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4.38 AVERAGE
4.38 AVERAGE
adventurous
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
adventurous
informative
inspiring
mysterious
medium-paced
We added this book to our library after listening/talking to a local wolverine biologist about a recent survey and study done in our own backyard. It's an important book. An honest book. A book that's altogether difficult to read in places, as nearly all honest and important books are.
The Wolverine Way is part natural history of/part personal connection to one the wildest, most tenacious species on the planet, told through the lens of Douglas Chadwick, a wildlife biologist who lives near Glacier National Park and who was a volunteer participant in an intensive five-year study of wolverines done there from 2004-2009.
But this book, like every naturalist-themed book I’ve ever read, isn’t just about wolverines. It’s about the climate crisis, human greed, misguided and outdated game management/hunting philosophies, the extreme need for wilderness corridors between wild spaces, and the lack of sufficient buffer zones between humans and wild animals. It’s about a fierce animal that has as much right to exist in the mountains as we do. (And arguably more right in the winter.)
These animals may be fierce, but they aren’t cruel. Cruel is what humans so often are and most certainly have been when it comes to diligently, passionately, and ignorantly trapping, baiting, “harvesting,” and otherwise nearly exterminating woodland (and oceanic) predators like the wolverine—as if this world will be anything but less than without them in it. As if our public and private wilderness lands and oceans will be anything but more unstable without healthy communities of predators helping manage and maintain what are both complex and vital ecosystems.
What I hope we can collectively figure out before it’s too late: We’re all connected; we need predators (and predators need ample prey, + room to roam and exist); these complex and vital ecosystems aren’t just essential to a wolverine’s survival, but to our own, too.
We have wolverines where we live, and while there aren’t enough of them left in Idaho, or anywhere else in the West, that we have them at all gives me a sense of solace. I so want them to make it.
Some of my favorite passages, then:
“To say that French voyageurs and other whites in the first waves of colonization were predisposed to portray wolverines as diabolical is putting it mildly. … Reviling wolverines wasn’t fundamentally about wolverines—no more than condemning wolves through the centuries as sadistic spawn of Satan was [is] about the wolves themselves.” —from “Kwi’kwa’ju”
“The hallmark of our particular era is the startling pace at which humans multiplied to the point of monopolizing much of the biosphere and altering its basic qualities.” —from “Risks, Rewards, and Southern Polar Bears”
“As the wolverine becomes better known at last, it adds a fierce emphasis to the message that every bear, wolf, lynx, and other major carnivore keeps giving: If the living systems we choose to protect aren’t large and strong and interconnected, then we aren’t really conserving them.” —from “Freedom to Roam”
[Five stars for important, scientifically sound books, and the hope we'll allow wolverines and their wild communities to recover even a fraction of what we've taken from them.]
The Wolverine Way is part natural history of/part personal connection to one the wildest, most tenacious species on the planet, told through the lens of Douglas Chadwick, a wildlife biologist who lives near Glacier National Park and who was a volunteer participant in an intensive five-year study of wolverines done there from 2004-2009.
But this book, like every naturalist-themed book I’ve ever read, isn’t just about wolverines. It’s about the climate crisis, human greed, misguided and outdated game management/hunting philosophies, the extreme need for wilderness corridors between wild spaces, and the lack of sufficient buffer zones between humans and wild animals. It’s about a fierce animal that has as much right to exist in the mountains as we do. (And arguably more right in the winter.)
These animals may be fierce, but they aren’t cruel. Cruel is what humans so often are and most certainly have been when it comes to diligently, passionately, and ignorantly trapping, baiting, “harvesting,” and otherwise nearly exterminating woodland (and oceanic) predators like the wolverine—as if this world will be anything but less than without them in it. As if our public and private wilderness lands and oceans will be anything but more unstable without healthy communities of predators helping manage and maintain what are both complex and vital ecosystems.
What I hope we can collectively figure out before it’s too late: We’re all connected; we need predators (and predators need ample prey, + room to roam and exist); these complex and vital ecosystems aren’t just essential to a wolverine’s survival, but to our own, too.
We have wolverines where we live, and while there aren’t enough of them left in Idaho, or anywhere else in the West, that we have them at all gives me a sense of solace. I so want them to make it.
Some of my favorite passages, then:
“To say that French voyageurs and other whites in the first waves of colonization were predisposed to portray wolverines as diabolical is putting it mildly. … Reviling wolverines wasn’t fundamentally about wolverines—no more than condemning wolves through the centuries as sadistic spawn of Satan was [is] about the wolves themselves.” —from “Kwi’kwa’ju”
“The hallmark of our particular era is the startling pace at which humans multiplied to the point of monopolizing much of the biosphere and altering its basic qualities.” —from “Risks, Rewards, and Southern Polar Bears”
“As the wolverine becomes better known at last, it adds a fierce emphasis to the message that every bear, wolf, lynx, and other major carnivore keeps giving: If the living systems we choose to protect aren’t large and strong and interconnected, then we aren’t really conserving them.” —from “Freedom to Roam”
[Five stars for important, scientifically sound books, and the hope we'll allow wolverines and their wild communities to recover even a fraction of what we've taken from them.]