As discussed in the previous chapter, for centuries wolves were considered humanity's worst natural enemy.

Western European countries went to considerable lengths to contain and eventually eradicate wolves from much of the continent. In France, residual resident or territorial wolves were eliminated between 1882 and 1930. The last reward for a dead wolf was given in 1896 and the final known wolf-on-human attack took place in 1918 (Moriceau 2013a; 2013b). Consequently, for almost a century the species was absent as a resident species in France, with dispersing lone wolves shot or chased as ‘escapees’ (Bernard 1981; Moriceau 2013a).

However, in 1992 wolves started to steadily recolonise the French Alps from Italy. They are currently resident in South-Eastern France and have started to recolonise the Vosges mountain range. Dispersive young wolves from the eastern populations are also progressively settling further into the French interior and other parts of Europe. This spectacular recovery, aided by the full protection of the EU Habitats Directive, has placed the wolf in a positive light as an ambassador species for the restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems, emblematic for ecologically sustainable management and the protection of the countryside.

The return of the wolf received a largely positive response from the general public, including many city-dwellers. Among supporters, wolves are regarded as ‘super-predators’ deserving full protection. However, this perspective often fails to acknowledge that wolves were once reviled as foul and cunning man-eating beasts, as the eminent scientist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon branded the species in his Histoire Naturelle (1749–83). Indeed, there is much French historical documentation, illustration and oral testament describing dangerous interactions of wolves with people, as there is elsewhere in Europe where wolves were long existent (Bernard 1981). The dark rural memories of the Big Bad Wolf once held by agro-communities and wolf opponents resurfaced as farmers began to experience wolf attacks on their livestock again. Their concerns (Fig 2.1a) are not entirely unfounded, as cultural-historical analysis reveals.

The so-called ‘wolf wars’ of old in France and other parts of southern Europe tend to be overlooked by some authors and biologists who, portraying the wolf as a benign and charismatic animal, failed to reflect on the past, and the potential danger wolves pose to humans in a modern Western setting (Linnell et al 2002; Radinger 2004; Alleau and Linnell 2015; Linnell and Alleau 2017; Taake 2020).

No other mammal is so deeply embedded and disparately considered in human thinking and cultural expressions in history as the wolf. In addition to the multifarious representations of the animal in mythology, religion, fairy tales and legend, it was regarded by the psychologist C G Jung as an archetypical being or ancient echo of the human collective subconscious (Jung 2003). In this figurative moral light, the wolf persistently and universally inspires human traits, both good and evil. According to a Cherokee tale, one can choose to feed either one's inner harmonious white wolf or the demeaning ominous black wolf, a parallel to the Christian belief of the demonic wolf amongst the innocent ‘human flock’.

The wolf became part of human culture far back in prehistory. According to recent estimates, wolves bonded repeatedly and in multiple ways with people from around 35,000 years ago, with several lines leading to (proto)dogs across Eurasia. These adopted ‘wolfdogs’ had social behavioural traits that were familiar and valued by people (Miklosi 2015; Shipman 2021; Schleidt and Shalter 2003). The wolf as a wild and untamed ‘counterpart’ remained forever detached from human civilisation, at times perceived as a fringe animal; one incessantly stirring the human imagination.

THE WOLF AS TOTEM

Palaeolithic humans, with their predominant animistic worldview, admired wolves as skilled competitors rather than dangerous rivals. Many northern shamanic cultures worshipped the wolf as a spiritually guiding ‘power animal’ (Lopez 1978; Eliade 1989; Hunt 2008). Despite this widespread veneration, representation of the wolf in cave and carving art is scant, certainly when compared to more common renderings of predators such as the cave bear, hyena, lion and leopard (Guthrie 2005; Shipman 2009). However, at least three wolf depictions can be found in the Altxerri Cave in Spain and the Font-de-Gaume and La Grotte de la Vache caves in France; in the latter there is a bone carving of two wolves interacting, indicating perhaps that early modern humans were interested in the social nature of the animal.

SPECTACULAR COMEBACK

Shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain, wolves dispersed from their Eastern Bloc refuges to recolonise much of their former territory in the West. There had been sporadic forays into Germany since World War II, but these wolves usually ended up as ‘roadkill’ or were shot as ‘zoo escapees’ (Worner 2014; Hachtel 2018). However, with the protection of the wolf in Poland in 1995 (Gula 2008; Nowak et al 2021) and a corresponding reduction in hunting in other parts of Eastern Europe, the stage was set for a return to Germany. This commenced with a successful wolf pairing in Lusatia (Lausitz) in eastern Saxony. In 2000 the first pups were born after more than 150 years of extinction (Reinhardt and Kluth 2007), sparking a new wolf era in north-western Europe1 (Ansorge et al 2010).

At first the Lausitz wolf population spread slowly around a close-knit formation of wolf territories in former lignite (‘brown coal’) extraction sites. From around 2008, young wolves from here and more from the east began to journey more widely across Germany, settling on former military sites and other large inaccessible areas such as peatlands along a north-western line (Andersen et al 2015; Reinhardt et al 2019; Van Maanen 2019). Here the wolves selected habitats with pronounced wild ungulate prey abundance and limited human interference.

By 2013 the German wolf population had reached 18 confirmed packs. That year the first pups were born in the Luneburg Heath region near Munster, marking the westernmost settlement of the wolf population. The population subsequently grew to 60 wolf packs in 2017; and again to 157 wolf packs in 2021, producing a recorded total of 556 pups (DBBW 2021a).

Wolf territories are currently concentrated in regions of northern Germany (notably the Luneburg and Lausitz regions), with still large ‘wolf-free’ gaps in other parts of the country (Fig 24.1), despite some of these areas appearing – superficially at least – to be suitable wolf habitat (eg with high prey abundance).

After the reintroduction of gray wolves

to Yellowstone and, as anticipated, their culling

of deer, trees grew beyond the deer stunt

of the mid-century. In their up reach

songbirds nested, who scattered

seed for underbrush, and in that cover

warrened snowshoe hare. Weasel and water shrew

returned, also vole, and came soon hawk

and falcon, bald eagle, kestrel, and with them

hawk shadow, falcon shadow. Eagle shade

and kestrel shade haunted newly-berried

runnels where deer no longer rummaged, cautious

as they were, now, of being surprised by wolves. Berries

brought bear, while undergrowth and willows, growing

now right down to the river, brought beavers,

who dam. Muskrats came to the dams, and tadpoles.

Came, too, the night song of the fathers

of tadpoles. With water striders, the dark

gray American dipper bobbed in fresh pools

of the river, and fish stayed, and the bear, who

fished, also culled deer fawns, and to their kill scraps

came vulture and coyote, long gone in the region

until now, and their scat scattered seed, and more

trees, brush, and berries grew up along the river

that had run straight and so flooded but thus dammed,

compelled to meander, is less prone to overrun. Don’t

you tell me this is not the same as my story. All this

life born from one hungry animal, this whole,

new landscape, the course of the river changed,

I know this. I reintroduced myself to myself, this time

a mother. After which, nothing was ever the same.

In North America, and more recently in Europe, the grey wolf (Canis lupus, and its close relative the Eurasian wolf, Canis lupus lupus) have staged a remarkable recovery over the last few decades. In this book we explore various aspects of this recovery, alongside some of the history, literature and myth surrounding this most iconic of species. We also meet some wolves that have headed south and consider the many faces of the dingo – from outback wolf to feral dog, and the Tasmanian wolf that never was a wolf. Perhaps no other species has polarised human opinion more than the wolf, a trend which continues to this day. The wolf can be simultaneously an inspirational emblem of the wild and an embodiment of evil, a pest to be managed or worse, eradicated (as was the case in the UK). In other books and papers, many of the authors in this volume have spoken of the need for compassion and coexistence with non-human species, even if at times this means accepting that our behaviour has to change and this might come at a cost.

As with our previous work on bears, we knew that there was a rich seam of information to mine here – not only on the biology and taxonomy of wolves, but more importantly on the human-wolf relationship and how this has been expressed in folklore, in first nations’ societies, in adult and children's literature, in exhibitions, zoos, museums and in art. Given a book of this scope, it was also inevitable that we would end up invoking Godwin's Law, and the emergence of Nazi Werewolves from Outer Space. We wanted also to discuss how our perception of wolves is influenced by the manner in which they are revealed to the public in the wild, to the fascinated gaze of tourists.

To achieve these wide-ranging aims we have been fortunate to bring together a distinguished field of authors, all of whom have addressed wolf species from different standpoints. To all of them we are extremely grateful for their time, expertise and patience, but especially so to the two doyens of wolf studies and rewilding, Luigi Boitani and Mark Fisher, who have kindly provided the Foreword and Afterword for this book