being defended with a number of lethal fallacies as well as by wrongly invoking the prestige of science. In practice it is a lethal myth and the tragic death of 22-year-old Kenton Carnegie on November the 8^th 2005 in northern Saskatchewan, is a case in point. He had no authoritative warning. He was killed by wolves, which, protected from hunting, were not merely habituated to people through the use of a garbage dump, but had already mounted a first exploratory attack on humans, which was narrowly defeated. Against a pack of wolves, a lone man has no chance.

Political Correctness

Flawed political correctness can be lethal! The political correctness I am concerned about here is the view that wolves are universally harmless, so that free ranging wolves pose no danger to humans. One is dealing here with a complex case of scholarship taken out of context, with a partially valid, but premature hypothesis becoming a politicized dogma and then, a case of extremism. It is also a case of wrongly invoking the prestige of science. In reviewing the material pertaining to predation by wolves on humans I have documented how evidence is distorted so as to uphold the myth of the “harmless” wolf. Moreover, the denying or manipulating of facts and blaming the victim have been prevalent following the attack of predators on people in North America. Furthermore, as we shall see, the defense of the myth of the “harmless” wolf has reached extraordinary proportions. Perpetuating that myth will, under currently developing circumstances in North America and in Western Europe, where un-hunted wolf populations are expanding, lead to needless injury or death of people. This is all the more tragic considering that one can pinpoint with great precision the conditions under which wolves will avoid humans as well as the obverse, the conditions under which wolves will attack humans. Moreover, such conditions are within our power to manage. It is inconceivable that wolf-conservation can be advanced if we do not prevent wolves from attacking people. While attacks have been extremely rare historically in North America, the increase and spread of wolves may change that. Of special concern are wolves that do not see humans as foes and adversaries and habituate to human presence. That, emphatically, doses not bode well for the future!

Why did reputable North American scholars develop the notion of the “harmless” wolf

We must ask first how it is possible that renowned scholars such as the late Douglas H. Pimlott in Canada and David Mech in the United States helped formulate the view of the “harmless wolf”. A review of their work reveals that (1) while they were very cognizant that wolves infected with rabies were dangerous to humans, (2) they never envisioned circumstances in which free ranging, healthy wolves could become dangerous to people, nor the opposite, namely the circumstances under which wolves remain harmless. Events in North America, at that time and historically, did not lend themselves to that line of thought. Mark E. McNay puts it rather ironically: ”After gray wolves (Canis lupus) were exterminated over a large portion of their North American range during the early 1900s, researchers reviewed the history of wolf-human encounters and concluded that wild, free-ranging wolves posed little or no threat to human safety”. Pimlott used the thorough review of wolf attacks on

 humans in North America and Europe by Dr. Doug Clark, formerly Chief of the Fish and Wildlife Branch, Ontario Department of Lands and Forests. Clark suggested that rabies was responsible for such attacks. He was skeptical of reports of wolf attacks as he experience in the Canadian continental wilderness only very shy wolves. And I must add here: so did I! Moreover, the harmlessness was emphasized by the ability of skilled biologists working in the wilds for decades with habituated wolves. Clark was apparently not aware of the behavioral differences between rabid and non-rabid wolves. (3) Happenings to the contrary in Eurasia were screened for North American authors by language, political and cultural barriers. (4) As records of wolf attacks on people are a matter of history, and in the professional domain of historians, a discipline quite different from biology, both biologists expressed skepticism towards historical matter. They were not alone in this skepticism. They chose to label old reports of wolf attacks as the “Red Riding Hood” mythology without dealing with the veracity of historical records that gave rise to that or to similar European fairytales. (5) Moreover, as we have only recently become aware, there was in Eastern (Communist) Europe at that time a deliberate policy of deception, a practice of withholding and covering-up relevant information about wolf attacks on people. During the Cold War area Russian scientists could not freely discuss wolf attacks on people with their western colleagues. I shall dwell on that issue in some detail later. (6) The matter of how wolves deal with exploring new prey was not dealt with. It is a matter that requires technical knowledge of habituation, which is a knowledge that resides in the disciplines of animal behavior and psychology, not in wildlife biology. Wildlife biologists recognized relatively recently that the matter of habituation is highly relevant to wildlife management, long after the original writings of Pimlott and Mech. The hypothesis of the “harmless” wolf was premature as eminent scientists were faced with highly contradictory information that they were somewhat leery of and could not resolve. However, their position was regarded then and subsequently as appropriate. And so did I for my entire professional career and well into retirement. How was it possible that early explores here saw a multitude of at the worst mischievous and curious wolves that were of no threat to the travelers? How could scientists work for years with habituated wilderness wolves? How could one reconcile this with the horror stories from Europe? One can get to understand such, but only by knowing well the discipline of animal behavior and the detailed, thorough studies done to understand captive wolves and wolf-dog hybrid behavior. Yet that research was then just in the making, and the information about the behavior of wolves as revealed in the studies of Erich Klinghammer at Wolf Park, Jerome H. Woolpy and Benson E. Ginsburg, Hary and Martha Frank, or Ray and Lorna Coppinger came later. Still, on the face of it, the logic and facts appeared to fit together so simply: if, as Dr. Clark reported in his review, the attacks in Europe were caused by rabies, then healthy wolves in Europe did not attack people any more than they did in North America! Consequently, one need not fear attacks by healthy wolves and the fairy tale about Red Riding Hood was thus baseless.

Moreover, the conception of the harmless wolf is reinforced by popular accounts such as of the lone Alaska wolf in Juneau named Romeo who is trying to make social contact and is stealing dogs without injuring such.

Discovering the error

Unfortunately, the enthusiastic consensus that American wolves were harmless led to the view that even if wolves could be dangerous to people outside North America, such information was irrelevant to an understanding of our North American wolves. I too was guilty of this lapse in scholarship. I too held this erroneous view during my entire professional career and until four years after my retirement. While I retained an intense personal interest in carnivores, and eagerly observed free ranging wolves for hours on end in one of my field studies, an opportunity that arose every 10-14 days during two winters, the focuses of my scholarly interest were the large herbivores. I thus deferred judgment to reputable colleagues who were studying carnivores professionally. I awoke rudely from that mistake in 1999 only after being confronted by a “misbehaving” pack of wolves about our Vancouver Island home. The behavior of these wolves defied North American conventional wisdom! I was forced to change my mind not because of the written scholarly record, but because of the unexpected personal experiences with wolves beginning in summer 1999 and carrying on to this day. These Vancouver Island wolves acted like Russian, not like American wolves. It was a case of a wolf pack trying to establish a territory “in multi-use landscapes surrounding houses, farms, villages and cities”, the “future habitat” of wolves globally as envisioned by the cited Norwegian multi-author report on wolves.  In our case it was at the edge of a rural district among livestock barns, factory buildings and suburban houses. The wolves became visible. They acted totally different from the wolves I had known in the wilderness areas on the mainland. The – utter - devastation of wildlife, wolves threatening neighbors and my wife, wolves following people into barns, on verandas and to their very front doors, wolves deliberately and calmly approaching and observing people at close range and following neighbors on horseback, a wolf fraternizing successfully with sheep-guarding dogs, all this - and more - was simply not part of my expectations. One hesitates using the worn-out word “shocking”, but it’s close to what I felt. I happened to meet David Mech in Calgary at the Wildlife Society convention, and told him about it. His response is equally revealing. “Val” he said ”had anybody else told me, I would not have believed it.”

The “misbehaving” pack stayed with us from summer 1999 till March 12^th 2003, when a neighbor shot the last of the 13 wolves after it successfully fraternized with his sheep dogs for nearly half a year. The rest were eliminated by a predator control officer and the neighbors, myself included. I had thus four years of pre-misbehaving pack experiences, followed by almost four years by vivid “bad wolf” experiences, followed by three years when only a few well-behaved wolf visitors came through, followed by a new “misbehaving” pack establishing itself early in 2007. I had thus in addition to my personal observations, and those of Renate, my wife, those of my neighbors – all first-hand experiences. In totality it was a large body of consistent observational material. I wrote about it to Erich Klinghammer, in a long letter, which was eventually published by Jack Gwynn in the Virginia Wildlifer. The wolves, which visited us between packs trying to establish themselves, were passing thorough invisibly and were on their best “American” behavior.

Under-reporting wolf incidences

An important factor that biases the lore about wolves in North America is that only a small fraction of the interactions between wolves and people are reported. The exceptions are attacks that lead to injuries or death of persons so attacked. Living in rural Canada as I do now in retirement, I am very well aware that wolves kill pets and livestock, or confront people and are shot in the process, and these incidents are rarely reported in the newspapers, on radio or television. None of what happened to my wife, our neighbors, or myself when we lived with a misbehaving wolf pack from summer 1999 to spring 2003 was ever reported in any Canadian news outlet. However, an incident in 2007 did make the press. Our observations were recorded in the professional press read by American wildlife managers. A senior fellow biologist who had been confronted twice by wolf packs on Vancouver island and who had to climb to safety, told me he never speaks of the incidents because nobody believes that wolves could be dangerous. I have been notified that there are others with that experience and view. In short, the claim that aggressive interactions between wolves and people are exceeding rare is in part an artifact of incomplete reporting.

As McNay reported, for decades the common reply of biologists to concerns about wolves were similar to the following statement:” There has never been a documented case of a healthy wild wolf killing or seriously injuring a person in North America” (Mech 1998:9). A brief acquaintance with matters posted on the Internet reveals a huge publicity campaign by various organizations to paint a positive picture of wolves as harmless creatures, including lesson plans aimed at schoolchildren. Scientists delivering the “harmless” wolf message are lionized.  No well-educated person can possibly escape the message that wolves are harmless and have received in the past a bad reputation due to ignorance, superstitions and malice. And after all, we are assured; it’s based on science!  Yet modern studies by competent scientists of the innate behavior of wolves show that humans would have been the prey of wolves. This, however, does not deny that wolves may attack persons for motives other than predation. Early in the exploration by wolves of our neighbors, my wife and myself the wolves barked and howled in their confrontations treating us thus as if we were rival wolves, not prey.

The Myth turns deadly

Kenton Carnegie is not the only victim of the “harmless wolf” message. So was 24-year-old Wildlife Biologist, Trisha Wyman, who was killed on April 18^th 1996 by a captive wolf pack in Ontario. In a phone conversation with Erich Klinghammer of Wolf Park, who was called in as an expert witness to examine the Wyman case, he reported that there was great surprise at her death, as wolves are not supposed to attack people. He was stunned at the ignorance. Ms Wyman had visited the park previously and spent some time studying the wolves. She was given the dream job of looking after and interpreting the wolves. She lasted three days! She and the people surrounding here, just like Kenton and the people surrounding him, must have been totally imbued by the myth of the “harmless wolves”. Had there been but proper preparation, such as turning to the people running Wolf Park who have been researching wolves for decades and have detailed advice on how to handle captive wolves and wolf-dog hybrids. Had this been done, it would have disabused anyone of a naïve faith in the “harmless wolf” message. Wolves in packs, be they captive and socialized or not socialized (the wolves which killed Trish Wyman were not socialized) or be they free ranging, can be exceedingly dangerous, absolutely lethal – depending on circumstances. It’s circumstances that count not the misleading statistics that wolf attacks on people in North America are infinitesimally rare.

Mr. Fred Desjarlais was attacked and wounded by a wolf on December 31^st, 2004 near Camenco’s Key Lake Mine in northern Saskatchewan. This appears to be another case of a garbage-habituated healthy wolf attacking a person. Again, there was apparently no understanding among personnel or government agencies, that habituating wolves may attack people.

The Vargas Island wolf-attack was in a campground accessible by sea only and frequented by campers using kayaks. This suggests that persons using such were informed, environmentally astute outdoor enthusiast. Here too the exploratory attacks by wolves were not taken seriously, till they escalated into a sever, injurious, but still clumsy attack upon Scott Lavigne on July 2^nd 2002.

In the recent (July 5^th 2007) Anderson Island, British Columbia, case a 31-year-old outdoorsman with a kayak was put into hospital by a 25 Kg emaciated, old female wolf with damaged dentition, despite him stabbing her nine times with a knife with a 4-inch blade. This did not kill the wolf, but did cause her to withdraw. She was shot hours later with a shotgun. It was an unprovoked, predatory attack. The victim declined interviews fearing that such would reflect negatively on wolves.

A captive pack of nine wolf hybrids, kept as pets, killed its owner, Sandra L. Piovesan, of Salem Township, Pennsylvania, on July 17^th 2006. Linda Wilson Fuoco and Chico Harlan, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote that Ms. Piovesan treated her wolves like children, and said as much when neighbors asked about them. Ms. Piovesan said that "they (the wolf-hybrids) give me unqualified love". She fed the animals’ road kill that sometimes caused the nearby neighborhood to smell. She said that she liked the wolf-dogs because they were pretty. While the notion of the “harmless” wolf is here not explicit, it is implicit. At risk are, clearly, the well-educated, caring persons who place their trust in science.

What Russian scholars said

Please contrast the above with a statement by two renowned and reputable Russian scientists: “Wolves are harmful to humans in many respects; they attack livestock and dogs, wild ungulates and other useful animals, spread diseases and attack people directly. The little use which may be derived from captured wolves (skin, tasty meat which is fully suitable for food) as well as sporting pleasures of hunting wolves, are not to be compared to the damage to human health and economic interest caused by these undoubtedly injurious predators”. This statement opened the section on the practical significance of wolves in V. G. Heptner, N. P. Naumov on p. 262 of Mammals of the Soviet Union. Vol. II, Part 1a. It was translated under the editorship of Dr. Robert S. Hoffmann, also a renowned zoologist, and published by the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Originally published in 1967, this series became available in German in1974, but in English only in 1998. Heptner and Naumove also pointed out episodes and circumstances when wolves had killed and consumed humans, but they did not treat the subject exhaustively. As I shall show below, there were weighty reasons why could not publish more.

While this source on wolves was evidently not available to only English speaking biologists, it was available to European biologists, as was shortly thereafter the 1980 book “Povedenie Volka”, (The Behaviour of the Wolf) published in Moscow by the Soviet Academy of Science under the editorship of Prof. D. Bibikov. It was followed by the 1982 book on wolves by Mikhail P. Pavlov. Both authors are highly reputable scientists. However, translations into Norwegian from Professor Bibikov’s Russian book provoked defamatory condemnation by Scandinavian conservationists in the news media. After Pavlov’s book became available in Norway, three of its chapters were translated and published by Norway’s  “Naturvårdsverket”, the agency responsible for the protection of nature. It generated in the media hysteric responses by non-government organizations supporting wolves and their reintroduction. They demanded, among others, that the distribution of the translation be halted and all copies be destroyed. Unfortunately this was done, apparently an illegal act. (A translation of Chapter 12 of Pavlov’s 2^nd ed. 1990 is appended to this report). Subsequently, the translator of Povlov’s and Bibicov’s work, Elis Palsson, indignant over this blatant censorship and suppression of ideas and facts, had his translation published as a book in Swedish.

Scholarship gone astray

It is self evident from the foregoing that an understanding of wolf predation on humans could not be expect to come from North America. Not only were there far too few incidences but also the historical information was often not clear if only rabies-infected wolves attacked people or if healthy wolves were involved as well. Consequently, an understanding of wolf predation on humans would have to come from Eurasian sources.

An opportunity arose in 1984, as subsequent to the controversy about the translation of Russian publications, the Norwegian State Institute for Nature Research struck a committee of 18 scientists to review the dangers from wolves. Clearly, this was the inquest to thoroughly investigate wolf attacks on humans using appropriate historical and current sources, as well as up to date science. 

However, that did not quite materialize. While the 2002 report covered wolf/human interactions throughout the wolf’s range in Eurasia and North America, by country, as well as those of other large carnivores, and despite, some excellent information and 18 authors not withstanding, the report fell short in some regards. However, the report can be lauded as unique in modern times in that western scientists acknowledged frankly the potential dangers from wolves. Moreover, five years after the report its central conclusions appear to be become official policies in Europe^.

What went wrong?

In the first instance the study of attacks by wolves on people requires the tools and insights of competent historians – not of scientists! Scientists are not equipped professionally to search out, let alone verify the validity of historical accounts of wolf attacks on people. Only after the historians have done their part, then the role of science is to investigate the validated reports for matters that only a scientist can perceive and deal with, namely the attributes that arise from the biology of wolves. This was an opportunity to decipher and to explain the patterns of behaviour that in wolves – as in coyotes – signal the impending attacks on humans. Yet this was not done. One is thus left wondering how it is possible for students of coyotes in urban areas to develop a predictive warning system that foretells the coming of attacks by coyotes on children, while a large number cooperating scientists fail to do so when studying the much richer European and Asian material of wolf attacks on humans.

 Secondly, the study is transparently biased towards the conventional “harmless” wolf conception. One wonders if this is an example of undue influence on Europeans of American ideas that were then fashionable in science? It apparently escaped the authors that they had the means in hand of testing the American “harmless” wolf conception as a hypothesis.

Thirdly, it is the report’s contention “that large carnivores must be conserved in multi-use landscapes surrounding houses, farms, villages and cities”. Yet where in their search have they found one example of wolf packs existing for a long time in harmony with humans close to “houses, farms, villages and cities”?  Had there been a way to co-exist with wolves, would not the Europeans and Asians have discovered it long ago? Had there been a way to co-exist with wild wolves would Western Europeans have gone to the high economic and social costs that was entailed by the massive, yet inefficient methods of destroying wolves? Did not the authors of the report notice to what pains, inconveniences and costs Europeans went historically to remove wolves? Moreover, the authors appear unaware of the horrendous assumptions they made about the behaviour of wolves, for how is their contention commensurable with the hard-wired interlock of instinct and imprint-like learning in wolves, as worked out in the last three decades by behavioural scientists? As Janis Koler-Matznick puts it, wolves are extremely difficult to condition to reliably inhibit inherent behaviour. Moreover none of the scientists involved had first hand experience with wolves trying to establish themselves “in multi-use landscapes surrounding houses, farms, villages and cities”. And first hand experience, alas, is still the most potent factor in science, as I must attest to from personal experiences. We would not do field work otherwise!

Fourthly, there is the misinforming and misinformed statistic. While the authors’ contention that wolf attacks on humans are rare is historically correct, it is a dangerous and misleading statement as it’s implied advocacy may mollify the reader into lethal complacency.  Such a statement misinforms fundamentally about risk. Yet it is a statement in many scientific, let alone popular communications about wolves. In that statement the writer has substituted the reader’s (client’s) judgment with his own. It’s a piece of advocacy. The professionally correct manner of proceeding is to tell the reader under which circumstances there is a low or a high probability of a wolf attack – and let the reader (client) come to his or her own judgment. Let me put it another way: by stepping into my car I accept the miniscule risk of driving over a cliff – unless I point the nose of the car over a cliff and hit the accelerator. Now, what happened in Northern Saskatchewan in the fall of 2005 with wolves was the equivalent of pointing a car over a cliff and preparing to give gas! The wolves were showing the wolf-coyote progression of behaviors that had to lead to attacks on humans, exploratory and final – and nobody recognized it. Quite the contrary, every one involved acted - firmly! – as if wolves would not attack people.

Professionalism kicks in when the precursors – scholarship, science, interdisciplinary studies – have been exercised in an adequate and disinterested fashion The professionally correct way to proceed is to give the reader the ability to accurately judge when wolf attacks are likely or unlikely. Then dangerous circumstances can be recognised and the chances of wolf attacks on humans – totally - avoided.  And that must be the goal, not convincing the public that the death of few children is an acceptable cost of maintaining wolves for the “good of the ecosystem”.

And one more concern pertaining to statistic: any expression of chance hinges on circumstances. Wolves will indeed exceptionally approach people, lest alone molest or attack them if the circumstances of the past can be repeated. In principle, that is unlikely. Consequently, it does behove the professional to explore when circumstances insure a Zero probability of wolf attacks and when the probability is One.

Fifthly, the Russian material was selected in the report for some negative treatment. Pavlov was belittled as a non-scientist, a false claim as this senior person (Pavlov was born in 1920) published over 150 scientific papers and is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was accused of anti-wolf biases for stating, “in the main part of the Soviet Union wolves can not be regarded as a member of the ecosystem" or stating that there was no need to maintain wolves in protected areas to keep ungulate populations in "balance". Did they not discover that wolves’ left to their own fate severely denuded the landscape of almost anything “wildlife” (as I have personally observed on Vancouver Island in Canada)? Assuming Pavlov aimed to maximise wild ungulate populations through extensive wolf control, is that not a certain way to insure wolves through the creation of a lasting food base? There was no recognition of Pavlov’s political courage to even write on the dangers from wolves, or the difficult conditions he laboured under, or the cautions he so carefully expressed. Nor does the study allow for the implications of Pavlov’s political revelations. This unfortunate matter can be followed in some detail in Appendix X to this report.

Clearly, the biology of the wolf ceased to be mere matter of science, but became politicised. The politically correct version is currently the image of the “harmless” wolf that does not attack people. Matters to the contrary are labelled derogatorily as the “Little Red Riding Hood Lies” all historical evidence to the contrary!

While we may decry the censorship in Communist Russia of lethal encounters with wolves, as revealed by Pavlov, what are we to make of the censorship applied to Pavlov’s work in democratic Norway? Or for that matter in the USA, for when Pavlov’s Chapter 12 was translated into English by the eminent Russian zoologist Dr. Leonid Baskin, his wife Valentina, and Alaskan wildlife biologist Patrick Valkenburg, then edited by wildlife biologists Patrick Valkenburg and Mark McNay, they could not find a publisher for the translation. This translation now appears as Appendix A in Will Graves book on Russian wolves published in Canada , as well as Appendix A attached to this report. I refer to Appendix F and the words of Dr. S. Korytin on human casualties of wolf attacks who published 1990 in a leading hunting magazine ”Ohota i ohotnitshje hozjaistvo”  N 6, an article “Wolves as man-eaters” . “The attacks of wolves on people has since times immemorial been one of the most horrible scourges. Thus, in the space of just three years (1849 – 1851), 260 adults and 110 children died because of wolves (Lazarevskii, 1876). Official statistics were kept of the cases. In the annual reports of the governors this information was concentrated in the table on the causes of death of the population into the column ”Killed by wild predators”. After the revolution no statistical information on wolf damages were published in our country, but chance information still sometimes found its way into the newspapers. (Kuzmich, 1925; Barabash-Nikiforov, 1928; Timofejev, 1949; Kornejev, 1950; Serzhanin, 1955; Shnitnikov; 1957; Marvin, 1959; Nazarova, 1978; Peskov, 1979; Zhumadilov, Mahmutov, 1979; Osmolovskaja, Priklonskii, 1979; Boldenkov, 1980; Janshin, 1980; Garbuzov, Janshin, 1980; Cherkasskii, 1985). In reality, the number of such cases was much bigger: M.P.Pavlov  (1965, 1989) published previously unknown facts on wolf attacks on humans, which, apart from the author himself, P.A. Manteifel and G.P. Kamenskii had collected. The principal part of the material deals with wolf damages to children in various parts of our country during and after WW II. Proven cases were 103. Korytin, is a doctor of biology, professor, director of the Prof. Zhitkov department of ecology and ethology of VNIOZ, the All-Union Scientific Research Institute for Hunting Economy and Furbearer Raising.

The North American and the Russian and historical versions are, of course, not exclusive, rather, they are both valid - depending on circumstances.

How did the myth of the “harmless” wolf arise

It is thus important to first understand how the myth of the “harmless wolf” arose. It is a North American invention of the 20^th century and based on circumstances peculiar to the 20^th century on this continent. These are (a) the fact that in the past century there is no record of a healthy, wild wolf killing a person in North America, as compared to 59 persons being killed by bears and about 17 being killed by cougars. Overlooked were the earlier North American records of wolves attacking and killing humans. (b) The deliberate propagation of a distorted, fictitious picture of the wolf in order to foster its preservation, and in Communist Russia to justify the confiscation of weapons in rural areas, deliberately keeping the population unarmed. (c) The (false) notion that wolves are highly adaptable to and compatible with the presence of humans, a notion again going back to North American experiences with native predators, but inaccurately interpreted.

Let me begin by asking

Why did wolves kill no human that we know of in the 20^th Century in North America (but did so in the 19^th?)

The short answer is that (a) wolves were historically very scarce, in part due to severe prosecution, (b) the North American population is heavily armed, (c) because hunted wolves are exceedingly frightened of humans and (d) because an open hunting season leads to the quick removal of “misbehaving” wolves, well before they can cause damage.

1. Wolves were scarce or absent over virtually all of North America except late in the 20^th Century.

In short, wolves were very scarce during much of the 20^th century in North America, a fact I was keenly aware of while doing my research work in the Canadian wilderness, which stretched between 1958 and my retirement in 1995. For reasons of chance and mathematics, meetings between wolves and people were very rare.

2. People throughout North America were well armed historically and wolves meeting armed people were eliminated before they caused excessive trouble.

3.  Under specific circumstances wolves avoid any contact with people.

Consequently, lethal wolf attacks during the 20^th Century are absent in North America because there were very few wolves, the wolves were hunted and very shy and avoided people, and the few wolves approaching people were inevitably shot. Where people were attacked and injured by wolves, they were in all cases without firearms.

No case can be made that wolves inherently avoid preying on people.

A literary prank

The conception of the “harmless” wolf got a big lift from what can only be considered a brilliant literary prank. A very talented Canadian author and humorist, Farley Mowat, presented as fact a fictitious account of wolf biology in his 1963 book Never Cry Wolf. The literary establishment fell for it and is till falling as evidenced in a film based on this book as well as study guides, while it is still advertised by Amazon books as a true-life story. It was quickly dismissed as fictitious by Canadian biologists Frank Banfield (1966) and Doug Pimlott (1967) but their book reviews in academic journals carried little weight. Moreover, they were humorously countered by the author, who carried the public with him. As David Mech writes:” Whereas the other books and articles were based strictly on facts and the experiences of the author, Mowat’s seems to be basically fiction founded somewhat on facts. It appears to have been compounded by his own limited adventures with wild wolves plus a generous quantity of unacknowledged experiences of other authors; a certain amount of imagination and embellishment probably completed the formula for this book” Subsequently a lengthy exposé of Mowat’s book and working habits was published by John Goddard in the May 1996 edition of Saturday Night. Karen R. Jones covers in her book the reaction of reviewers in western Canada to Mowat’s book, drawing on some eminent scientists such as Bill Fuller of the University of Alberta, and Jim Bendell then at the University of British Columbia. Mowat did not take them in. Quite the contrary!  Because of the unmasking, Mowat’s book is not cited in the science literature as an authority, but its impact on lay persons is enormous! And not only in North America.

Russian communism embraces the “harmless  wolf” conception

Mowat’s book was a popular hit in Russia and came virtually God-sent to the Communist party and its propaganda. There is no doubt that the Russian scientists were well aware of the reservations of Canadian scientists. Nevertheless, despite communist eulogy to matters scientific (and thus to objectivity), the book was translated and widely distributed. The reason for this official enthusiasm for the “harmless”, mouse-eating wolf was only revealed by Pavlov (see Appendix X, the translated Chapter 12 of his 2^nd or 1990 edition of his book on wolves). Russia had conscripted the able-bodied men at the beginning of World War II from the villages and sent them to the front to fight the Wehrmacht. Simultaneously, all hunting weapons in the villages were confiscated leaving the women, children and old people utterly unarmed. Wolves clued in on that quickly, leading to heavy predation on livestock and a wave of lethal attacks on villagers, primarily children. The Russian government slapped a ban on all reports of wolves attacking, injuring or eating humans keeping such records secret. These records were only discovered after the fall of communism in Russia. This policy of silence pertaining to wolves killing people also explains earlier actions, such as failure to record wolf attacks on people after the fall of the Czar in the October Revolution, as well as the subsequent reports by some Russian authors that all tales of man-eating wolves were fictitious. It was not in the interest of the communist party to permit an armed citizenry, which is the only effective antidote to wolf attacks. After World War II Professor A. A. Mantejfel led a commission appointed by the highest hunting authority of the Russian Federal Republic, to investigate wolves killing people, but this came to naught, probably for above reason. The link between disarming of the citizen and the numerous deaths form wolves thereafter must not become public knowledge. This explains in retrospect the rather sparse account of man-killing wolves by Professors Heptner and Nasimovic in the (1967) Mammals of the USSR, and their selection of only a few, but very gruesome cases, including multiple killings by the same wolf. There was consequently no way in which man-eating wolves could be discussed freely by western and Russian scientists during the Cold War era. The killing of people by wolves in Russia continues, but is underreported, as does the scarcity in civilian hands of effective firearms and especially of ammunition.

Premature enthusiasm

The book Arctic Wild by Lois Chrisler describes how a couple of photographers out to film caribou raised wolf pups while they were out in the barrens. The wolf pups were a delight to be with, as vividly described in the book. And indeed wolf cubs before reaching full maturity are very submissive and thus perceived as very sweet. They have to be, for their life depends on being accepted continually by the parents and the pack. However, with maturity there are tensions in the pack, expulsions may take place, or “revolts” in which on rare occasions daughters kill mothers and sons kill fathers. Every captive wolf will at one point attempt to dominate his human companion. From such tests there is no escape although this is a complex matter. If the human companion survives the attack, the wolf reverts to accepting his dominance. However tensions remain as the wolf cannot be commanded, and remains through life a very independent spirit.. Decades of work with wolves by Erich Klinghammer and Harry Frank Martha Gialdini Frank and their colleagues are relevant here. As Janice Koler-Matznick puts it, wolves have a biological imperative to move up in the dominance hierarchy making sexually mature wolves in human company dangerous. Although competitive, wolves in a pack are not above supporting an injured companion, and do hold back on biting hard in a dominance dispute, minimizing injury.

Wolves are not very “adaptable”

Another assumption based on North American experiences with native large predators is that gray wolves are adaptable and thus can be made to live close to humans, much as do black bears, cougars and coyotes. The latter are old, native North Americans, which were for at least two million years a part of the native North American mega-fauna, which collapsed at the end of the last Ice Age (some 11,000-7,000 years ago). However, these three carnivores survived as did a few native herbivores while the remaining 50 plus species of large mammals went extinct.

Black bears, cougars and coyotes can be lethally dangerous to people, but they are virtually invisible much of the time even within towns, and not consistently threatening to us.  Much of the time they are nocturnal and very cautious and escape detection. Moreover, they tend to flee quickly upon sighting humans - except where protected. However even then the cougar remains invisible. Our experience is that we can live with these three predators, and mange the dangers arising. The reason why these three native North American carnivores are so adaptable and “smart”, appears to be a historical one. Ice Age North America was populated by very big, highly specialized predators, and the surviving ones were way down on the totem pole of power. This fierce predation pressure insured that native North American predators and herbivores were exceptionally able to avoid predation. They are very adaptable!

The wolf is not. It is a Siberian species, which spread throughout North America with other Siberian species such as grizzly bear, wolverine, moose, elk and humans when the native Mega-fauna died out beginning 12,000 years ago. Wolf, grizzly and wolverine were thus not subject to the ferocious predation pressure as there were few of the mega-predators present in Eurasia. They are expected to be more instinct-bound than black bears, coyotes and cougars. The latter are doing quite well in North America, even close to humans, the wolf, grizzly and wolverine are not. These three “Siberian” species are of great concern to wildlife conservation. The three old Americans are not.

Traditional wildlife biology in North America is deficient in an understanding of animal behavior, and a lack of attention to instincts in wolves and their programmed, imprint-like learning is a matter in point. The strength of modern animal behavior is its contribution to an understanding of the adaptive role of behavior and its evolution. The genetic components of behavior are summed together as instincts. While these are genetic in origin, they tend to be applied in an opportunistic though usually logical fashion. During their two-year development from puppy to adulthood, wolves go through critical stages of learning, virtually imprinting, which results under the tutelage of adult wolves in effective adjustments to local conditions and insure success in hunting, socializing and reproducing. An adult free-ranging wolf so imprinted and conditioned cannot readily switch to another pattern, and if it does, then only in the face of real hardship or overwhelming opportunity. This has been the finding of modern studies into the behavior of wolves. Consequently, when wolves that shun humans begin to be curious about humans, it’s a dependable sign that the wolves are seriously interested in humans as prey.

Examining the incidents of wolves preying on humans and circumstances surrounding these events, a pattern appears, irrespective of historic age or locality. That is a hint that here are instincts at work. How such instincts are structured, is revealed by comparing the behavior of different dog breeds. Each dog breed emphasizes different aspect of the predatory instincts, and such patterns are heritable. And that means that in the future wolves will again prey on people, as they are instinct bound to do – granted the right opportunities and constraints.

We now know, and – as shown below - have known for centuries, that free ranging wolves short of food and habituating to people will – eventually - begin exploring humans as alternative prey. Under such circumstances the attack of a lone wolf is very dangerous even to an athletic man, while the attack of a pack is absolutely lethal. It must be emphasized again and again that wolves habituating to us cannot act otherwise! They are closely bound in their behavior by instincts that served them very well for millions of years.  We cannot expect wolves to learn new tricks the way dogs d. How then, one may ask, can wolves “be conserved in multi-use landscapes surrounding houses, farms, villages and cities”.

“Debunking” the Little Red Riding Hood image of wolves;

the historical record

The German Philosopher Emanuel Kant is credited with the quip that “We learn from history that we do not learn from history”. His whimsical wisdom is relevant here. The knowledge pertaining to man-eating wolves spans centuries and continents, but has been one of the best-guarded secrets in North America, Communist Russia, but also Western Europe. Information concerning man-eating wolves was dismissed and suppressed in various ways.  It is important to record here, at least briefly how and why this was done.

The material pertaining to man-killing wolves is not science and can never be “scientific”. To make demands that it be so is based on a mistaken notion of what science is within the larger realm of scholarship. We learn about wolf attacks on humans from a great number of diverse sources, from interviews of first person experiences of survivors, participants and observers, from entries by priests into parish records, from entries by county clerks into county and court records, and the evaluations of such records by commissions, the police, scientists, historians, civil servants and laypersons. Historians have the best tools and background to study such reports and place them into context. Science enters the scene only in that it can pronounce on the same material in a manner historians and other disciplines cannot. And what science can contribute depends entirely on the disciplinary background of the scientists involved.

And then there is science and science. Matters of wolf behavior and ecology fall into the broad discipline of Biology, which arose historically as “Natural History”. The last great proponent of this way of doing science, was the late Konrad Lorenz, one of the fathers of the modern discipline of animal behavior (ethology) and rewarded with the Nobel Prize for his efforts. He was close to contempt for modern mathematical trendiness, and relied instead on close observation, descriptions and his beloved Anecdotes. That is, he worked not unlike Charles Darwin, who arguably gave humanity the most important theoretical understanding of life. And material pertaining to the biology of wolves in general, let alone of man-killing wolves, is very anecdotal. A quantitative approach to such would be in the discipline of Epidemiology, but the material is far too limited and far too complex to expect results from a quantitative epidemiological approach. Moreover, Epidemiology prior to the application of statistics uses historical approaches, that is, good detective work! And good detective work is not limited to science.

Before turning to the pertinent historical material about man-killing wolves, I shall enumerate some of the criticism thrown its way.

Little Red Riding Hood is based on reality

Hans Friedrich von Flemming addressed his encyclopedic work “Der Vollkommene Teutsche Jäger” (The fully experienced German hunter) to his Mighty Sovereign and Master, Friedrich Augusto, King of Poland in 1719, followed by a second volume in 1724. This massive two-volume work on wildlife and its management was published in Leipzig, Saxony, Germany. I possess the 1749 version of these tomes. It was one of two successful attempts at generating a comprehensive account of all matters pertaining to the wildlife and nature of north central Europe in a highly organized encyclopedic fashion. This work, with closely spaced letters covers over a thousand pages, and is illustrated in encyclopedic fashion. Even by modern standards the species accounts, written in a terse, factual manner are remarkably accurate and I have cited Flemming on aspects pertaining to deer biology in my 1998 book Deer of the World. Flemming was a well-traveled nobleman and manager of estates. He lived shortly after the devastation of the 30-year War, and was thus all-too familiar with the problems caused by wolves during that period (see quote from Grzimek’s encyclopedia below).

Flemming’s account of the wolf is dry and to the point. He considers wolves a punishment sent by God. As he does for the deer species, he gives a good review of the wolf biology and continues on to describe tersely the severe problems wolves cause, the fact hat during war times when wolves are little persecuted they are especially dangerous, that wolves follow armies, that taming and keeping wolves leads to such wolves destroying livestock, that wolves are dangerous to children, that man-eating wolves are often ageing individuals, that a strong man can put up an effective resistance to a wolf, that wolves are shy and can be cowed by a brave man, as well as that some people died some time after being bitten by wolves. He wrote much more than that about wolves. Aside from the biology, he thus illustrates the wolf in some detail as a dangerous animal. Consequently, he spent a lot of space on the means and ways of controlling wolf numbers.

Is von Flemming to be trusted?

What motivation might he have had informing his sovereign accurately about the life history of all species of wildlife and their relation to man, and then misinform him about wolves?

How could he dare basing his exhaustive account on the very expensive and time consuming means of controlling wolves on a lie?

Controlling wolves in Flemming’s days was a huge, capital and manpower intensive operation, requiring miles of netting, specialized net-carts, big drying sheds for storing and drying nets. It required whole villages who were conscripted under threat of punishment to do the driving so as to capture wolves. It disrupted economic activities and reduced taxes. How could one afford such based on a lie about wolves?

How could Flemming have gotten away with a lie of such importance? Had wolves been harmless, it would have been known, and well known by the emperor who watched over his treasury and whom informants surrounded.

Nobility was then very much enamored of wildlife, and their professional foresters then were excellent wildlife managers, as we know from the red deer antlers of the day still hanging on castle walls and the detailed records kept of hunt books. Flemming’s encyclopedia reveals an astonishingly comprehensive knowledge base of very practical knowledge about all wildlife. These people knew all too well why the wolf was to rural serfs the very embodiment of terror. Grzimek’s Encyclopedia puts it this way: “since a break-in by wolves into a cattle stall could mean an economic catastrophe for the owners, who could not then pay their tithe or could produce their necessary winter supplies (of meat) for salting. After the Thirty Years’ War, wolves multiplied and often prevented new settlements”. We find almost the same conditions in reviewing wolves in Russia.

Flemming’s experiences arose in the very heartland of the brothers Grimm fairy tales, Little Red Riding Hood included. The famous fairy tale was thus based on very real events and was not a case of ignorant superstition. It served as a valid warning to parents and children not to enter the forests containing wolves and be on the lookout for such. Man-killing wolves were a real threat and the society of the day did what they could to keep the danger minimal even though controlling wolves was very costly and met with little success. Even then it was known that wolves did thrive in wilderness settings, and, consequently, that destroying wilderness by turning it into meadows, cultivated fields, orchards, villages and towns robbed the wolf of living space. Wolves and wilderness were treated both as enemies of humanity in that area and time span.

Strychnine was invented shortly after Flemming and led to a severe drop in wolf numbers by the time of the French Revolution. Napoleon’s defeated army marching back from Moscow had wolves following which restored the wolf plague again till about 1850. Wolves were largely extinct by about the First World War in western and central Europe. However, when wolves were prevalent in the 19^th century in Germany they continued to kill people. Thus in 1820 the grand duchy of Posen in Prussia reported 19 adults and children killed by wolves. Trying to explain everything as the attacks by rabid wolves still means that the presence of wolves is very dangerous if rabies is indigenous. If only rabid wolves had been dangerous, then Flemming could not have known that wolves became especially dangerous once the tasted human flesh, or that an attacking wolf could be intimidated, or that wolves selected children. Rabid wolves bite indiscriminately, do not feed on their victims and cannot be intimidated.

Flemming’s encyclopedic treatment of wolves, does much more than verify the validity of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, it sets a pattern of expectation when reviewing other authors writing about wolves. Brehm’s Tierleben, a popular encyclopedic treatment of Animals published almost 200 years later paints a picture similar to Flemming and cites statistics on humans killed by wolves in Germany.  The 1975 English version of Grzimek’s Encyclopedia, acknowledges the European historic past, but emphasizes that “ In North America, wolf researchers, hikers and campers have nothing to fear from wolves”.  The authors also use here as their basis the thorough review of Dr. Doug Clark, formerly Chief of the Fish and Wildlife Branch, Ontario Department of Lands and Forests, which was also used by Pimlott. Clark was skeptical of reports of wolf attacks as his experience was much as my own in the Canadian continental wilderness, namely, of very shy wolves.

However, long before the Red Riding hood tale, wolves had fearsome roles in the Nordic mythology.  In the pre-Christian Germanic conceptions of gods and their fate, Fenrir, a giant wolf was preordained to kill the mightiest of gods, Odin, during the final cataclysm, Ragnarök. Never mind that the wolves Fenrir and Geri were created and nurtured by Odin, and were his close companions throughout. The trickster Loki, was punished by the gods for the murder of one of them, Balder, by having one of Loki’s children, Vali, turned into a wolf who then killed his sibling, Narfi, whose guts in turn were used to tie Loki to a rock, and inflict punishments on him till Ragnarök. Apparently, even the ancients knew that wolves may turn on their parents and siblings and kill them. This, however, can be contrasted against the ancient image of feral children raised by wolves such as Romulus and Remus in the Roman saga, or Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli in modern fiction. However, even here the “wolf children” act rank-sensitive, like wolves, as Romulus dominates over his brother Remus and kills him.

Russian, Finnish, Indian, Korean and other wolves

Most reports of problem wolves come from Russia and Finland. However, the language barriers were formidable. The relevant books by Bibikov and Pavlov are still not translated totally into English, and the wolf section in the Mammals of the USSR became available in English only in 1998. A book manuscript by an American linguist, Will Graves, came into my hands. Graves, after his transfer to Moscow, began reading about wolves in order to improve his language skill. A hunter and outdoorsman he quickly became aware that the Russian literature on wolves differed greatly from the modern one in North America. He was permitted to travel and he met with Russian scientists studying wolves, Bibikov and Pavlov included, he met with and talked to editors of wildlife publications, book authors, but also with hunters and herdsmen in the field, including survivors of wolf attacks. A significant finding of his is that there were five peaks of high abundance of wolves in Russia in the past 150 years. Each high was followed by government efforts to reduce wolves and each low was followed by neglect till wolf numbers rose again to unacceptable levels.  He could not find an outlet for his manuscript, which deals widely with wolves in Russian culture, including a rich collection of proverbs. I found the book valuable and after editing it the manuscript was accepted and published by a Canadian academic publisher (2007, Russian Wolves. Anxiety through the Ages. Detselig, Calgary. Pavlov’s translated chapter 12 is Appendix A in this book, and is Appendix A in this report).

The important material from Finland became available in English through the efforts of Magnus Hagelstam, as the current return of wolves to Finland is raising old, but well-founded safety concerns. What is most significant is that trained historians have examined the historical killings of children by wolves and found such reports valid. I have appended correspondence and position statements to this report (see Appendix G).

In addition Indian scientists dealt with the problem of child killing wolves in India, a problem of some significance.

Collectively, the massive material pertaining to man-killing wolves from Russia, Finland, India and elsewhere, follows much the same pattern as in the German historical accounts by Flemming. I was able to contrast such against my personal experiences with “misbehaving” wolves on Vancouver Island, as well as ongoing reports I am receiving on wolf incidents in areas where wolves are protected and expanding, namely in the United States (Yellowstone and New Mexico), in Sweden, Finland and most recently, eastern Germany. And then there are recent reports in Canada and Alaska of wolf attacks on people. To this we can add what some native people understood about wolves. Collectively, this material, as well as specific studies in animal behavior, allows us to pinpoint precisely the conditions in free-ranging which wolves are dangerous to people, as well as when free-ranging wolves are utterly harmless. About the fact that captive packs of wolves or wolf hybrids can be dangerous, there is no dispute.

The Korean experience is reviewed by Robert Neff in an article, Devils in the Darkness, published in June 2007. It gives grim statistics and does show that wolves become dangerous under conditions of helplessness by a rural population. I have covered similar matters pertaining to wolves in Afghanistan, Turkey and Iran in various end-note commentaries.