The Big Bad Wolf and the American Mind

By Hillary Rosner, 12-21-05

Everywhere you turn these days, there seem to be headlines about wolves. “Idaho to Take Over Managing Wolves in January,� read an AP story in yesterday’s Idaho Statesman. “Wolfless Nevada,� declared another AP piece, in the Casper Star-Tribune. (That fascinating story was about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejecting a petition to delist wolves in Nevada, despite the fact that the species was completely wiped out in Nevada several decades ago.) Across the West, states are grappling with the question of how to manage wolves: whether or not they should be listed, what should happen when they interfere with ranching, how many is too many, who should be allowed to decide.

Given that wolves are crossing state borders — from Idaho to Oregon, for one — the wolf will soon be making an appearance around the Northwest, at least in federal court.

In the ten years since wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone, the animals have become a symbol of hope for wildlife lovers, a soul-stirring sign that the wild has not been entirely eradicated from the West. But for some ranchers and others who will never love the howling canines, the wolf is still a creature to loathe, a pest no better than a rat that should be left to survive only in the smallest possible pack numbers.

If the headlines are any indication, it seems like the anti-wolf faction may be winning – though their victories are hidden behind a veil of dispassionate policymaking. For all the wolf’s success at making a comeback, the talk still seems to be about just how many it’s okay to off. Take the Idaho headline I mentioned. The news summary of the story on Headwaters News goes like this: “Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and Secretary of Interior Gale Norton will sign an agreement handing control of most wolves over to the state, which will give ranchers the ability to apply for state permits to kill problem wolves and will allow state wildlife officials to apply for permits from the Interior Department to kill wolves harming big-game herds.�

On the one hand, we’ve come a long way from the torture and gleeful slaughter of wolves that Jon Coleman describes in his book Vicious: Wolves and Men in America, published last year. But on the other hand, wolves are still viewed by many with a strange and seemingly unparalleled hatred; they’re endowed with a longstanding mythical status as terrible creatures, a status that even time apparently can’t shake.

American attitudes toward wolves are tied up in the strange relationship we have with the idea of the wild more generally: we want it, but only in places where we designate it, only as decreed and managed by us. So, too, wolves are fine, but only if they stay within certain boundaries and keep their wolfishness to a minimum. Keeping wolves in check is a sign, somehow, that we’ve triumphed as a civilization; let them get out of control, and you never know where else nature might come insidiously creeping back in.

We’ve gotten to a point where anything allowed to retain its stamp of “wild� – whether animal, plant, or landscape – must be rigorously managed down to the last detail. Perhaps there’s no way around it. But it undoubtedly has an impact on the American psyche, perhaps subconsciously altering the way we interpret words like “wild� and “wilderness.�

In a recent Google News alert, I received a link to a marketing site hyping DisneyWorld’s http://www.magicalmountain.net/WDWNewsDetail.asp?page=1&NewsID=1056�>Fort Wilderness – a campground-as-theme-park, or perhaps theme-park-as-campground, from what I can gather. It’s not in the West, of course, but it fits in with this larger idea of wanting wild things and places in user-friendly morsels. “Relax within the confines of the lush Florida landscape lined with rustic woods teaming with friendly, local wildlife,� the site proclaims. (I’m not sure whether the local wildlife are real or animated.) At Fort Wilderness, you can hook up your RV or stay in a spacious log cabin – complete with air conditioning, cable TV, and maid service. If this “quaint, rustic setting� makes you hungry, head to the Trail’s End Restaurant for a BBQ buffet.

Suffice it to say there are no wolves at Fort Wilderness. (Except, maybe, the Big Bad Wolf.)






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