Carter Niemeyer's Wolfer Part 2: Of Wolf Hysteria, Witches, and "the Other"

 

Read Part 1: Thoughts on Wolf Wars

Not long after wolves began wandering south from Canada into Montana in the mid 1980s, livestock depredations began, first on the east side of Glacier Park.  In his memoir Wolfer, Carter Niemeyer talks about what it was like to be among the very first to deal with wolf –livestock conflicts and depredations in the region—conflicts that increased as more packs got established, and after the reintroduced Yellowstone and central Idaho wolves began to expand.  Carter’s very readable memoir is peppered with chronicles of investigations of dead livestock where a wolf was implicated, and “the wave of hysteria” that seemed to trail behind wolves.  Some of his anecdotes are funny, some strange, and others make you wonder about human intelligence. 

Carter had to learn how to deal with these mounting conflicts pretty much from scratch, based on his extensive experience with coyotes and other predators, and from talking to wolf experts in Minnesota, the only other area in the lower-48 states where wolves had not been extirpated.  He had to learn the ropes of darting, drugging, handling, and moving wolves away from areas where the depredations were occurring, in the hopes that they would not come back.  He also had to learn if a wolf had actually killed a stock animal, or if it had died from other causes.  This was important because compensation would be provided for verified wolf kills.  And verifications of an actual kill by a wolf (or by any other cause) is not as clear cut as one might think. 

Carter writes, “I was amazed that conservative, God-fearing rural folk could conjure such absurd ideas about how a farm animal became dead.  I was once called to a ranch north of Great Falls to look at a dead cow which had been reportedly mutilated by people—maybe devil worshipers—maybe aliens, according to the sheriff.” 

Carter’s style of investigation, which was very detailed and involved skinning the stock animal out to examine the cause of death, could not have been more different from the typical Wildlife Service trapper.  And, given the prevailing views of wolves, Carter’s approach didn’t go over all that well among some of his agency colleagues and others.  And that bothered him.  “I didn’t care for the escalating anti-wolf attitude, because it caused imprecise reasoning.  And imprecise reasoning was quickly followed by actions that didn’t solve the problem at the end.”

A bell went off in my head when I read that sentence.  That tracked my experience exactly.  The anti-wolf hysteria, and the resulting nonsensical actions—a knot of blame, retribution, hyperbole—get us further and further away from real-world problem solving needed to resolve conflicts with wolves.  This mindset promotes a pattern of polarization, which feeds on itself. Such hysteria may organize part of a community for or against a cause, but ultimately it drives communities apart.  It removes mindfulness, intelligence, and even practical action from the suite of possible, potentially constructive responses to a problematic situation. 

This kind of hysteria makes facts less relevant. Less than 1% of sheep losses in Idaho were caused by wolves in 2004—(the last year for which complete statistics were available)—and the Idaho and Montana figures are similar.  Also, for 2006, less than 1% of cattle losses in Wyoming were attributable to wolves.  (The primary causes of death include digestive problems, respiratory disease, birthing and other health problems. 

So what is it that explains this wolf hysteria? Is it being used to provide people a way to game the system to get compensation?  That might be plausible, since gaming the “system” and working angles for subsidies has been an art perfected on public lands in the West since before the Homestead Act.   

And, do some of the ranchers Carter describes really think that evidence of how a stock animal dies doesn’t really matter?  That no one was going to investigate a claim before handing over money from taxpayers and well-intentioned donors, in some cases thousands of dollars, for depredation claims? 

Maybe so, but I think that something deep, perhaps even hidden from human consciousness, is behind this hysteria, something that may be  rooted in the symbolic nature of the wolf itself.  To some, the wolf is Satan’s Dog, to others, the emblem of the nasty federal government, or the onerous Endangered Species Act, or the untamed frontier that westerners have tried so hard to dominate for so many decades.  The wolf has, unwittingly perhaps, become a lightning rod for the combined frustrations of those bound to ways of life in the West that are in decline, most often for economic reasons.

It’s a fact that the West is changing dramatically.  It’s becoming more urban, and the old ways of life aren’t working anymore for the traditional industries such as ranching, logging and mining.  As economist Ray Rasker and Tom Powers have repeatedly pointed out, the basis of the new West is retirement income, entrepreneurial/footloose “modem cowboys”, and in some areas, near national parks for example, tourism.  And a lot of people are moving here because of amenities: the clean water and air, and the abundance of wildlife.  These people are coming with different views and ways of valuing wildlife, including wolves.  Many do not share the traditional impulse to dominate nature and kill anything (especially carnivores) that gets in the way.  We are in a period of radical social transition in the West, and those with the traditional values systems are feeling deeply and profoundly threatened by the newcomers.   

This is not unlike what occurred during the 1500 and 1600s, when the witch craze began; it was a time of similar radical transformation, after major depopulation because of the plague, the Little Ice Age, and famine.  By the mid 1500s, the old style religion was not working for many Europeans anymore, as prayers were not stopping the devastating plague or the food shortages; frustration mounted and somebody needed to be blamed.  And it turned out to be the healers, mostly women, people on the fringe of the male-dominated social system.  Many were midwives or herbalists (doctors of the time), who were accused of witchcraft.  They were convenient, because often they were single, they didn’t have political standing, and they lay outside the male power structure. It has been well documented that instigators deliberately went into communities looking to incite trouble, and searched for those who were potentially weird, or just different, or lived alone, or didn’t have children. At the end of the day, thousands of innocent people were burned at the stake because somebody needed to be blamed for a system that had come unraveled. 

I think I’m on firm ground in making this analogy between wolves and witches, because of my own experience in the wolf arena for the past two decades. If I had any doubt about it, I reached the conclusion that wolf-hating is the displacement of other anxieties during a confrontation about four years ago with an elk outfitter, after a near violent wolf hearing in Cody.  This particular outfitter—let’s call him Joe—came after me after the hearing looking for a fight about NRDC, wolves, eastern elitists, etc, etc.  But after a while, he switched gears, and started talking about the increase in the cost of living in Cody, the decline in elk outfitting, the escalating land prices, and problems with the weather, drought and warm fall weather that made elk hunting more difficult.  And then he said something really interesting: “you know you can’t control a lot of things, but guys out here feel that at least they can go out and kill a wolf.” 

This was one of those “ah hah” moments for me. In a context of mounting frustration and a culture of guns, a wolf, the foreigner, the other, the devil dog, is the perfect target.  Even better, it has no voice—it can’t argue with you that killing it won’t solve your economic and social woes.

The problem is that, at bottom, taking one’s anger out on wolves doesn’t solve the real problems for individuals, communities, and the wolves and other wildlife that make our ecosystems so special. 

I learned something new about this predisposition to find a “scapegoat” from an interesting book I’ve been reading called Buddha’s Brain, by Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius.  The book talks at length about research on evolution and neural-biology of the human brain, and their effects on family and community, and pressures that have long contributed to aggressive thoughts or behaviors.  Citing a 2007 paper in “Science” by Jay Choi and S. Bowles, “The Co-evolution of Parochial Altruism and War”, the authors say, “in those tough [prehistoric] environments, it was reproductively advantageous for our ancestors to be cooperative within their own band, but aggressive toward other bands.”  The authors go on to discuss the neural dynamics of aggression and hate saying, “the result is… a familiar one: take good care of “us”, and fear, disdain and attack “them”.  Often these tendencies are manipulated, such as by the demonization of “them” and the class justification for strong father authoritarian control.  But those manipulations would not be nearly as successful if it weren’t for the legacy of between group aggression and evolutionary history”.

Recognizing how our brains are wired, and our tendency to pursue aggressive behavior toward out-groups, how can we change our response to “the other”?  I think it starts by changing the narrative about the other, and expanding the sense of “we”.  Ecology teaches us that we are all connected in profoundly complex and deep ways. But if we can begin to understand how the “other” works, and put ones’ self in “the others” shoes, deeply listening for what’s behind the frustration with wolves, maybe we can learn something that could help expand the “we”, and diminish the polarized line between “them” and “us”. 

This happened that night in Cody talking to Joe. I felt for him and had a deeper appreciation for what he was going through. He, in turn, I think got a better sense about who I was: not an outsider, but someone who had lived in the Yellowstone ecosystem for 30 years, and even had hiked through the country where he outfitted. It was clear that he was afraid that his line of work, and the personal identity he had built around it, did not have a promising long term future—wolves or no wolves.  He was uncomfortable with the changes in his community that are like so many other in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, becoming increasingly yuppified, expensive, and filled with people with different value systems.  I shared his dismay at all the trophy houses going up in the North Fork of the Shoshone, and the fact that many of their owners lived there just a few months a year.

So, in one personal encounter, I can say that both of us changed how we saw “the other”. If the resolution of differences about wolf issues could be achieved at a personal scale alone, we probably would be doing a lot better at it than we are, if we put our minds and hearts into just talking to one another honestly and openly. But these issues play out on many scales, from the personal to the community, to the state and to the national levels.

Unfortunately, there are few safe and creative arenas at larger scales where we can talk about the problems and challenges associated with wolves.  And too often, it seems that the government agencies really don’t want to engage people in meaningful ways, or find new arenas to foster the resolution of problems.  People know when government agencies are not listening to them or taking their concerns seriously.  This behavior is guaranteed to further alienate the public on all sides of the issues, and deepen cynicism about government. And that is basically where we find ourselves with the wolf debate today.

 

Next up: solutions piece

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