Read Online The Company of Wolves by Peter Steinhart - Free Book Online
Authors: Peter Steinhart
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the end of the world. That myth may well have seeded the twentieth century’s view that it would be war, rather than disease, overpopulation, famine, or pollution, that ultimately destroyed humankind.
By the fifteenth century, Europeans widely believed that there were wolves that prowled about human habitations and could not be killed. They were, according to the writings of religious scholars, emissaries of the Devil. Between 1598 and 1600, a French judge sentenced six hundred people to death, believing the Devil had rubbed their bodies with a satanic unguent, turned them into werewolves, and sent them to torment the countryside.
In spasms of civic spirit, European communities launched organizedwolf hunts. The French army designated
louvetiers
, officers charged with organizing ordinary citizens to hunt wolves, and the office persisted into the twentieth century. The British felt so beset by wolves that in 1652 Oliver Cromwell forbade the export of Irish wolfhounds, lest Ireland have an inadequate supply of the dogs.
The war against wolves came to the New World as a virus in the mind of the first Europeans to settle North America. Wherever it found farmers keeping livestock, it grew deadly. The first domestic livestock arrived in the New World in 1512. In 1609, cattle, pigs, and horses arrived at Jamestown. Early settlements carved pastures out of the almost continuous forest of the Eastern Seaboard. That concentrated cattle and sheep onto open ground, where it was relatively easy for wolves to attack. At the same time, the settlers so reduced the deer and other native prey of wolves, that wolves were
compelled
to feed on livestock. The result was that, within twenty years, the colonies were establishing bounties on wolves. Massachusetts installed a bounty in 1630, Jamestown less than two years later.
We can get some idea what indiscriminate trapping, poisoning, and shooting might have done to wolf populations by looking at what happens to coyote and mountain-lion populations today in the western states. Not all coyotes attack sheep. Resident breeding pairs of coyotes tend to hold a territory and to drive out young dispersers, who have left their birthplaces and gone looking for unoccupied space to claim as their own. If the resident coyotes do not eat sheep, there is little or no predation on the neighboring ranchers’ flocks. But if the resident pair is eliminated, the territory becomes a sink into which young wolves disperse from neighboring areas. Moreover, constant shooting lowers the age at which females bear young and raises the number of young in an average litter. So, where coyotes are shot, population density is apt to be high, competition for food intense, and the loss of sheep more likely.
A similar process may have occurred among mountain lions in California. In a study of mountain-lion predation on deer fawns in the Sierra National Forest, researchers found that mountain lions took a very high toll on the young deer. But they had trouble keeping the radio-collared lions on the airwaves, because poachers were shooting them. One of the collars ended up broadcasting from the bottom of a lake. With the poaching, there may have been no residentlions available to keep dispersers moving on. The researcher, perhaps not coincidentally, reported the highest density of mountain lions known to science.
Wolves, like coyotes, reproduce at earlier ages and have larger litters when their population is dramatically reduced. To control wolf numbers, the population must be reduced at least 70 percent each year. Early on, bounty hunting didn’t destroy that many wolves, and probably did little more than give ranchers the impression that they had to keep up the pressure to prevent wolves from simply overwhelming them. In 1925, Henry Boice of the Chiricahua Cattle Company in Arizona observed that, although bounty hunters were taking 15 to 125 wolves a year from ranch properties, “the number of wolves running on our range
By the fifteenth century, Europeans widely believed that there were wolves that prowled about human habitations and could not be killed. They were, according to the writings of religious scholars, emissaries of the Devil. Between 1598 and 1600, a French judge sentenced six hundred people to death, believing the Devil had rubbed their bodies with a satanic unguent, turned them into werewolves, and sent them to torment the countryside.
In spasms of civic spirit, European communities launched organizedwolf hunts. The French army designated
louvetiers
, officers charged with organizing ordinary citizens to hunt wolves, and the office persisted into the twentieth century. The British felt so beset by wolves that in 1652 Oliver Cromwell forbade the export of Irish wolfhounds, lest Ireland have an inadequate supply of the dogs.
The war against wolves came to the New World as a virus in the mind of the first Europeans to settle North America. Wherever it found farmers keeping livestock, it grew deadly. The first domestic livestock arrived in the New World in 1512. In 1609, cattle, pigs, and horses arrived at Jamestown. Early settlements carved pastures out of the almost continuous forest of the Eastern Seaboard. That concentrated cattle and sheep onto open ground, where it was relatively easy for wolves to attack. At the same time, the settlers so reduced the deer and other native prey of wolves, that wolves were
compelled
to feed on livestock. The result was that, within twenty years, the colonies were establishing bounties on wolves. Massachusetts installed a bounty in 1630, Jamestown less than two years later.
We can get some idea what indiscriminate trapping, poisoning, and shooting might have done to wolf populations by looking at what happens to coyote and mountain-lion populations today in the western states. Not all coyotes attack sheep. Resident breeding pairs of coyotes tend to hold a territory and to drive out young dispersers, who have left their birthplaces and gone looking for unoccupied space to claim as their own. If the resident coyotes do not eat sheep, there is little or no predation on the neighboring ranchers’ flocks. But if the resident pair is eliminated, the territory becomes a sink into which young wolves disperse from neighboring areas. Moreover, constant shooting lowers the age at which females bear young and raises the number of young in an average litter. So, where coyotes are shot, population density is apt to be high, competition for food intense, and the loss of sheep more likely.
A similar process may have occurred among mountain lions in California. In a study of mountain-lion predation on deer fawns in the Sierra National Forest, researchers found that mountain lions took a very high toll on the young deer. But they had trouble keeping the radio-collared lions on the airwaves, because poachers were shooting them. One of the collars ended up broadcasting from the bottom of a lake. With the poaching, there may have been no residentlions available to keep dispersers moving on. The researcher, perhaps not coincidentally, reported the highest density of mountain lions known to science.
Wolves, like coyotes, reproduce at earlier ages and have larger litters when their population is dramatically reduced. To control wolf numbers, the population must be reduced at least 70 percent each year. Early on, bounty hunting didn’t destroy that many wolves, and probably did little more than give ranchers the impression that they had to keep up the pressure to prevent wolves from simply overwhelming them. In 1925, Henry Boice of the Chiricahua Cattle Company in Arizona observed that, although bounty hunters were taking 15 to 125 wolves a year from ranch properties, “the number of wolves running on our range
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