There is a place up north, far north.
A place called Wolf country.
When I heard that wolves had been removed
from the endangered species list,
after 40 years of protection, I was surprised.
As I knew we only had a few thousand wolves
left in the country.
And it troubled me that we were still
so divided in our thinking
about this highly intelligent species.
So I decided to travel to places
where they still could be found
and talk to people who knew and studied them,
and somehow try to understand why
there were those who still feared and misunderstood them.
Wow, it's a beautiful day.
And we're headed up to northern Minnesota
to go see Jim Brandenburg.
Jim Brandenburg has been photographing
and writing about wolves for over 45 years.
He's known all over the world for his study of wolves.
This is a really unique area that we're going to.
It's... it's actually called wolf country,
and where Jim lives, it borders on the boundary waters canoe area,
which has a million acres of pure wilderness.
Being out here, it's very different from where I grew up.
You can see all kinds of wildlife.
You can see eagles,
and if you're lucky, you might even see a wolf.
This is northern Minnesota.
It definitely takes a unique and hearty person
to live out here.
Everybody's up here for a different reason.
My reason was to be close to the wilderness and to photograph wolves.
Or to see wolves, I didn't have to photograph them,
I just want to be around them.
And it evolved, it took me years,
many, many years to get some decent photographs,
so it wasn't a practical consideration,
it wasn't a job, or a career move
to come up here and photograph wolves,
and do posters and do books and do movies.
It was just an intuitive fire inside of me.
I got into photographing wolves and telling their story
because I thought they were the most persecuted animal in the world.
More than lions, more than tigers,
I really believe the wolf... the wolf's reputation
is worst, misplaced reputation of any animal in the world.
And I thought, there's a story.
1968,
about a mile from here, I was walking with my camera,
Nikon F manual exposure with a 300-millimeter lens,
snowshoes, on lake Juan
at the end of the Fernwood trail, which is right here,
I saw a wolf before it saw me.
I fell down onto the ice and the snow,
crouching, thinking maybe, maybe
I can sneak up on this wolf,
maybe the wolf won't see me.
The wolf kept coming, the wolf saw me,
and it said, "ah, is that food, is that a beaver?"
"Is that a dead moose? Is that a dead deer,
is it... what is that thing?"
The wolf started stalking me, you think I was excited?
That's one of my first encounters with a wolf,
and I was stalked by a wolf.
I have photographs to prove it.
Not just a story.
I cherish those photographs,
but you should see the look in that wolf's face
when it finally decided that I was a human.
That's when I knew that wolves were slightly
different than what I thought they were.
I could see all the embarrassment
condensed in one expression, and walking away,
like, "well you fooled me for a second, but don't tell anybody."
That whole...
the series of photographs is precious,
I never even published it.
Steve Piragis and his wife
have lived up on the edge of the boundary waters canoe area
for over 35 years,
outside of a town called Ely, Minnesota,
which is the closest town to wolf country,
with a population of 3,500 people.
They came and fell in love with the wilderness
and decided to make it their permanent home.
Now it's their backyard.
They have an outfitting company,
Piragis northwoods company,
where they lead canoe excursions,
including howling for wolves canoe trip.
You know, I mean, we enjoy that we live in a place
that's wild enough that we have wild wolves
in our neighborhood, and we hear 'em howling,
and I mean, I had a great experience with wolves, myself,
oh, just a half... oh, about a mile actually, from here,
when I was out on a run, very unusual opportunity
to see wolves close up.
There was, uh... two adults
and two... two very young pups.
Uh, it was in may, so it was probably...
they were probably six or eight weeks old,
and they were down in kind of a hollow in a clear cut,
so I could... as I ran along the road,
I could see these four wolves,
two adults, two pups.
And, uh... they saw me,
and the mom, I assume the mom,
kind of a large Grey wolf,
and the other one's a very dark wolf,
much smaller, um,
the mom kind of scurried up into the woods
and made a high-pitched caw, a very high-pitched screaming kind of caw,
and everybody followed her up into the woods. The babies stopped,
they were just rolling over each other
like two little pups having fun,
and the mom started, you know, alerting them,
and they walked up into the woods together.
So I go around the backside of the hill,
and I imitated this little sound,
this... this high-pitched call that the mom was doing,
and lo and behold, out of the woods come the two pups.
Like right to me,
right within four feet of me.
And... they... you know, they thought I was the mom calling to them.
So, uh, I said, wow, this is...
this is pretty neat,
and, uh... within seconds later,
the trees kind of start shaking down the hill,
and down the hill comes the mom,
making a... a show of it by shaking the trees.
Shows up right in front of me with the two pups,
looks at me, and runs away.
And I thought, that's fairly unusual
for the mom to run away.
And a couple seconds later, back she comes,
same thing, trees shaking, you know,
and this time she stands over the pups,
I'm probably 12 feet away at the most.
Stands over the pups,
all of the hackles on the back of her neck come up,
her head low... lowers down, she's looking straight at me,
and goes "woof."
And I said, you know, intellectually,
that was the one time I was a little afraid
Of wolves.
The place we meet wolves for the first time
is in that fantastic story of little red riding hood.
And it's not a very complimentary story to wolves,
it in fact is one of the first fear characters
that we, as children, engage with.
These all relate to some of the myths around
wolves. And... and they're dangerous,
because they're not accounts of the actual wolves,
they're not accounts F real, live wolves
and the behaviors that wolves engage in.
My God!
No!
The werewolf, the loup-garou, was...
was a... is a mischievous creature
that will come at night and steal your shoes.
So you wake up in the morning, where are my shoes?
Oh, they took it, right, and so you go into the forest
looking for this creature that is hiding behind the tree with your shoes.
And all of a sudden, it became this, you know,
blood-thirsty animal that will steal your kid,
not your shoes.
The risk of being injured,
or killed by a wolf is... is... is minuscule.
If you are afraid of a wolf,
your car keys should be taken away from you,
because you're far more likely to get in a car wreck,
you shouldn't step in an airplane,
you shouldn't go outside if there's lightning anywhere nearby,
these are all far, far more common causes of injury and death.
And so wolves, simply, uh, are not a threat to human beings,
it's just a... it's a silly thing to think so.
The wolf made a decision
to join the human family.
Somehow, someway, because they fit in.
Why did the wolf come into the human family 40... 50... 60,000 years ago,
and the cat didn't, or the horse didn't?
Because it seemed to be a little more of an easy partnership.
They blended in a little bit better.
That was a decision that the wolf made
for sustainability and survivability.
Do you think there are more dogs in the world
than wolves right now?
How many millions and millions of dogs are there in the world?
That's... that's the wolf.
The wolf decided that somehow.
It's clear that the evolution of the wolf to the dog
has had a huge impact on man.
Think of the many gifts from the wolf.
Seeing eye dogs, service animals,
even companionship.
Scientific studies have even proven
that people live longer that have dogs.
And the wolf is more intelligent,
has advanced senses, and a bigger brain.
We're similar to them, they're not similar to us.
It's very interesting, because I mean, we learn our initial programming,
a lot of it, we learn from them.
On average, a wolf walks for about eight hours of every day,
and they can walk at quite a clip,
they can walk at four to six Miles an hour,
and so if you wanna know what it's like to be a wolf, walk.
And just keep walking, and walk and walk and walk. Walk day after day.
This is a big, big part of what the life of a wolf is all about, is walking.
It's the simplest thing.
And the next most important thing
is... is also something that's very, very closely related to humans,
is just that wolves live in families, they live in packs.
And a pack is basically a family unit,
and while wolves spend about eight hours of every day walking,
they spend about eight hours of every day socializing with their pack mates.
And so if you like living in your family,
and if you like walking, you have a great deal in common with wolves,
and the next most important thing to know about wolves
is how it is that they get their food.
They eat things that are generally bigger than them.
Sometimes up to 10 times their size.
And so wolves capture their food, whether it's a moose,
or a deer, or an elk, they do it by killing it with their teeth.
Imagine killing something that's 10 times your size with your teeth,
and that's the only way you're gonna get to eat.
And so it's incredibly heroic, it's incredibly dangerous
uh, to be able to get food in this way.
Um, wolf is capable of living to about 12 years of age,
but their life expectancy is about four years of age,
and one of the most common causes of death is starvation,
the inability to get enough food,
and it's just because it's really hard to kill something
that's 10 times your size with your teeth.
I grew up in this hunting culture
where you defined your worth, in some ways,
by how many pheasants you could shoot,
or how many ducks you could get,
and what kind of a trophy you could get.
The biggest buck with the biggest antlers,
and if you could go shoot a wolf,
pfft, you're a real man.
One day I found myself heading north
with some friends from Hardwick, Minnesota,
they were probably 10 years older than me,
they were going to go wolf hunting.
Okay, it's not the ultimate animal,
maybe it is back then.
There was a bounty on wolves.
A 50-dollar bounty. What does that mean?
It means that, culturally, it was a value to kill them, right?
So us naive prairie kids...
I imagine they were in their 20s, and I was 15...
let's go up north, go look for wolves, and go hunt them.
So I had a m-1 carbine, world war ii vintage
that I got from NRA, but I was a young boy
expressing my cultural norm,
and if I could go up and kill a wolf,
I would be the hero of my town,
it'd be in the newspaper, there'd be pictures.
So I went up north with my friends and looked,
walked through the woods, and... scared.
Scared that I'd see a wolf, scared that I wouldn't.
I was good shot, and if I saw one, I might have killed it.
Didn't see one, didn't see any tracks.
To me, the ultimate question is,
why do you kill the things you love?
I think it's a primal thing.
It's a male thing.
Uh, we go back 30,000 years to the cave paintings
in Glasgow and Southern France.
Picasso said it's the most beautiful art man's ever created,
we can't even equal that.
They love them, but they killed as many as they could to eat them.
So it's in our genes, I mean, for thousands and thousands and thousands
and thousands of years, we hunted.
We forget that sometimes, I think, in this century.
It wasn't that long ago,
we depended upon the weapon bow and arrow,
atlatl, spear, gun,
to go out and keep our families alive
and keep ourselves fed.
Well we haven't evolved past that,
we still have that strange kind of an instinct
we wanna quest, we wanna hunt,
it's very powerful.
Most of the stuff of what we do in life
is a gradual slide into a consciousness,
or a point of view.
Some of us reach those points
where something happens one day and it changes,
and you meet someone,
you read a book, you watch a movie.
This particular day, I was 14 years old,
up in a state park near Luverne, Minnesota
where I grew up, and I was a fox hunter at this point.
I killed fox for a living, and I liked it.
The most... one of the most exciting times of my life.
Yet, I love fox.
Outwit them.
Not easy to kill a fox, they're very smart.
You have to be pretty good at tracking and watching,
and you have to be a good shot.
But there's a certain point you evolve somehow, you change.
The camera just happened to come into my life somehow,
as the artist.
I was up in the blue mountains with my camera, instead of my gun,
and I saw a fox off in the distance.
Well I learned from an old friend of mine, Jeff Cooney,
10 years older than me, that did the same thing,
how to squeak like a mouse
to make the fox think there's a free meal,
so I hid behind a rock and went...
The fox came running, I peeked up,
just as the fox came within maybe 10 feet,
made a click with my three-dollar plastic Argus camera,
I was like, "wow, that's amazing."
Then I got a picture back a week later.
You take it to the drugstore... black and white film, it's a process,
they come back with a little print,
and magic.
I shot the fox.
I captured, there's my trophy.
There's my bragging point.
I don't have a fox skin,
I have a photograph. This is even better.
I can put it on the wall and the fox is still alive.
It didn't take long.
From that moment on, it was a different story.
And I'm still doing the same thing.
I'm still a hunter.
I'm... I'm still tricking animals, sneaking up on them.
Jim had met Will Steger in the 80's,
and the two embarked on a well-known expedition to the north pole.
Jim had heard about the white wolf not being afraid of man,
and became fascinated with an idea of a similar mission to the arctic.
And the unique opportunity to document,
and live with wolves in the wild.
Less than 500 Miles from the north pole
lies Canada's most distant frontier,
Ellesmere island.
Only someone with a passion for wolves
would dream of tracking them into this desolate land.
One such person is photographer Jim Brandenburg.
Wolves have always been a favorite animal of mine,
and I suppose one of the reasons they're my favorite animal
is because they're so intelligent.
That intelligence makes it, uh... nearly impossible to film them
in a more conventional place,
say in the forested areas.
And for some reason these arctic wolves
have... have got a quality about them
where they tolerated us very well,
and it became clear
that it would make a wonderful story.
In 1986, Jim's white wolf premiered
at the Sundance film festival and won numerous prestigious awards.
White wolf also became a best-selling book,
and was the cover story
for the national geographic magazine.
When I was involved in that,
I felt this is the highlight of my career,
I will never equal it,
except one thing maybe.
If a bunch of aliens had popped down on my property
and said, "Jim, come with us on our spaceship,
we're gonna go off to another planet."
I'm... I'm kidding. It sounds funny,
this is my... this is a true conception I thought,
when I was in the middle of the white wolf experience,
I thought, I will never equal this,
and I was right.
I've never equaled it since.
Our tent, in research,
was within a five-minute walk of the den.
Lived right with them, as a family.
We had problems with the white wolves
coming stealing our stuff out of the tent.
So, it's very different than here,
the wolves up there were kind of blase about humans.
To see a wolf here, back in those days, was rare.
I know people in Ely that spent a lifetime here
and never saw a wild wolf.
At times, it pays to speak wolf.
The Alpha male, the leader of the pack,
the father of the pups, the boss
injured his paw for about three weeks.
He was injured, couldn't really hunt.
The rest of the pack took care of him.
Saw it, I mean it was clear.
They had babysitters, scruffy, we called him.
The pack would go off hunting.
Scruffy around the pack would be very submissive,
and wolves are like humans. And they beat up one another other,
you see a weak one, that, uh, was the...
the... in every class of 30 kids,
there's always one kid that everybody picks on.
Not everybody, but, they get picked on.
Wolf pack's the same way.
This scruffy animal we called scruffy,
the rest of the wolves beat him up all the time.
Constantly were picking on him, and chewing on him,
well when the rest of the pack went off hunting,
scruffy was the designated babysitter. Scruffy did that to the pups.
Scruffy was the big boss and it was very subtle complex behavior with wolves.
I saw stuff that mimicked a lot of human behavior.
Aunts and uncles, and children, and brothers, and sisters
taking care of the pack.
Not just casually, but very tight family unit.
The very last day, as we packed up,
the den was about seven Miles away from the landing strip,
a little... it was a very small remote landing strip, and...
we got in the airplane, packed the stuff up,
the lump in my throat was as big as the airplane itself.
I looked out the window, and there was the family of wolves sitting there,
like they were saying goodbye.
Next to the landing strip as we taxied off
and took off.
And I think of that as a story that someone would make up,
but on my mother's grave it's a true story.
I haven't been back since.
In the words of author Barry Lopez,
"and to approach them slowly in terms
of the Western imagination is really to deny the animal."
"It behooves us to visit with the people
whom we share a planet, and an interest in wolves,
but who themselves come from a different time space,
and who, so far as we know,
are very much closer to the wolf than we will ever be."
James Taylor called one day,
the singer, wanted me to help him with an album cover.
He wanted a wolf on the album cover, and that surprised me.
His album, "never die young."
I didn't think he knew much about wolves,
but he knew a lot about wolves.
Came up here and saw wolves.
I asked him if he'd do a benefit concert for wolves, and he said yes.
We did two of them. One in Minneapolis,
one in Madison, Wisconsin.
Raised some nice money,
some of that money went to the defenders of wildlife,
defenders of wildlife leveraged that up into a... a program
to give the ratchers over on Yellowstone an excuse
to allow the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone
by paying for the cows that the wolves killed off the park properties.
So in a tiny, small way,
James Taylor and I had a fairly significant role
in opening up that dam to let the wolf be reintroduced to Yellowstone.
We didn't know if the wolf would survive in Yellowstone, particularly.
They thrived.
When the wolf returned to Yellowstone,
after an absence of over 65 years,
scientists discovered an ecological phenomenon
called the trophic cascade.
"Trophic" refers to the different levels of the food chain,
plant being one, insects the next,
all the way up the ladder.
And the wolf had a cascading effect.
The elk and deer grew stronger,
the aspens and willows flourished,
even the grass grew taller.
And the most fascinating, was that the rivers were covered,
along with its many inhabitants.
Despite being small in numbers,
this top predator would not only transform the ecosystem,
but also, its physical geography.
A magical story of ecology and a missing piece being put back in.
Sometimes I say once you break something in the environment
you can't fix it.
That's magical. I'm very proud of that.
And every time you listen to a James Taylor song,
think of that and thank him.
Good shot.
That's the end of her.
Then, in 2011, something shifted.
Despite a sea-change of attitude
about this iconic species,
president Obama signed off on de-listing the wolf.
The same year, state legislatures in the west
pushed through a wolf hunting and trapping bill
that would put the collared wolves in Yellowstone in jeopardy.
Soon, gunshots were reported around the globe,
and millions mourn the death
of the most famous wolf in the world.
Researchers knew her as the Alpha female 832f,
but to many, she was known as 06.
And this is where wolves are revealing
in, in our... in humans, what might be a great failing.
And, and... the concern is this basically,
it's just that, as a country we don't know how to answer
this very simple question, which is,
what is an endangered species?
And there's definitely controversy
about how to interpret that phrase
and what it means, but whatever it means,
occupying 15% of the historic range
could not possibly count as recovery.
And snaring, I wasn't even aware of snaring.
I mean, I had heard of it.
I learned about that during this time,
and now I'm just so appalled that 75% of the wolves
that were killed during the trapping season
were killed by snaring.
The trap itself is created in such a way
that it will catch any animal that steps into it.
And that mean... would mean not only the target animal,
which in this instance would be the wolf,
but any other animal that steps into that trap.
A beautiful male coyote,
a three-to four-year-old male coyote
was caught in a wildlife services trap.
And it appeared to us that this animal had been in this trap,
from the extent of its injuries in the tissue,
for anywhere from a week minimum,
but possibly two weeks.
As we investigated the situation, looked around,
we found other coyote tracks
within his area, right around him and in the snow around him.
And what was interesting is it appeared to us that
possibly his mate, or another coyote,
was actually helping him survive,
was actually protecting him against other predators,
and probably bringing him food, too.
If the American public saw this
and understood the brutality and the cruelty of this,
that this program would be ended very quickly.
I often ask people who abuse animals
and do nasty things to animals,
"would you do it to your dog?"
And some people don't like to hear that
because it puts them in a very uneasy space.
And, you know, thank goodness,
if I've talked to somebody who's, you know, trapped a wolf,
shot a wolf, done something harm...
poisoned prairie dogs, um, harmed coyotes,
and I say well, "would you do it to you dog?"
They go, "well no, of course I wouldn't."
And then I'll say, "well how come you can do it to another animal
who is also sentient and conscious
and feels pain?"
And oftentimes, with a lot of people,
there's a pause.
And it's an important pause, I think,
because they haven't ever put their dog
in the place of those animals.
Following the de-listing in the Yellowstone area,
the wolf was about to face a new threat
in the Great Lakes region.
Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar
petitioned the interior secretary
for the de-listing of the wolf in Minnesota,
and were calling for a state-regulated wolf hunt.
Senator Dibble.
Thank you, Mr. President,
we're not quite done with wolves, sorry.
- Um, I have the a18 amendment. - Senator dibble offers
the a18 amendment, the secretary will report the amendment.
Senator dibble moves to amend house file 2171 as amended
pursuant to rule 45 adopted by the senate April 17th, 2012,
as follows, page 22 delete section 50,
this is the a18 amendment.
And it was very clear what the intent
of that committee hearing was.
It was to roll out a... a plan to hunt wolves in the state of Minnesota.
This is even before the official de-listing occurred.
The first hearing at the legislature was January...
was a day before the d-listing, was January 26th.
In the house and in the senate.
The... the rush was on.
The pressure was on.
There was going to be a wolf hunt.
The big agricultural groups, the big hunting groups
had done their homework, had effectively lobbied
all the chairs on the committees.
Already had a plan in place through the DNR
to begin this hunt in 2012.
The bill was rushed through, it eventually was incorporated
into the game and fish bill, there was some debate on the floor,
but it was just too late in the process
for us to stop it.
The authority that has been working on... on wolves
for many, many years,
no... no question about it,
there was no hesitation on that particular call.
It was asked directly on that particular conference call
if it is time to manage wolves in Minnesota
and this man said, "absolutely."
And he said because of the numbers, number one,
and because the numbers...
If they continue to grow at the rate they are growing,
they're gonna be causing problems amongst themselves.
Yes, so recently, the federal government proposed to delist wolves
throughout the lower 48,
excepting for Mexican wolves.
And whenever the federal government makes a proposal like that,
it has to go through a scientific peer review.
And so I was selected to be a peer reviewer,
along with a couple of others,
and we were selected on the basis of our credentials,
on the basis of what we knew about wolves.
It was later discovered, uh...
that myself and these two colleagues of mine
were not favorably disposed to this particular proposal
to delist wolves across the country.
And when that was found out, uh, we were uninvited
to be panelists to review this document.
And that created some controversy for folks, because of course it's not a...
a very sensible way to go about a peer review,
to just take people off because you might not like
the opinion that they would come to.
And, um... and, this really is just a symptom
of a much bigger trouble uh, that we have on the planet,
we think that, uh... uh, life is just full of a bunch of opinions,
and one opinion is the same as another,
and that's not the case. Uh, the thing that makes a scientific opinion
different from any other kind of opinion
is just how well it's defended.
And so it doesn't matter what my opinion is,
what matters is how well-reasoned it is,
and how well-defended it is.
Members, it's... it's very easy
for those of you who live around here
and you can watch wolves on television, and...
and, uh... but it's a lot different for people
that actually live in wolf country,
where wolves live.
Where parents are afraid to leave their kids alone
to wait for the school bus.
I know one of the editors of one of my newspapers
and when she takes a walk at night,
she carries a handgun with her.
Because of wolves.
The decision was made.
And now to take it away from these people
that are so impassioned about the wolf,
to kill the wolf.
There's... as much passion as you see to protect the wolf,
there may be more passion,
may be more, to kill the wolf.
There may be.
And it's... it's a laser-seeking,
hot-point on a politician's skin.
And they are just,
it's... it's pathetic.
Members, if you'd really like to see what the wolves do
in greater Minnesota,
take a look online of the picture of the young man
that was taken out of his sleeping bag
while he was camping in northern Minnesota.
And take a look at his skull,
where there's staples,
where the wolf took a big chunk out of his head.
A wolf attack is incredibly rare.
Matter of fact, there's only two recorded attacks
in the entire United States in over a hundred years.
Now, the last one just happened in Minnesota recently,
and they... they shot and killed the wolf,
and then they... they tested him for rabies,
he did not have rabies, but what he had was
he had an incredibly deformed jaw
which prevented him from hunting.
He had been kicked out of his pack,
and he was doing things that are not normal
wolf behavior for survival purposes.
Management is very much needed.
I suggest that we let the DNR do their job,
and for those of us that live in greater Minnesota,
where we have wolves,
where we see wolves,
they're not just little German Shepherds
that live in your backyard.
They're big wolves, and they're a problem.
I truly believe that the problem comes from
too many wolves.
I'm not against the wolf, the wolf is a beautiful animal
when he's where he belongs.
Um, but he's not that beautiful when he's in my cow yard.
We, um... I see a lot of T-shirts around here today
that says, "howling wolves" on it,
um, you know if I'm laying in my bed in a motel
down here in the cities and I hear a wolf howl,
that's a beautiful sound,
but when I'm layin' in my bed at home,
and my wife and I hear a wolf howl,
it means we better hit the floor running,
because he's probably after one of our livestock in the yard.
The concern that the farmers have expressed
is that their cattle or livestock
will be taken by wolves.
And as a result of that, they supported wolf hunts
in this state for many, many years in Minnesota.
We've gone back and we've reviewed
some of the data on this.
There are 165,000 cows and cattle
in wolf territory in the state of Minnesota.
And that's the principle farming group
that's concerned about depredation,
or the taking of livestock by wolves.
What we learned last year, and this is very typical...
in 2012, there were only 81 verified cases
of livestock losses in the state of Minnesota.
That's 81 out of 165,000.
Now in our judgment, that doesn't constitute the basis for a hunt.
We understand farmers are making a living,
we understand many of these farmers
are using non-lethal techniques, not all,
we strongly urge the USDA to work more closely
with these farmers, and the DNR to ensure
that they're taking all non-lethal actions possible,
and that could mean different lighting techniques,
flaggery, which is simply small flags
that seem to discourage wolves,
llamas, guard dogs, burroughs,
we know they work, a lot of research has been done,
both in Minnesota and Wisconsin,
and out west.
Non-lethal methods are effective,
but when they don't work,
we understand the need at times
to take offending wolves,
but that doesn't constitute the basis for a hunt.
If you've got a wolf, you know,
moving around your farm land,
you need to do something to strengthen your boundaries,
and reinforce your territory, so that wolf knows
when he's transgressing out of his range.
There's the emotional level,
where when our livestock get predated on,
that we don't overly react emotionally
out of old stories.
So it's negotiating that space, too.
We got lots of folk who are,
sort of, crazy wolf-lovers,
and don't necessarily always want to appreciate
the reality of what wolves mean in the world.
Yes, they predate. They are hunters. They're carnivores.
I handed out for you a story from the April 7th, 2012 edition
and so you don't have to read it, I'll just kind of read you
a few quotes out of it.
I had this constituent, and this is what it says,
she was pruning some bushes near her deck,
stood up and turned around, and quote,
"and there was a big, black wolf baring his teeth,
very close, just a few feet away."
She took a few steps towards the house,
but to her dismay, she saw another wolf
smaller, grey, and mangy-looking about eight feet away,
between her and the house.
She slowly backed away from both animals to her truck,
as she unlocked her truck, she said,
"the wolves hunched down and growled at me."
That's a quote.
When she got into her truck, she honked the horn,
but the wolves stayed put
and barked at her.
Members, that's a real experience,
that are happening, maybe not every day,
but every week
where wolves really live, because they're over-populated.
The secretary will take the roll.
That was it, so,
they were done, it was a done deal.
And I wasn't sure what I was going to do.
I left there and I thought, oh my goodness,
what is going on? And I approached the legislature,
his name is representative David dill,
he is a democrat out of crane lake,
and I approached him in the hall near the elevators
and I said, have you considered
the ecological benefits of the wolf? You know,
even if you're a hunter, even if you're an angler,
no matter who you are, whether you're a wildlife viewer,
a hunter, an angler, somebody who believes in keeping ecology intact,
you have to believe that the wolf is a necessary part of that.
And he basically said to me, "oh, nobody's talked about that."
And then he kind of caught himself, 'cause he realized,
well that's a reason to have somebody testify.
And he started panicking, seriously.
He was running from the elevator button
when it didn't come right away to another elevator button,
saying, "there will be a wolf hunt this year."
And I looked at him, 'cause he like running away from me,
and I was the only one in the hall,
and I'm a short-statured, small-statured woman,
and he was much taller, and I said,
I'm not chasing you.
You don't have to run.
But I think he knew that he was basically facing
what he was gonna face soon.
This year, wolves lost
their endangered species protection.
Wolves keep forests and streams healthy,
they're wilderness allies.
50% of wolf pups die of starvation,
and many wolves are poached.
While Minnesota's original plan
had a five-year waiting period,
a new wolf hunting and trapping bill
is now being passed by the legislature
with no regard to its impact.
We are recklessly endangering our wolves.
Tell governor Dayton to stop the wolf hunt.
We are about to lose all that we worked so hard to save.
Don't silence our wilderness.
Studies suggest that the wolf became the dog
when wolves began to follow hunters
to scavenge on the kills that they had left behind.
And in the process, some became isolated
from other wolves, and migrated along with people.
And over time, the human family
became their pack.
Good girl.
Say goodbye to mama, come up.
I'm gonna miss you.
Be good.
Be a good girl.
Okay.
I think it's safe to say 700, at least,
wolves were killed this season.
So if you look at the rough numbers,
it's about a fourth of the wolves.
- Right? Is that fair? - Yeah.
A quarter of the wolves. Yeah.
So, you know, I guess the argument
that a lot of people have who are concerned about this
is that that's a lot of wolves.
- What... - and even if it's a thousand,
which would be a third of the population...
- which it could be. - That's still within the range of...
of what's been identified as, um...
a number that... that may be sustainable.
Has anybody ever stud... studied long-term effects
on wolves and wolf packs when you go in
and you start taking out pack members?
There's been studies looking at... at wolf pack dynamics, not specifically,
not necessarily, you know, measuring this influence
of hunting or trapping, but, you know,
through radio-collared studies of wolves,
there's been, um,
documented, high turn-over rates
in wolf packs.
So there is a high mortality level there,
there already without hunting and trapping,
wolves can get hit by cars,
they can get trapped for depredation control,
they get killed by other wolves,
and there is this
you know, pretty steady change-over in wolf pack structure.
But I've never... I've never seen,
and you may have something,
but I've never seen,
you know, long-term research done.
'Cause we're talking statistics, we're talking... right.
Numbers...
Yeah, I mean it's... and I...
and yeah, there... that has not,
like I said, has not been studied specifically.
Whether or not hunting and trapping
has an influence on the stability of wolf packs,
population wide,
I mean certainly on an individual level,
you're gonna kill a breeding animal,
but there's other animals in the population
that come in and replace those animals.
The DNR never, um,
brings any attention to that fact that,
you know, it's not just blatantly killing animals,
it's... it's actually wiping out
this very cohesive system that packs have.
We've lost sight of that a bit in our thinking
about management of wildlife and management
of wolves today.
Clearly with the wolf hunt mentality,
and talking to Dan stark at the DNR,
you know, they think about...
they think about the wolves as, you know, just numbers.
They don't think about them as being
feeling, sentient beings who,
if you take out... certainly if you take out the top member,
the breeding pair, it's devastating to the pack,
but even if you take out other members of the pack,
it's... it's not like you come in and replace these,
you can't replace a relationship.
You can't... you can't replace the value
that that one wolf has in the pack.
Here is an array of portraits,
wolves from the past in the neighborhood.
It was a core pack of eight or so,
with 19 wolves that we counted
over the years when this was done.
These I think around 15,
with just personal names for me to remember.
Broken foot, crooked ear,
blind one-eye, beautiful one,
this one was the papa.
This was the Alpha male that was shot
before the hunting started, illegal hunting,
it was shot illegally not far from here.
I was very familiar with 19 wolves
here on Ravenwood, one year,
when they were really doing well.
Lots of deer around.
I photographed each one, gave each one a name,
had a little portrait of each one
with a little name underneath.
The Alpha male was killed by a hunter
less than a mile from here.
I know who did it.
I asked them to be careful,
I talked to them before the hunt.
They were setting up their hunting camp,
I said, please be careful, there are a lot of wolves here,
I know it's tempting.
This is long before the wolf hunt.
It's hard to talk about this.
This was about three years ago.
And, uh... we found that, uh... the Alpha male, blackie,
was killed of this pack,
the wolf I'd been photographing and watching
for three, four years.
Biggest footprint I've ever seen on a wolf. Interesting looking wolf.
He was pure black, and I watched him turn grey.
But he'd been radio-collared.
The hunter didn't want anyone to find out
where he killed the wolf,
so he snipped off the radio collar and dropped it off
near Ely to throw off the signal.
I know, basically, who did it.
Uh, changed my life,
changed the wolf... the wolf pack was totally different after that,
totally, they seemed to disperse.
Everything was different.
I couldn't make hide nor hair of it.
They... they disappeared.
Uh, everything changed.
I changed.
I have not really photographed wolves since then.
It broke my heart.
It really destroyed me, in some sense.
I've not been the same.
It... it broke... it drove me to tears.
Stop the hunt!
We know in Minnesota the one survey that was conducted
by the department of natural resources
before the hunt began.
In that single survey, 79% of the respondents
opposed the season, yet they went ahead with it.
Stop the hunt!
Minnesota is special.
We are special here because we have always had wolves.
When they were down in 1970,
the endangered threatened species act,
in my opinion, was written with the wolf in mind.
And we were the only state that had 'em,
and the reason we had 'em, wasn't 'cause of anything we've done,
it was because we had wild lands
where they could find refuge.
You know who I feel like I'm fighting to protect
the environment from? The DNR!
Hello, this is Jane Goodall.
I really wish I could be in Minnesota
to greet you in person, but I am thinking of you.
There you are, gathered to make your views known
to those who have the power of making decisions.
They're absolutely neat, your wolves.
The only population in the lower 48 states
that wasn't exterminated.
I personally have a real love for wolves.
They show all the characteristics of loyalty and courage
that we admire in our own domestic dogs.
They have similar emotions, such as contentment and fear.
They know suffering and pain.
It's time that recreational hunting of wolves
and other forms of persecution came to an end.
And you, in Minnesota,
by insisting on a just wolf-management plan,
can lead the way.
I would not kill a wolf.
I know that, because he's here for a reason,
just like I am.
We all are here for a reason.
But we need to acknowledge that.
And then we went to the fond de lac reservation
and we had a ceremony honoring the wolf.
Um, it... actually,
that was extremely moving.
Um, it was sad to me, because the...
the Ojibwe culture really values the wolf,
and the people there, um...
they were talking about how the wolf would hide in caves,
the wolf would escape. They were... they were trying to think
of any way that they could cope with the fact
that these wolves were gonna be killed.
By the time we drove back to the twin cities that day,
November 3rd, 2012,
we'd already had seven wolves killed.
I think it was Edward Abby said something about
if we destroy the last of the wilderness,
I mean, we destroy the very,
we're threatening the very idea
of freedom itself.
It's what makes us a people.
It's not just some abstract thing out there
for recreation to go visit in a canoe,
or backpacking or something,
it's what we are as a people.
And we need to hang on to it,
we've got to fight corporations.
We've got to fight this recreation industrial complex
that's threatening these precious wild lands that are so diverse.
The foundation that... that supports our being here today
is all the micro-organisms in the soil
and the plants and the animals that walk on it,
the animals that swim and the animals that fly.
We're all intertwined, it's that great web of life.
In Mahingan, the wolf, he's our brother,
he's right there with us.
We walk the earth with him.
I found that there are many indigenous cultures
in the world that have always revered the wolf.
I interviewed chi-Mahingan, which means "big wolf"
from the red lake nation.
For the Ojibwe people,
there's no separation between the wolf and them.
The wolf holds the medicine and teaches humility.
You know, one of the first designs that was created
was a circle.
And everything after that was placed inside the circle.
And therefore, everything moves in the circle.
Even the human, from childhood to childhood,
the seasons go in circle.
All the stars, the sun, the moon, the earth,
it always moves in a circle.
And what that creates is what they call a rhythm.
There's a universal rhythm.
And I... and I kinda joke about that, too, you know,
saying everything tries to be round,
they say everything a Indian does tries to be round.
I try to be round.
They are, traditionally Indians are round.
You have continuity.
Today they told the animals
to take care of their brother,
the human being.
Otherwise,
the human being would not have survived.
The animal people, yes, we will watch our brother.
We will give them our hide, we will give them our flesh.
We'll give them our bones so they can live.
So we know that, said the animal people.
And today we're gonna pay the animal people,
especially the wolf, we're gonna pay him back
by killing him.
Medicine,
when I think of...
The role it has in bringing us back
to our own center of integrity,
which means wholeness, basically.
Where our own regenerative health powers
can find their balance again.
In that sense, medicine is a catalyst.
And I see the wolf,
in a sense, one can say the wolf is medicine.
But then that raises, for me, another question,
which is, well what are we ailing from?
What is the ailment?
And I think when one looks around the lands,
across the world, there is one,
in this time we live in,
the ailment that we...
we struggle with, is fear.
It is fear of the enemy. It is fear of the neighbor. It is fear of the self.
It is fear of power. It is fear of love.
It is fear of so many things.
Fear of the loss of livelihood,
in the case of those living directly with wolves,
and all these fear elements, for me,
are directly embodied by the wolf.
The wolf is a great mirror towards us.
We have so many similarities,
and as you talk about in that Ojibwe myth,
the wolf is, in a sense, our partner,
and our brother, and was in the past.
And I think going forward, there is,
if one looks at the wolf as a medicine in that sense,
there's really much that we can learn,
in our current society, from the wolf.
Inspired by the idea
of the wolf as a symbol of medicine,
I decided to go to California
and spend time with the group that is doing something
very unique with wolves, wolf-dogs and people.
That was nice.
Thank you, wow, I feel special.
A wolf rehabilitation center in Acton, California
that believes strongly that the wolf has great value
and is a teacher that we can learn from.
And we're at a wolf hike they do.
Each month, they'll take people to see their wolves and wolf-dogs
and teach them about wolves.
They rehabilitate these animals,
and then they work with people and inner-city youths,
and people with PTSD, it's quite extraordinary what they do.
We have the kids come in, they're coming from all different backgrounds,
most of them are at-risk youth
coming from inner-city situations.
They've come from gang violence
and that kind of a thing, and they come in with their walls up,
always needing to protect themselves, make sure they're safe,
they come in, they've got their attitude, they've got their swagger
goin' on, and you know, they're like comin' in
and they're like, "whatever, what do you got to teach me?"
And they come in, they got their, you know,
earphones in and stuff, we go,
"take your earphones out," you know,
"hand 'em over,"
"you're gonna stand here, you're gonna sit here
and we're gonna make a circle."
"And we're just gonna get really present."
"And the minute that they all truly drop in,
and let go of that stuff and center themselves,
the pack will actually begin to howl."
And this has happened numerous times,
and every single time the kids go...
"Oh my God!"
And for the rest of the program
they're putty in our hands,
it's incredible.
Oh, what a vicious wolf,
yes you are.
Yes you are.
You're a big vicious wolf.
Yes.
And inevitably, they'll pick one or two
particular wolves that they really feel
a connection with because of the story.
Then when they finally get to meet that wolf,
and they get to sit with that wolf,
and they get to look into the eyes of that wolf,
looking into the eyes of a wolf
it's like you're really seeing your own soul.
And that is incredibly healing.
You take a look at this, its posture,
and how big it is, and you would automatically be scared of it,
but in reality it's just... just a loving creature,
it just... it just wants to be loved like anybody and anything else,
it just wants to be loved.
It wants to be...
The de-listing of wolves.
You just have to... you just have to really just...
You just really just...
have to really...
if you really wanna help...
That's love right there.
Get my psychiatrist.
This is where I come, specifically,
besides the walking, is quite nice,
where things do feel better.
When I think about crisis-es in the world,
crisis-es happening around me,
especially with the wolves,
I feel better here.
And it helps me.
It's a time of re-evaluation.
That's what the wolves taught me.
In an odd way, right?
In a very odd way,
this whole wolf hunt has made me confront things
that I don't have answers for.
My investment and telling the story,
and seeing it was maybe wasted.
There's a lesson there, I have to get beyond that.
I have to think about that a little bit,
I'm pretty angry.
Anger is not a solution,
and something you shouldn't carry around with you.
I've been gone a lot because of that,
choose to, certainly during the hunting season.
The pups are born, there was a den nearby,
there were pups born, they're out there.
Uh, I'll think, well, like the first hunt,
the last wolf I photographed was blondie.
That was a wolf that was shot, and she was a pup.
She was nine months old.
I'm afraid to bond to these animals.
I've bonded to every, I knew,
I've probably known 30, or 40 wolves
like friends, over the years,
and I'm afraid to do that now.
It's been a couple years now
and it's not getting any better.
No.
I came back to Minnesota
for one last interview with Jim
before I was to wrap up the film.
But with another wolf hunt on the horizon,
it was a bit of a somber reunion.
But just as we were about to pack up,
Jim, with his unique ability for resilience,
said he had something he wanted to show us.
Something he had just found
that he hadn't shared with anyone before.
And I wondered in that moment
if Jim, too, was looking for some hope.
I can't explain it, it happens to me a lot.
I don't know what it is.
It isn't psychic, it's something else.
Just curiosity, because I'm so curious,
I eventually ran into something interesting.
I don't think this den necessarily pulled me
psychically, like "come see us, Jim,"
but it almost feels like that because
it's happened to me enough times,
and especially here.
So just up around the corner,
I looked down and I saw the grass was all matted down,
I thought, someone came here for a picnic.
Except nobody comes here.
It was very unnatural looking,
so I just took... followed the trail up
and looked a little bit further,
and saw chewings on the tree.
I thought beaver? No.
Den.
Wolf den? Too fantastic.
Maybe fox or coyote.
Came up,
saw this,
virtually the minute I saw this den
within the minute, almost 15 seconds,
I was standing on a very supple twig, branch,
it let loose as I started walking toward the entrance,
just to look, I mean, I was 30, 40 feet.
Snapped me in the eye and it felt like a hammer hit me on the head.
So you've got the mixture of exaltation
of seeing a wolf den,
the same time getting spanked in the eye.
Just about knocked me out,
I knew I had a pretty serious eye injury,
and it just came to me, you're not supposed to be here.
I wouldn't have stayed here anyway,
'cause you can't be around wolf dens
without them possibly moving,
and I wanted to get out of here quick.
But the eye being injured by this twig
was too much to comprehend.
And I didn't know what to think,
except, is this another message?
Is this, come look at, come, here's the den,
but don't come in.
As an investigative reporter as I am, you wanna get the story,
you wanna tell every bit of the story,
but I'd done that in the arctic,
crawled into the den in the arctic,
and the wolves stayed there the whole summer.
They didn't move the den, they didn't leave.
But they were like family to me,
they trusted me.
These wolves don't trust me.
I haven't seen them with my eyes.
I've not seen the mother or father,
I don't know who these wolves are.
I've seen them on the trail cam,
but I've never seen them with my eye,
haven't heard them howl.
So it's haunting, it's nearly haunting to me.
So it's like finding
a treasure under your bed
that was always there,
I'm trying to think of another analogy,
in your cupboard, you find a stack of gold,
or a Rembrandt painting.
And I didn't know what to do with it,
except just get out of there quickly.
'Cause I know if I stayed, they'd move the pups.
Did you hear that?
What I've learned in life, I'm almost 70 years old now,
and I've learned that you really have to come in through the back door
to change people's attitudes.
You can't confront it head on,
and convince someone to stop drinking,
stop smoking, stop speeding,
stop killing wolves.
You... have to somehow come in the back door.
When I met you,
you're the only person I've worked with.
Uh, why?
I don't... I just had an intuition that you,
and your message, and your movie could make a difference.
So find that back door. I don't know what that back door is.
That's what I thought I've been doing my whole life.
I'm not sure.
I get a lot of beautiful letters.
I don't know.
It's easy to be discouraged.
But I have to think that there's hope... here's hope.
We'll see, we'll see.
Then, the news came.
On December 21st, 2014,
a federal judge threw out the Obama administration decision
to remove the grey wolf population in the Great Lakes region
from the endangered species list.
A decision that would ban further wolf hunting and trapping
in the three states, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota.
U.S. district judge, Beryl Howell
ruled the removal was arbitrary and capricious,
and violated the federal endangered species act.
She concludes,
"at times a court must lean forward from the bench
"to let an agency know,
"in no uncertain terms, that enough is enough.
And this, is one of those times."