A killer. A manhunt. The triumph of justice and of the wolf.
The greatest event in Yellowstone history.
Greater Yellowstone was the last great truly intact ecosystem in the
temperate zones of the earth--until, in the 1920s, U.S. government
agents exterminated its top predator, the gray wolf. With traps and
rifles, even torching pups in their dens, the killing campaign was
entirely successful. The howl of the "evil" wolf was heard no more. The
"good" animals--elk, deer, bison--proliferated, until they too had to be
"managed."
Two decades later, recognizing that ecosystems lacking their keystone
predators tend to unravel, the visionary naturalist Aldo Leopold called
for the return of the wolf to Yellowstone. It would take another fifty
years for his vision to come true.
In the early 1990s, as the movement for Yellowstone wolf restoration
gained momentum, rage against it grew apace. When at last, in February
1995, fifteen wolves were trapped in Alberta and brought to acclimation
pens in Yellowstone, even then legal and political challenges continued.
There was also a lot of talk in the bars about "shoot, shovel, and shut
up."
While the wolves' enemies worked to return them to Canada, the
biologists in charge of the project feared that the wolves might well
return on their own. Once they were released, two packs remained in the
national park, but one bore only one pup and the other none. The other,
comprising Wolves Nine and Ten and Nine's yearling daughter,
disappeared.
They were in fact heading home. As they emerged from protected federal
land, an unemployed ne'er-do-well from Red Lodge, Montana, trained a
high-powered rifle on Wolf Number Ten and shot him through the chest.
Number Nine dug a den next to the body of her mate, and gave birth to
eight pups. The story of their rescue and the manhunt for the killer is
the heart of The Killing of Wolf Number Ten.
Read this book, and if you are ever fortunate enough to hear the howling
of Yellowstone wolves, you will always think of Wolves Nine and Ten. If
you ever see a Yellowstone wolf, chance are it will be carrying their
DNA.
The restoration of the wolf to Yellowstone is now recognized as one of
conservation's greatest achievements, and Wolves Nine and Ten will
always be known as its emblematic heroes.
