Wildness in a Modern Age – The Reintroduction of Wolves to the Landscape

Summary

There are some successful programs to reintroduce wild wolves into their natural habitat in the U.S. This keystone species recovery activity is a long game and there remains much opposition to this movement, at least some of which stems from our mythological view of wolves as standing for all that is vicious, dangerous, and savage. Peterson outlines the uphill battle that this endangered species is undergoing. She shares many stories, including her experience of the capturing, transferring, and release of a wolf pack into the wild.

She reminds us that Jacques Cousteau once said that people protect what they love, and she encourages us to become intimate with the wild: “If you don’t have intimacy with the wild, if you don’t get out into the woods, if you don’t get out into the oceans, if you don’t have a sense that there is this natural, beautiful, wondrous world out there that you can be intimate with, then you are losing what it is to be human. Acquaint yourself with others who don’t mirror us, who we don’t domesticate, who don’t serve us. Loving that, I think, is a much higher form of love.” (hosted by Justine Willis Toms)