i howl for them

at least one of you out there know why i like wolves.

i found this article by german magazine “der spiegel” back in march and didn’t give it much attention, except being mildly surprised to read that wolves have already ventured forward that far again from the east after dying out in the western parts of europe in the 19th century. i had heard that there were still wolves in poland, but that article claims groups of wolves are back in spain, portugal, france and parts of eastern and central europe. about 20 wolves had been sighted along the german-polish border in brandenburg and saxony.

now i discovered a follow-up on that article and that got me more interested. the count of wolves in germany has gone up to around 30, and it seems for the first time in centuries those wolves have found a foothold and started reproducing again, finding an ideal territory in eastern germany. but parts of southern and western Germany offer good “wolf country”, too, and some of the offspring (who, like humans, “leave home” after they’ve grown up and start a family elsewhere) have already disappeared from the site of their first sightings.

this news makes me happy, but the fear of wolves is already up. we have all grown up with the “little red riding hood” tale of the brothers grimm, and people are demonizing the wolf all over europe. in fact a healthy wolf will not go after humans, if he can he will avoid contact at all costs for his own safety.
the state of saxony has started an educational program to teach at local schools and town fairs to straighten out some popular myths about wolves, but already people there are getting concerned the wolf population is getting “out of control” and want to go back to shooting wolves.
but it’s not only their primal fear of wolves, they are worried to lose one of their economic factors – wild game. not that i think humans have more right to claim that for themselves than wild beasts. but usually predators don’t “wipe out” their source of food. they go after old, and sick, and slow specimens.

an amazing book i have loved since my early youth sprang to my mind immediately on reading this, the book “never cry wolf” by farley mowat. he tells the story of how he is assigned by the canadian wildlife service to live in the canadian tundra for a year and investigate the diminishment of the arctic caribou by the canadian wolves. instead he finds that, except for a few weeks each year when the caribou travel through their territory, the wolves mainly live off mice. if they go for caribou, they contribute to natural selection by choosing weak and sick animals. who had been killing the caribou in large numbers were mostly human hunters. mowat so claims that a wolf pack as part of the ecosystem is much less of a threat to its balance than a human.

i am certainly keeping my attention on this. i think there is a lot of trouble ahead, fear and hate of the wolf making it impossible for people to see the wolves’ natural right to live and to spread, reclaiming those areas where the have been eradicated before. it seems only humans don’t know how to share their territory. wolves do.

~ by bine on November 6, 2007.