Wolves Vote with Their Feet
Kendrick Peak Pack wolf (“Hope” #2979). Photo courtesy of the Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project.
The Mexican gray wolf family living west of Flagstaff, Arizona near Kendrick Peak are blissfully unaware of the proximity of election day. They know nothing of the candidates’ positions, the ballot measures, nor the flood of robocalls asking for votes. They don’t know that they are in a battleground state, or even that they are north of the arbitrary boundary of the Mexican Wolf Experimental Population Area. They only know that it recently snowed where they live, and that there are fewer of the thick-bodied, mooing grass-eaters around at the water source now.
They don’t know that they’ve broken the rules about where they are allowed to be, or that they have run across the line that delineates the land they are allowed to live within. They just know when the moon is full, and their bellies are empty. They know how to hunt, to survive, to navigate this landscape and stay together. There are at least two wolves, maybe more, that have claimed this space (but have stayed largely out of human sight) since at least June.
The Kendrick Peak wolves don’t know that they have voted to expand the current range of their species into the Grand Canyon ecoregion, exactly where scientists have predicted wolves would thrive. They have voted for a chance to disperse to the shadows of the San Francisco Peaks by following the scent trails of wolves that dispersed before them. They have voted to be together in this new place, to forge bonds and create a family. They’ve elected themselves the leaders in this new place, and the deer and elk and coyotes and aspen and all the other beings in the forest recognize the wolves’ new role.
Can humans let them lead? Can the government agencies cede their sense of power and let the wolves decide where to live? Can we forget the map that puts a line around wolf territory and embrace the map that opens the line to wolves’ self-determination and survival? Can we try to live with the wolves rather than manage them into submission and/or south of Interstate 40?
Right now, there are at least three votes in favor, including mine.
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