Hunt for the Shadow Wolf: Excerpt

Ed. note: This is an excerpt from Hunt for the Shadow Wolf by Derek Gow and published here with permission by and from Chelsea Green UK.

When my journey began to reintroduce the beaver to Britain and I undertook many European trips to view the rich waterworlds they create, wolves were a nothing.

They did not exist in most of the landscapes I visited a quarter of a century ago. I recall a field trip to the Netherlands with an agricultural college in Hampshire to look at an engineering project near Nijmegen. As we viewed the steel-grey konik ponies and black Galloway cattle contentedly grazing, I asked the project manager accompanying us if, as part of his ambitious rewilding agenda, he would ever consider reintroducing predators.

I recall he laughed before saying no and stating it was his belief that, as more green bridges covered with trees linked to river corridors or other landscapes being recovered for nature were built, in time wolves would arrive of their own volition.

As the nearest wolf population was nearly a thousand kilometres away in the military ranges of Saxony, I dismissed this assumption as fanciful. When several years later a young wolf was killed on a motorway equidistant from the Dutch border and its east German birthplace, it still seemed far-fetched that, long after the last was killed in 1869, they could recolonise the Netherlands. Now, of course, they have and, despite several road deaths and a number of illegal killings, there are believed to be nine packs in 2023 – wolf pairs that have borne cubs – seven of which, plus a scattering of single wolves, are living without great issue in the sprawling pine forests of the central Veluwe.

As the wolf has returned to France and to Germany, to Belgium and the Netherlands, to Luxembourg, Lichtenstein and Switzerland, more old beavering chums told tales of their comeback. Some sad about their strange sudden deaths or disappearances. Odd incidents with tame kangaroos. Of weeping school teachers and of the hatred of wolves associated with the worst of the politics of the rising far right.

But there are governments who have banned their killing and many people of all sorts who have decided to offer them welcome. Wolves are not easy to live with.

Although wolf-proof fences can be erected to protect sheep in small fields, for large roaming mountain flocks guard dogs and corrals not used since the Middle Ages need to be reemployed and rebuilt. Foals and calves can and will be attacked as wolf numbers increase and, while there remains little evidence that they pose any real threat to us, the fear of the wolf that many individuals carry in the darkest portals of their hearts remains all too alive.

Perhaps we resent them for being a life force that’s ungovernable by us.

The English Channel, deep and wide, ensures our sanctity for a wolf-free future here in Britain. If we ever wish, like the Coloradans have just done, to acquire them once more, they will have to be captured and crated from European forests. While, of course, the draconian unions of the farming elite will say no and persuade their pals in power perhaps to back them for a while, there are others in increasing number who long for a different future.

More rewilding estates and progressive farm owners are relaxed. Foresters, who wish to bring deer numbers down and so reinstate a natural equilibrium between landscape and wildlife, know that the materials used for the fences they erect now to deny deer access will only do so for around fifteen years and that, one day, an alternative must come. Other voices in wider society are also rising. Large conservation groups, journalists and writers, sober scientists, young film makers, poets and children. In short, people of all sorts are asking: why not?

Many have come to realise that the story of the wolf’s eradication from Britain was simply a curtain-raiser for the sheep and the deer, which, in ever-rising numbers, have flayed our uplands bare.

One day, perhaps the slim candle of hope that’s smoking slowly may flare into a torch of ambition.

My quest to find out what happened to the wolves that were once here has become both a mission and delight.

As one story faltered or came to conclusion, another would beckon from the page of an elderly account, a hint from a place name or through the chance encounter with an individual who knew more. Several times, a sentence that I started to explain to a listener would be finished by them with information of which I knew nothing.

For what it’s worth, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, in its official reintroduction guidelines, requires that both the cause of a species’ extirpation and the absence of the initial drivers of its extinction are understood before any programme of restoration begins. Although we know that we killed wolves in Britain because they ate our sheep, that is a simplistic understanding without any depth of complication.

A better account of what happened in Britain to the wolf might therefore constitute a beginning of sorts for any movement that sought their return.

So, shall we commence?