The Man Who Lives with Wolves. Shaun Ellis

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СКАЧАТЬ program had been a political hot potato for many years, ever since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which was responsible for protecting endangered species, proposed a recovery plan for the wolf in 1980. The wolf was officially classified as endangered in forty-eight states in 1978. The plan was to reintroduce wolves in northwestern Montana, central Idaho, and Yellowstone National Park, but it had been thwarted again and again by legal action, largely by farming communities afraid that wolves roaming wild would kill their livestock. Finally, in 1994, after much argument, the secretary of the interior signed the release plan, which called for state agencies to manage the wolves once they had been released, but all three states declined to cooperate. Finally, the Nez Percé came up with a management program for Idaho, and in January 1995, after fifteen years of debate, fifteen Canadian gray wolves were released into about thirteen million acres of national forest in the Rockies. Two years later they released another twenty and they were doing so well that the biologists were already predicting that it would take no more than seven years before they could be taken off the endangered species list.

      We arrived at the Center just as it was getting dark and everyone came out to welcome us. I think they were keen to take a look at the madman who had traveled all the way from England. It was about half an hour’s drive out of the town of Winchester up a windy mountain track. The whole area was breathtakingly beautiful, with mountain trails through forests of giant ponderosa pines and Douglas firs. The main attraction was a big lake that brought tourists to the area as well as eagles and fish-eating birds. In summer the lake offered canoeing and water sports and in winter, ice-skating and ice fishing. The population of this little town was less than three hundred people and the facilities amounted to a canteen, a pub, a grocery store, and a gas station, and that was where we went each week to stock up on supplies and to have a shower and launder clothes.

      There was no running water in the camp and no electricity; drinking water had to be carried in and cooking was all done on propane gas appliances. One of the biologists showed me around. The accommodation comprised a cluster of individual tepees, one smaller one that was the toilet, and one larger tent, set apart from the main living quarters, which was the kitchen and canteen, where there was always a big pot of coffee available. It was set apart because bears frequently came out of the forest in search of food, and any food had to be either buried or hung up to try to prevent them from taking it. The tepees were allocated in order of seniority, those at the heart of the camp being the most prestigious. There was one, I noticed, that couldn’t have been farther away. It was right on the edge of the forest; it had a hole in the roof, moss growing up the sides of the canvas, and a door that was hanging off. Pity the poor devil who has to live in that one, I thought to myself. And yes, I was that poor devil.

      The tepees were semipermanent. Each one had a wooden floor, a wooden platform bed about three feet off the ground, and a little wood-burning stove, which was essential in those temperatures. That night I sat in my tent listening to the wolves that I would meet in the morning, and stoked the fire with logs. I was broke, I had none of the right equipment because I’d had to spend everything I had on airfare, and I had borrowed a friend’s sleeping bag that was far too short. I had no pillow and no creature comforts like those that adorned the other tepees, but by the time I put my head down, my nerves had dissolved and I had a very good feeling in the pit of my stomach. I felt that this could be what I had been searching for.

      The next morning I was awake before anyone else, too excited and too uncomfortable to sleep. I pulled on my army boots, put on fewer layers than I would have liked, and stepped outside into the cold of first light; it must have been about minus fifteen degrees. I thought that I could compensate for poor-quality clothing by my knowledge of survival, the golden rule for which is to be aware of your body temperature and resist the temptation to put on every garment you have. If you warm up and sweat, everything becomes wet and then icy cold. As the sun started to rise over the Sawtooth Mountains, I could see the full beauty of my surroundings. The snow was two to three feet deep and crisp underfoot and lay heavily on the tops of the trees—the most magnificent trees with huge trunks that rose more than a hundred feet above my head and smelled faintly of vanilla. It was so silent you could have heard a pin drop; I had arrived in paradise.

      The wolf enclosure was at the center of the camp, near the visitor center, where members of the public came to see the wolves and learn about them and the history and culture of the Nez Percé. It was one of the main tourist attractions of the area, but also very useful as a way of countering the fear and prejudice that so many people held toward these creatures. They had eleven timber wolves in captivity living in forty-eight acres of forest that was double fenced with a strip between the two fences. It became my job to walk around between the fences in the early morning looking for breaches or for frozen drifts of snow that could bring the ground high enough for the wolves to escape over the top.

      After the small enclosure at Sparkwell it was good to see these wolves had so much space to roam, although on subsequent visits I realized that even these wolves could suffer from the behavioral problems I had seen in small enclosures and always attributed to the cramped conditions. On the face of it, these animals had everything that nature intended and yet they began to have difficulty living with one another. It was a valuable lesson that space was not the most important factor. What was missing, I came to realize, was a rival pack. Just as human beings pull together in the face of a common threat or enemy, so do wolves. If life is too easy for them, food is plentiful and there is no immediate danger, they start to turn on one another.

      Once back from my dawn patrol I would go into the cooking tent and fill in the log book, noting any unusual findings. Then I’d pour myself a mug of hot black coffee, or if no one else was up, I would brew the first pot of the morning. Coffee was the only thing that was provided. Everyone bought and cooked food individually, but there was coffee ready throughout the day and for the first three weeks, I lived on black coffee and Jujubes, a sugar jelly sweet that I discovered I could buy very cheaply in the grocery store in Winchester. I used to go down there—the walk took about two hours—and buy three pounds at a time, which only cost a few cents, and which saw me through the coming week. They were packed full of sugar, of course, which gave me an instant high followed by a terrible low. It wasn’t an ideal diet to be living on when working eighteen-hour days in subzero temperatures, but I didn’t have enough money for anything else and I knew that it was only a matter of time before I wouldn’t even be able to afford the Jujubes.

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