After the reintroduction of gray wolves

to Yellowstone and, as anticipated, their culling

of deer, trees grew beyond the deer stunt

of the mid-century. In their up reach

songbirds nested, who scattered

seed for underbrush, and in that cover

warrened snowshoe hare. Weasel and water shrew

returned, also vole, and came soon hawk

and falcon, bald eagle, kestrel, and with them

hawk shadow, falcon shadow. Eagle shade

and kestrel shade haunted newly-berried

runnels where deer no longer rummaged, cautious

as they were, now, of being surprised by wolves. Berries

brought bear, while undergrowth and willows, growing

now right down to the river, brought beavers,

who dam. Muskrats came to the dams, and tadpoles.

Came, too, the night song of the fathers

of tadpoles. With water striders, the dark

gray American dipper bobbed in fresh pools

of the river, and fish stayed, and the bear, who

fished, also culled deer fawns, and to their kill scraps

came vulture and coyote, long gone in the region

until now, and their scat scattered seed, and more

trees, brush, and berries grew up along the river

that had run straight and so flooded but thus dammed,

compelled to meander, is less prone to overrun. Don’t

you tell me this is not the same as my story. All this

life born from one hungry animal, this whole,

new landscape, the course of the river changed,

I know this. I reintroduced myself to myself, this time

a mother. After which, nothing was ever the same.

In North America, and more recently in Europe, the grey wolf (Canis lupus, and its close relative the Eurasian wolf, Canis lupus lupus) have staged a remarkable recovery over the last few decades. In this book we explore various aspects of this recovery, alongside some of the history, literature and myth surrounding this most iconic of species. We also meet some wolves that have headed south and consider the many faces of the dingo – from outback wolf to feral dog, and the Tasmanian wolf that never was a wolf. Perhaps no other species has polarised human opinion more than the wolf, a trend which continues to this day. The wolf can be simultaneously an inspirational emblem of the wild and an embodiment of evil, a pest to be managed or worse, eradicated (as was the case in the UK). In other books and papers, many of the authors in this volume have spoken of the need for compassion and coexistence with non-human species, even if at times this means accepting that our behaviour has to change and this might come at a cost.

As with our previous work on bears, we knew that there was a rich seam of information to mine here – not only on the biology and taxonomy of wolves, but more importantly on the human-wolf relationship and how this has been expressed in folklore, in first nations’ societies, in adult and children's literature, in exhibitions, zoos, museums and in art. Given a book of this scope, it was also inevitable that we would end up invoking Godwin's Law, and the emergence of Nazi Werewolves from Outer Space. We wanted also to discuss how our perception of wolves is influenced by the manner in which they are revealed to the public in the wild, to the fascinated gaze of tourists.

To achieve these wide-ranging aims we have been fortunate to bring together a distinguished field of authors, all of whom have addressed wolf species from different standpoints. To all of them we are extremely grateful for their time, expertise and patience, but especially so to the two doyens of wolf studies and rewilding, Luigi Boitani and Mark Fisher, who have kindly provided the Foreword and Afterword for this book