Wolf Wars Begin in Europe
Any partnership hunters and gatherers may have had with wolves soured once our ancestors became herders that claimed land and raised livestock. They came to treat wolves as unwanted competitors. They began to dislike and fear wolves and wolf-human history degenerated from an inspiring tale of two species partnering to a sad story of one species with a powerful arsenal—and no thoughts of long-term consequences—waging war on another.
To understand this war, let’s use the Middle Ages (5th-15th century) as a starting point. That was a time when horrifying rumors—some of them true—about rabid wolves killing humans spread across Europe. Governments declared war on wolves.
In France in the 800s, the government hired an elite corps of hunters to control the wolf population. In England in the late 1200s, King Edward ordered the extermination of wolves in some parts of the country. In 1427, James of Scotland passed a law requiring three wolf hunts a year, even during denning season.
Wolf wars such as these were not waged in a vacuum; Europeans were struggling with other deadly challenges. A Little Ice Age, that some experts believe began as early as the 1300s and lasted until the mid 1800s, chilled Europe. During that Little Ice Age, temperatures decreased, snowfall increased, and the growing season shrank. This reduced harvests and created devastating shortages of crops and livestock.
 |
| Europe in the 1300s. Map public domain |
Also during the early 1300s, and perhaps due to the Little Ice Age, the Great Famine struck, killing 10 to 25 percent of the population of many European cities and towns.
To make matters worse, in the mid 1300s, the Black Death peaked. That plague eventually killed at least a third of all western Europeans.
With families and friends starving and dying, few would accept wolves taking livestock. I can imagine the war cry spreading across the countryside: Protect our families! Protect our livestock! Kill all wolves!
Once the Black Death subsided, western Europe’s population rebounded and doubled by the early 1600s. According to Jon T. Coleman, author of Vicious: Wolves and Men in America, more Europeans meant more mouths to feed. More food meant more land needed for livestock and crops. More land for farming meant less available for wolves.
As Europe’s population grew and spread, so did wolf killing. By the early 1500s, wolves had been hunted and trapped to extinction in England. They were eradicated from Scotland by the late 1600s and from Ireland by the late 1700s.
Anti-Wolf Attitudes Sail to the New World
Increased European population helped lead to colonization of North America. When colonists disembarked in the New World, wolves probably watched from the woods; an estimated two million wolves roamed most of North America, though colonists rarely saw them since wolves avoided humans. Nevertheless, another war on wolves was about to erupt.
Even though most colonists had never lost livestock to wolves, had never seen or heard wolves, they stepped off the boats disliking and fearing the predators. They began the New World siege quickly. As early as 1625, colonists were using tactics refined in the Old World to stop predation, according to Barry Lopez in Of Wolves and Men. They also had firearms and could kill from a distance. They hired wolf hunters and passed bounty laws—the first in Massachusetts in 1630. Other colonies followed including New Jersey in 1697.
 |
| Photo by Mary Strickroth |
Wolf Hatred American Style
The often told story says that Old World anti-wolf attitudes begat New World anti-wolf attitudes. But historian Coleman argues that these immigrants and their descendants—our ancestors—added an American twist to the view of wolves.
Given the colonists’ Old World view of wolves as monsters, one would expect New World settlers to have avoided wolves. Yet Coleman discovered records from as early as 1621 that show just the opposite. A settler, in one example, stumbled upon wolves at a deer kill, chased the wolves away, and swiped the meat. Records also document colonists encountering wolves and the frightened animals turning tail.
If wolves were such cowards, why did colonists treat them so viciously? Religion was partly to blame, says Coleman. “The biblical version of wolves with its focus on greed, corruption, and theft flourished in New England…” Colonists thumped the Bible to rationalize wreaking havoc on wolves for the crime of killing livestock.
Yet settlers aided and abetted those crimes by grazing livestock in wolf country without proper supervision. Coleman found colonists entrusted their herds to teenage boys “short in stature and attention span.” Wolves—hungry and struggling because settlers had overhunted their natural prey—took some livestock. This scenario moved west with civilization: Everywhere settlers killed off wild game, wolves came to dine on imported livestock. Settlers fought back. But they didn’t just kill wolves; they ravaged them, Coleman says, because Euro-Americans fantasized…”to overpower savagery one must lash out savagely.”
Lashing out included creating fantasies that were the opposite of reality. Colonists portrayed wolves preying on humans. Reality: humans preyed on wolves. Colonists described howling wolves surrounding humans and inducing panic. Reality: humans surrounded and panicked wolves. This belief in a savage wolf—a figment in minds filled with fantasies—fed hatred and prompted vicious eradication of wolves in colonial America.
Wolves didn’t fight back. Their natural intelligence, speed, strength, and teeth were no match for our big brains and big arsenals. By the mid 1800s, that arsenal included more effective rifles and strychnine. By poisoning a carcass, hunters could kill an entire pack.
And as settlers moved west, the war on wolves moved with them. More on that in PART 3.
Join Rick in his latest writing adventure, Love the Wild, a free weekly letter to subscribers. You'll enjoy a diverse selection of podcasts, photo essays, opinion pieces, excerpts from Rick's award-winning books, and more. All aim to excite your mind and warm your heart with stories about wildlife and wild lands.
Rick's bestselling In the Temple of Wolves; its sequel, Deep into Yellowstone; and its prequel, The Wilds of Aging are available signed. His books are also available unsigned or as eBook or audiobook on Amazon.
Rick Lamplugh's writings and research has led me to become a whole hearted wolf advocate and activist in Colorado. Thank you Rick
ReplyDeleteThank you, Rhonda, for your kind words and for all you are doing for wolves in Colorado. It looks to me like you and other wolf advocates are doing a good job fighting for reintroduction.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThere was a particularly Abominable practice that occurred since at least the mid-1600s in the North American colonies.
ReplyDeleteIn this, all the available persons with guns, ubiquitous, as bushmeat was a rampant North American industry until the extirpations of ALL animals caused some outcry to 19th century governments which established "legal" hunting and state management.
That abdication of wildlife management to states,as we now understand,was a grave mistake.
But, back to the practice:
the armed males would be sent out radially, as far in one case I read, as 100 miles. At a predetermined time (perhaps sunrise or some other easily synchronized time), the riflemen were to turn and commence firing into the air, walking toward their original center of dispersion. They would do this for as many days as it took to come into sensory contact, and, of course, ALL the larger mammals would have consistently fled toward that center.
I believe the phrase "killing ground originated" in this practice.
All the crop-eating ungulates, and all the predators,, and any other animals in the killing ground, were then shot by the circle of gunmen.
(even muzzle-loading rifles can be reloaded quickly by pouring /placing the powder & shot, and banging the stock on the ground, an old, now forgotten and unnecessary process)
This culture is heir to such atrocity. Right now, it is legal in some states to set a number fo dogs as a group, with GPS on each individual collar, to pursue black bears (and further, to set out baits to most easily find recent whereabouts and spoor from which the dogs can efficiently discover targets), and sometimes other carnivores, then using their location to find and kill the helpless treed or surrounded animal.
I was shocked that this practice even occurs by individuals who claimed membership in the most traditionally wolf-respectful native american tribe.( as a child I was taught and influenced by an uncle who was highly influenced by that people, with some heredity there)