Return of the Wolf
Conflict & Coexistence

Silver Medal winner Environment/​Ecology Independent Publisher Book Awards

 

70 photographs with colour insert

A BC Bestseller

Wolves are the mara­thon run­ners of the an­im­al world, cap­able of tire­lessly trot­ting all night with bursts of speed up to sixty kilo­metres per hour when tak­ing down prey. They de­vel­op com­plex hunt­ing strategies, are able to hear sounds more than ten kilo­metres away and can swim thir­teen kilo­metres of open ocean.

As pack an­im­als, wolves com­mu­nic­ate in a vari­ety of ways in­clud­ing body lan­guage, scent mark­ing and vo­cal­iz­ing, with each wolf pos­sess­ing a howl as dis­tinct as a hu­man fingerprint.

Wolves are per­cept­ive, dis­cern­ing and ex­per­i­ence a wide range of emo­tions. Some sci­ent­ists be­lieve that their com­plex so­cial struc­tures and in­tim­ate fam­ily bonds are more sim­il­ar to hu­mans’ than any oth­er mam­mal in­clud­ing primates.

The car­ni­vore has unique re­la­tion­ships with ravens, bears, cou­gars and coyotes. But its most com­plex re­la­tion­ship – and per­haps most dan­ger­ous – is with humans.

Wolves once roamed most of North America and Eurasia but vig­or­ous erad­ic­a­tion pro­grams drastic­ally re­duced their num­bers and in some cases des­troyed en­tire pop­u­la­tions. Now wolves are re­turn­ing to their former hab­it­at and en­coun­ters with hu­mans are be­com­ing more frequent.

In Return of the Wolf, Paula Wild ex­am­ines the com­plex web of myth and mis­con­cep­tion that sur­rounds this pred­at­or. Along the way, she in­vest­ig­ates why Eurasian wolves ap­pear to be more ag­gress­ive to­ward hu­mans than their North American cous­ins and looks at how people’s be­ha­viour can put wolves at risk.

She also ex­plores the dy­nam­ic between dogs and wolves, as well as in­nov­at­ive meth­ods to pre­vent live­stock pred­a­tion and the con­tro­versy over wolf culls to save en­dangered caribou.

In a com­pel­ling blend of nat­ur­al his­tory, in­di­gen­ous stor­ies, per­son­al ac­counts and in­ter­views with sci­ent­ists and oth­ers, Wild ex­am­ines our evolving re­la­tion­ship with wolves. She dis­cov­ers that the can­ids can and do live closer to hu­man hab­it­a­tion than most people real­ize and con­sults with wild­life spe­cial­ists, ranch­ers and rur­al res­id­ents on ways to min­im­ize conflict.

Is it pos­sible for hu­mans and wolves to co­ex­ist? One thing is cer­tain: just as wolves have af­fected hu­man ac­tions, at­ti­tudes and cul­tures for cen­tur­ies, hu­man per­cep­tions con­tin­ue to shape the des­tiny of the wolf.

 

 

Print edi­tions

Available in Canada October 2018

Available in the USA March 2019

Ebooks

Available in Canada October 2018

Internationally March 2019

 

 

 

Return of the Wolf can be ordered at book­stores through­out Canada and the USA.

It can also be ordered from Indigo, amazon​.ca and amazon​.com

If you’d like an auto­graphed copy, con­tact Paula.

 

Banner photo: Members of the Druid pack chase a bull elk in Yellowstone National Park. Photo by Doug Smith, US National Park Service.