---
product_id: 94992885
title: "American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West"
brand: "nate blakesleemark bramhallrandom house audio"
price: "156 zł"
currency: PLN
in_stock: false
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.pl/products/94992885-american-wolf-a-true-story-of-survival-and-obsession-in
store_origin: PL
region: Poland
---

# American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West

**Brand:** nate blakesleemark bramhallrandom house audio
**Price:** 156 zł
**Availability:** ❌ Out of Stock

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- **What is this?** American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West by nate blakesleemark bramhallrandom house audio
- **How much does it cost?** 156 zł with free shipping
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## Description

American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    An excellent book that could help end trophy hunting of wolves near our national parks!
  

*by A***S on Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2017*

Nate Blakeslee’s book provides a penetrating view of wolves and people who love, hate, and manage them. It’s priority reading if you’re interested in wolves, particularly those of Yellowstone National Park.Insights into the amazing lives of wolves derive mainly from the copious notes of dedicated wolf watcher Laurie Lyman, and from observations by Rick McIntyre, a famed Yellowstone Park interpretive ranger. Featured is O-Six, the most famous Yellowstone wolf to date.We learn of incredible challenges that O-Six and her Lamar family faced, from fending off grizzly bears near their den to dealing with the constant threat of territorial encroachment by neighboring wolf families. The book describes, for example, her riveting showdown with the bison-hunting Mollie’s pack, and her unbelievable cliff jump to save herself and her pups.O-Six was beloved by wolf watchers for “her stunning blend of confidence and competence that inspired them, her indomitable will, her ability to bend a harsh landscape to her own ends, to do what needed to be done to provide for herself and her family every day, without fail.” By 2012 “she had become one of the sights to see if you went to Yellowstone, like Old Faithful or the Upper Falls.” Her family’s response at the moment of her tragic death that December was nothing less than surreal.For some readers, the book may be overly empathetic towards wolf hunter Steven Turnbull (not his real name) who lives in western Wyoming near Yellowstone National Park. Steven and most people in his small Crandall Valley community had been personally affected by a sharp drop in elk abundance that coincided with wolf reintroduction in the 1990s, an event biologists attribute not only to wolves but also to drought and overhunting at the time (in general, elk harvests are now up in the Northern Rockies even with the presence of wolves).Turnbull and other local hunters find themselves in what is to them an annoyingly changed world. On one hand, hunting elk near the park is not nearly as easy it once was, and that undercuts their way of life; on the other, Yellowstone Park is a rebalanced ecosystem with more willows, more beavers, fewer coyotes, more pronghorns, more rodents, more food for raptors, and an upsurge in wolf-based tourism. Hunting park wolves can’t bring back the super abundant elk, but it can provide those offended by the wolf’s return a sense of retribution.The book’s most salient human, however, is not Turnbull but rather protagonist Rick McIntyre, interpretive ranger and “ambassador” to the wolf-watching public. To the dedicated wolf watcher, “Rick was a guru.” Some readers may feel that the book is overly devoted to his story but I found it to be a fascinating and essential part since a lot of what we learn about wolves was through his eyes.The opinions of Rick and park wolf biologist Doug Smith count hugely among admiring wolf watchers, and increasingly with the general public. But “Rick’s employment with the Park Service made the politics of the situation delicate." He showed “studied neutrality when fielding questions from visitors about wolf hunting around the park.” Nevertheless, if prominent figures like Rick and Doug couldn’t renounce wolf hunting near the park, or don’t even mention it to park visitors, who would?Rick explained to a friend of mine that there was a federal-state deal made when wolves were reintroduced in the 1990s – that the states would allow wolf hunting outside the park. Yet, no one predicted Yellowstone would become a “wolf-watching mecca” and that its wolves would cross the park boundary and be killed during hunting seasons.American Wolf holds out the promise that Rick will, once retired and no longer as obsessed about seeing wolves everyday, become a Yellowstone wolf “emissary, just as Jane Goodall had done when she torn herself away from her beloved chimps to begin her own writing and speaking career, championing their cause everywhere she went.”In one sense, the broad debate about wolves in the West, with its emphasis on livestock conflicts, gets too much coverage in the book. It tends to obscure the amazing story of park wolves, and their unique scientific, educational, aesthetic, spiritual, and economic value.In that light, I found an unfortunate statement in the book that could wrongly damage the reputation of park wolves: “In fact, almost every year since reintroduction, he [Doug Smith] had reluctantly approved the shooting of a handful of Yellowstone wolves who had attacked livestock grazing near the park.” In fact, agency records show that from 2000-2015 only two park wolves were put down, and no livestock losses could be attributed to park wolves.Thus, the motivation to hunt national park wolves has nothing to do with protecting livestock. Rather it stems from the desire to get a unique trophy, or take advantage of an opportunity to find a more vulnerable, less wary wolf, or from sheer hatred of wolves and contempt for people who cherish them. “Get a good look, they won’t be there much longer,” one man said to Laurie Lyman as he passed through the park.As Blakeslee points out, “some Yellowstone wolves had become tolerant of humans, especially those who lived in the Lamar Valley, where wolf watching had become so popular, raising the question of whether it was ethical to shoot them when they left the park.” O-Six and her family up until 2012 had never been in the woods with hunters.While the book details legal and political battles over removing wolves from the endangered species list, it gives short shrift to the important idea of creating a no hunting, no trapping safety zone for wolves near the park: “Wolf advocates had lobbied for a kind of buffer zone around the park in which hunting would never be allowed, but such efforts hadn’t gotten very far.” That’s it! As a result, readers didn’t learn what a U.S. congressman and others did to advance the idea, and about what could be done; for example, designing safety areas by using location data on wolves leaving the park. But the Park Service has not pursued this, and once refused a biologist’s request for data that would allow him to undertake the task.In a strange twist, Blakeslee describes how, immediately after the shooting of O-Six, the park’s wolf office transferred precisely that kind of location data (wrongly identified as “public information”) to an avid wolf watcher. As a private citizen, he used it in a “guerilla campaign” against would-be park wolf hunters. His aim was to stop wolves from leaving the park by using noise emitters along their likely routes. And, he used signal jammers to foil the radio receivers of anyone who might be monitoring radio-collared wolves moving out of the park!I was surprised that the book fails to mention Park Service attempts to get wolves to avoid people, by chasing or throwing objects at wolves, using non-lethal shotgun fired munitions, and other means. These practices typically involved wolves, including O-Six, that ignore people and do not flee from them. This is a complex matter that should be of considerable concern to wolf watchers and a public desperate to see and enjoy wolves in the park. Should emphasis be on wolf management or on people management, including rules that protect wolves that happen to cross the park boundary?Neither does the book say much about how hunting impacts the natural integrity of wolf society, and that of Yellowstone Park itself. Cross-boundary “edge effects” should be a matter of importance to everyone concerned about the future of national parks and wildlife in an increasingly human-dominated world.I noticed only one technical gaffe in the book: “Male wolves provided food and care for their offspring, so unusual in the animal world.” Most bird enthusiasts would be surprised!In sum, American Wolf should help change outdated thinking about wolves. They are not mere widgets of wildlife management but rather highly sentient beings whose lives can be as intriguing and complex as our own. As the book demonstrates, compassion, love, joy, hatred, betrayal, cruelty, mercy, wisdom, culture, and other aspects of humanity appear evident in wolf society. Wildlife management has for too long dealt with wolves strictly at the population level, not taking into account the lives and value of individual animals.While not perfect, American Wolf is a fascinating and informative book. I hope you will read it and join the growing number of people demanding an end to trophy hunting and trapping of wolves near our national parks.(Dr. Povilitis directs Campaign for Yellowstone’s Wolves. Visit us on Facebook!)

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    One of the Most Consequential Books I Have Read
  

*by N***S on Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2018*

I cannot do justice to this book. It is without a doubt the most moving and valuable work I read in 2017, and I enjoyed many excellent books last year. American Wolf deals with the reintroduction of wolves into the northern Rockies, beginning with packs brought to Yellowstone National Park. The author describes the sad history of wolves in America as European populations spread across the continent. Wolves were hunted, poisoned, trapped, and murdered as puppies in their dens until only a few remnants of the species were left in wilderness areas of northern Minnesota and Michigan. In the mid-1990s, efforts were made to return wolves to remote areas of the West, and the controversy over their fate began anew.I am not objective. I admit that. I love wolves, and have loved them for as long as I can remember. I don’t think of them as “pets;” they are significantly different from dogs, although they are considered to be the same species by most biologists. Wolves are wild, and they should be left to live that life. Dogs are my companion animals; wolves are something else entirely.Nate Blakeslee masterfully presents a balanced view of the various sides to the wolf issue, explaining how the presence of wolves impacts the lives of ranchers, hunters, outfitters, and others who recently find themselves sharing the land with these wild hunters. As apex predators, wolves compete with us for game and space. Elk hunters can no longer walk 50 feet from the road to shoot their trophies or provide themselves with “free” meat for much of the year. With the return of wolves to the landscape, elk numbers have returned to the balance which had existed for thousands of years before humans exterminated wolves from the ecosystem.But with the return of wolves, that ecosystem has come back into a healthier equilibrium, one that benefits many other creatures, including the elk themselves. The book clearly details this process while personalizing the wolf itself through comprehensive descriptions of the lives of many individuals being studied by wildlife biologists and Yellowstone park rangers; the wolf packs are also watched and admired by thousands of park visitors who have the thrilling and inspiring opportunity to glimpse a wilderness mostly gone, and nearly lost forever.The narrative centers around a special wolf, O-Six, and Rick McIntyre, the ranger who studies her and the other wolves of the park with obsessive dedication. The descriptions of wolves in this book are not sentimental or anthropomorphic; they originate from the field notes of Rick and others devoted to documenting the daily lives of these amazing creatures. Life for wolves can be brutal, and the author pulls no punches in relating the reality of hunts as well as the deadly inter-pack warfare .This book is inspiring, yet also profoundly sad. But it educated me, and it deeply moved me. I listened to the audiobook, and when it finished, I immediately began to listen again…to all of it. (Something I don’t remember ever doing before.) And it was even more inspiring and more sad the second time.I have not done justice to the book itself, to O-Six, or to Rick McIntyre in writing this review. I can only say that, for me, it was one of the most consequential books I have experienced. I believe that we need wildness, as we need air to breathe, food to eat, and water to drink. If we lose that in this great, vast land of ours, we lose a vital piece of our souls as well. I may never see a wolf in the wild, but knowing they are out there, roaming the mountains, gives me great hope and joy.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Fascinating and fairly balanced book about wolves and human behavior
  

*by T***S on Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2019*

Fascinating, easy to read book which was hard to put down. As a longtime western hunter who still appreciates predators I enjoyed the story of the reintroduction of the wolf into Yellowstone, the captivating look at wolf behavior, and the environmental effects of the reintroduction. Almost equally compelling is the look at human behavior. Some of the story is seen through the eyes of biologists, hunters, wolf experts/observers, and wolf groupies. I give Mr. Blakeslee a lot of credit for trying to present a balanced view  of the human dynamics without villainizing anyone (other than a few politicians, but, heck, they're fair game). It was a difficult task and for the most part he succeeded, although, for my taste, too much space was given to some of the wolf groupies who have overly anthropomorphized wolves. You get the feeling some of these folks would cry more over a dead wolf than their own dead child.Because the book follows the development and demise of dens and because wolves are referred to by number (which were assigned by the biologists) it can be a bit confusing remembering who is who. I ended up writing a brief description, org chart, and wolf members by den on an index card to keep it all straight and quick.The book could have used photos. The book felt a bit bare without them.Because I was reading the Kindle version (which can make going back and forth a bit of a hassle), the book would have also benefited by better or more maps.I would have rated the book 4.5 but Amazon doesn't give that choice.

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*Last updated: 2026-02-01*