for its complete eradication. Wolves were shot, trapped, poisoned, tortured, and burned alive. Wolf skulls and pelts were piled high for victory photographs and to claim the lucrative bounties. Many hunters (often called “wolfers”) believed they served God and country by clearing the countryside of such vermin... Naturalist writer Barry Lopez asserts that Americans persecuted wolves almost pathologically, and that, “wolf killing goes much beyond predator control…the history of killing wolves shows far less restraint and far more perversity.”4
Only with the growing environmentalist movement and the resulting Endangered Species Act from 1974 did the wolf population finally have a come-back. People had learned that predators regulate ecosystems. When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in 1995, it had an enormously beneficial effect on biodiversity – from soil and grass to insects and birds to herbivores and other predators. Scientists call this beneficial result the “trophic cascade”.5 “Trophic” refers to the different levels of the food chain, and wolves as apex predators have a cascading beneficial effect on all the trophic levels below them. Without top predators, elk will eat grasses, bushes, and even small trees in one location before moving on. In Yellowstone they had stripped much of the vegetation along the riverbanks. With the reintroduction of wolves, the elk were forced to run and keep moving which allowed young trees and shrubs to recover between migrations. The wolves also keep the coyote populations in check and help endangered grizzly bears who steal wolf kills to feed their cubs.
While grey wolves are protected in 44 of the lower 48 states, those in the northern Rocky Mountains of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming as well as portions of several nearby states lack protection. Some hunters and farmers are as bloodthirsty as their ancestors and use illegal methods such as airborne hunting or gruesome techniques such as the killing of litters in their dens. Montana and Idaho have legalized killing wolves on a massive scale, allowing the use of snares, extending the trapping season, and legalizing bounty hunting. The same methods are used to kill coyotes, foxes, and bobcats. Wildlife advocates object to the inhumane mass killing of wolves which jeopardizes their recovery.
Idaho's reckless, violent, massacre of wolves and their pups not only showcases the worst of state wildlife 'management,' it shines a light on the darkest corners of humanity.
--Samantha Bruegger, WildEarth Guardians
A year ago, 21 U.S. Senators led by Corey Booker wrote to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland urging an emergency relisting of the wolf on the federal threatened and endangered species list6. Close to 80 members of the House called for a similar action. So far, she has failed to do this.
Your lupine amigos photograph nicely here. I have a great passion for wolves. Thanks for this.