Wolf My Spirit Animal Is A Grumpy Wolf Who Slaps Annoying People Shirt

Through the systematic, vehement extermination of every wolf to be found, the U.S. won its war against wild nature. Over the course of a few centuries, the wolf population was reduced from the millions to the hundreds, with the last few survivors in the lower 48 states retreating deep into the woods of present-day Michigan and Minnesota for safety.The fanaticism and scope of the crusade against wolves by the U.S. cannot be overstated. Naturalist writer Barry Lopez asserts that Americans persecuted wolves almost pathologically, and that, “wolf killing goes much beyond predator control…the history of killing wolves shows far less restraint and far more perversity.”Keeping this dark history in perspective, it is truly miraculous that there are any wolves left in the U.S. at all. To be clear, the federal government incentivized the killing of wolves as late at 1965, and many hunters still combed the Great Lakes region for the elusive packs that had taken refuge there. Despite the hunters’ best efforts, the northern timber wolves held their ground and actually began to make a slight comeback. With the cover of a vast, dense forest, and the recolonization of dispersing wolves from Canada, Michigan and Wisconsin’s wolves persevered. By 1970, there were a few reports of wolf sightings farther from the Canadian border than there had been in over a decade. The last of America’s wild wolves were starting to win more public interest and concern, and talk of endangered species conservation and legislation had just begun in the environmentalist movement.

Wolf My Spirit Animal Is A Grumpy Wolf Who Slaps Annoying People Shirt

The Protection of the Wolfwolf pups with bonesWolf pups in Yellowstone, photo courtesy of NPSt was only after the monumental declaration that the gray wolf would be protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1974 that wolf recovery truly became possible. The public’s interest and fascination grew in leaps and bounds as modern Americans became further removed from nature. As so often is the case, it was only after wolves had vanished that we began to value what we had lost.The northern gray wolf took a huge step on the road to recovery when the first pack of wild wolves crossed the border from Canada to Glacier National Park, Montana. Wolf conservationists and advocates, in their joy and disbelief, dubbed them the Magic Pack. Meanwhile, the Great Lakes population grew steadily, spreading into northern Wisconsin. By 1990, Montana’s Magic Pack had company, as other packs continued to migrate from Canada, and the first wolves were born on Glacier National Park soil. The first substantial reports of wolf sightings in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State came in, and the U.S. could now boast a possible population of wolves in seven states, including Alaska.