Yellowstone Wolves: A Chronicle of the Animal, the People, and the Politics - Softcover

Cat Urbigkit

Softcover

ISBN 10: 093992370X ISBN 13: 9780939923700

Publisher: McDonald and Woodward Publishing Company, 2008

Synopsis

Yellowstone Wolves provides a unique perspective on what is one of the most visible and contentious wildlife management experiments taking place in the American West today. It is a review of the discovery, persecution, and possible survival of the native wolves of the northern Rocky Mountains of the United States; it is a detailed chronicle of the debate over the legality and propriety of introducing wolves from Canada into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho during the mid-1990s; and it is an account of the spread of the released Canadian wolves from Yellowstone and central Idaho into surrounding areas and the tensions created by these movements. Most of all, Yellowstone Wolves is a passionate and fact-filled illustration of the raging interplay that can develop among the many diverse interests that vest in experiments of this type. Insights gained from Yellowstone Wolves will be of value for dealing with innumerable other issues, environmental and beyond, where multiple perspectives converge, conflict, and demand and deserve sober, intelligent, and candid resolution.

Cat Urbigkit, an advocate for the conservation of what were presumed to be remaining populations of wolves native to the Yellowstone area, a newspaper reporter who covered the debate over wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone and central Idaho during and after the mid-1990s, and one of the litigants who sued the US Fish and Wildlife Service to prevent the introduction of Canadian wolves into the region, is uniquely qualified to provide an intensely personal perspective on, and detailed record about, the debate over the Canadian wolf release and the circumstances that subsequently developed.

The Foreword by Ronald M. Nowak provides authoritative context for understanding the broader significance of endangered species management and the record, and trends, of the United States in managing the nation s biological diversity and adhering to the mandates of the Endangered Species Act.

About this title

About the Author:

Cat Urbigkit was born in southern Indiana and, while a young girl, moved with her family to Pinedale, Wyoming. A few years after graduating from high school, she married Jim Urbigkit. She eventually went into journalism, becoming a feature writer for a local newspaper and, more recently, a founding co-owner of a community newspaper, the Sublette Examiner. The Urbigkits presently own and operate a sheep ranch near Pinedale, but Cat remains active in journalism as a photographer, a writer for numerous regional newspapers, and an author and illustrator of children s books.

Cat and Jim became interested in the idea of wolf reintroduction to the Yellowstone area during the mid-1980s. As the debate evolved, the Urbigkits emerged as leading advocates against the introduction of Canadian wolves into a region that appeared to already harbor populations of the native Northern Rocky Mountain wolf. Despite their passionate and exhaustive efforts to protect the native wolf, they finally lost their legal battle to do so in 2000 and, subsequently, entered the ranching business. Soon thereafter, in 2003, some of the rapidly growing populations of Canadian wolves expanded their range far enough away from Yellowstone to find the Urbigkits and their sheep near Pinedale.

Review:

"The Foreword, by Ronald M. Nowak, beautifully sets the stage for the book itself. The Foreword is substantive and subtly presented, and it should be re-read once the book's main text is completed.
Yellowstone Wolves is a lively and carefully documented account of the use and abuse of science, multiple levels of politics, interpretations of the law, administration of justice, rural sociology, media, and unbridled propaganda as provided from all sides of a hideously complex subject. This book is a chronologically based, practical documentation, and the author's personal commitment to the issues is profound.
Although eminently readable by almost any interested person, the book should be required as case-study reading for students and professionals in the various fields of conservation biology. It also should give pause to all of us who write to decision-makers in support of viewpoints, as based upon passionate advice from disparate environmental or occupational organizations, before we personally have firm factual grasp on the involved motivations.
Particularly interesting is the book's unflinching insistence that agencies of the federal government represent the most important impediments to application of 'best available science' within specific issues of conservation biology. Although probably not a specific intention of its author, I suggest this book gives powerful testament in support of the conceptual strength and practical necessity of stricter enforcement of the Endangered Species Act of 1973." --Jason A. Lillegraven, Professor Emeritus, Departments of Geology/Geophysics and Zoology/Physiology, The University of Wyoming, 1/11/09

Cat Urbigkit . . . a newspaper photojournalist, rancher, and litigant against the Fisheries and Wildlife Service shares a unique inside-and-outside perspective on the decline and resurrection of the gray wolf in Yellowstone Wolves: A Chronicle of the Animal, the People, and the Politics. The protection of endangered species is most controversial when it comes to saving predatory animals, and nowhere has conflict been more intense than in and around Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park. . . . Urbigkit's undeniably thorough treatment of the subject, featuring impressive historical documentation, makes this book one that no serious conservationist should overlook. --Foreword Magazine - Reviews of Good Books Independently Published, Jan/Feb. 2009

Cat Urbigkit's explication of the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park . . . dramatizes the socio-political forces that define the changing landscape of the new West. --Laurie Latta, President of the Wyoming Council for the Humanities 2006

Cat [has] shown us the unimaginable interplay of biology, politics, factionalism, economics, and emotion that may revolve around the recognition, management, and political manipulation of an endangered species. . . . She has demonstrated the complexity and anguish of wolf conservation and provided a unique perspective on a fascinating story. --Ronald M. Nowak, Zoologist

Yellowstone Wolves provides a wonderful example of how wilderness management issues such as the reintroduction of a predator quickly become 'wicked' problems, involving multiple truths, conflicting science, bureaucratic and political pressures, special interest groups, concerned members of the public, and the legal system. On the wolf issue in Yellowstone, Urbigkit notes the government agencies have their own agenda, and change their policies and procedures to ensure this agenda is met. ...Urbigkit provides a valuable service by highlighting the political nature of decision making and the troubling self-selection of science to serve bureaucratic and political ends in wilderness, park, and wildlife management. -- John Shultis, IJW book editor, August 2009, International Journal of Wilderness.

...Highly recommended. All undergraduate, graduate, and public libraries with collections on ecology, mammalogy, and wildlife management.'-- H.N. Cunningham Jr., emeritus, Pennsylvania State Erie, Behrend College. CHOICE, May 2009, Vol. 46 No. 09

Anyone who wants the insight on problems with the Endangered Species Act, the politics in the US Fish and Wildlife Service and Park Service, and details about wolves in Yellowstone Park, both native and introduced, will find this an educational read that provides plenty of food for thought. -- Rebecca Colnar, Director of Media Relation, Montana Farm Bureau Spokesman, Spring 2009

'This book is an invaluable and unique addition to the story of wolves in the greater Yellowstone area.' -- Elaine Jones Hayes, Laramie County Library System, from Wyoming Library Roundup, Fall/Winter 2009, page 21

About this edition

• Publisher: McDonald and Woodward Publishing Company
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 093992370X
• ISBN 13: 9780939923700
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 300