Becoming Canis lupus
COLORADO WOLF STORIES XVI
SPECIAL NOTE: This episode of Colorado Wolf Stories attempts to follow the evolutionary and historical path of the humble creature that would become Canis lupus. It begins with its earliest ancestor, continuing to its relationships with humans, past and present, in a place we know today as Colorado. As with all episodes in this series, this is a work of informed speculation.
When the end came in a thunderous explosion, and fire rained down from the sky, the tiny shrew-like mammal stayed deep in her underground burrow, and she survived.
After several days, as the catastrophic conditions on the surface became bearable, she ventured out into a darkened, devastated world.
She was an omnivore, and could exist on what meager sustenance remained, after the dinosaur-killing comet and the inferno and the demise of almost every living thing. This least of creatures, which had trembled in the shadows of the Terrible Lizards for millions of years, was now the inheritor of all that was to come.
She and others of her kind would flourish in this new world. As ecosystems slowly recovered, becoming wetter and greener, as continents drifted, the survivors grew larger and diversified. She adapted at each step, changing in small ways that accumulated over hundreds of centuries, on an impossibly long journey across continents and time.
She arose in the southwest of a land-mass that would become known as North America, then made her way north and west into Eurasia. Here she became larger still, a true carnivore now. She would be the first of a new evolutionary line called canids.
By now, the planet was a warmer, densely forested place, and she was an apex predator. She preyed on other forest creatures which, like her, had grown in both size and diversity. She had come a long way since crawling out of that burrow, but her story had still just begun.
Time passed: decades, centuries, millennia. Millions of years came and went. Now the diversity of mammals reached new heights with the emergence of a species on the other side of the planet that rose up on two legs in the tall grasslands of Africa. These new upright creatures seemed to be a fragile life form. They were neither large nor strong, but they were smart. They could make tools and weapons, and hold them in their hands, and they began to spread across the continents.
During all this time, she continued her long transformation. Through countless generations, adaptations and mutations, she had become something utterly unlike the small rodent of long ago. She stood now as a member of a family group. She was a new kind of carnivorous canine, which bonded with its mate for life, cared for its young, and used intelligence and tenacity to survive. She would come to be called Canis lupus, the gray wolf.
As the planet cooled over the following centuries, another great migration took place. Glaciers advanced from the north, and seas retreated, revealing ancient land connections. These became new grazing grounds which invited the arrival of great Ice Age beasts, and soon thereafter, the upright human creatures who hunted them.
Gray wolves also followed the herds of shaggy plant-eaters. Eventually, this survivor of that long-ago extinction event, returned home to North America after an absence of 65 million years.
In the course of time, both humans and wolves spread across the continent. Humans formed different tribes, and wolves became subtly different species. These early human cultures generally lived in harmony with the wolf, admiring their skills at hunting, and their devotion to providing for and protecting their families. Many tribes elevated the wolf to revered spiritual status, and most aspired to reflect the qualities they saw in this tough and intelligent predator in their own lives.
The Cheyenne considered wolves to be teachers who had instructed the people how to hunt with cunning and cooperation. Apache warriors would sing and dance before battle to gain the strength and courage of the wolf.
Many tribes told stories about people lost in the wilderness, who were adopted and cared for by wolves. The Ojibwe considered the wolf to be their brother. They knew their fates were linked, and whatever befell one would befall the other.
In these ways and countless others, humans and wolves lived in harmony and respect in North America for some 20,000 years.
But for gray wolves, another apocalypse loomed on the horizon, with the arrival of a new kind of upright creature, who brought with them domestic sheep, goats, and cattle, and a deep and abiding hatred of wolves.
Those pious European colonists harbored superstitions about werewolves. They feared the dark shadows of New World wilderness as a place of the Devil, and they feared the wolf as his servant.
Accordingly, early colonists initiated a campaign of extermination against native peoples and any native creatures that they felt conflicted with their interests. They produced the first wildlife management law in American history: a one shilling bounty on wolves offered by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630.
The long war on wolves had begun.
Wolves were killed to protect livestock. They were killed for money, for pelts, for trophies, and for the grim pleasure of it. They were relentlessly shot and trapped. Puppies were burned in their dens or pulled out with hooks. Large-scale poison baiting inflicted unspeakable agony and death on thousands of wolves and untold numbers of other creatures such as foxes, bears, eagles, mountain lions, ravens, badgers, raccoons, magpies, weasels, vultures…
It was carnage beyond predator control, it was irrational annihilation.
In the West, during the latter half of the 1800s, unregulated market hunting in order to feed an influx of settlers and miners had decimated wolf prey such as bison, elk, and deer. At the same time, domestic animals were increasing in numbers, leaving wolves little choice but to take advantage of this easy new food source.
Wolves were also vilified for preying on species favored by hunters, and thus branded, “destroyers of wildlife”. Though he would eventually come to change his thinking regarding the ecological value of predators, Teddy Roosevelt called wolves, “beasts of waste and desolation.” Government efforts at eradication were relentless, and by 1945 the last gray wolf in Colorado was killed.
Across the American West, the howl of the wolf was gone.
In time, there were more changes in store for this maligned canine, but these were of a different nature entirely. Among the people who had tried so hard to exterminate wolves, different voices began to be raised in the late 1960s. The decline of wild creatures and wild places had reached a tipping point. These voices said that wildlife was a quality of our unique planet worth preserving. More boldly, they maintained that predators such as wolves had ecological value, that nature was incomplete and unhealthy without them. Laws were passed to protect wildlife—including predators—and new efforts were put in place to save species pushed to the brink of extinction.
With this newfound social support, wolves began a return to the American Rocky Mountains. From Canada, they made their way down into Montana. In 1995, gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, and wilderness lands in Idaho.
The restoration effort was a great success. Wolves began to resume their essential ecological role. Their numbers increased, and soon they dispersed into Washington, Oregon, and California.
Almost four decades later, in Colorado, citizen advocates began a campaign to reintroduce wolves to their state. A vote was taken, a law was passed, and in the winter of 2023, the first 10 wolves were released on public lands. Within months, the first pups were born.
After an absence of 80 years, gray wolves were home again in Colorado.
The path ahead for the gray wolf remains both promising and challenging. While many celebrate their rightful return, some among the upright creatures continue to struggle with willingness to coexist.
As a late winter snowstorm howls above the sheltered clearing where the wolves are bedded down, Mother Wolf and her family are warm and safe. Each member is contentedly curled up, nested in the snow. Even in the starless darkness she can see them: her mate, the big gray; her three pups; and her brother, the black wolf.
She cannot begin to know of the long odyssey of events that brought her here. She cannot conceive that 65 million years ago, an ancient ancestor once huddled against a storm of a very different type.
What she does know, and what she has always known, is that whatever storms may come, her job is to survive.
Loved the telling of two parallel evolutionary histories.
What a great read. Loved learning the background and evolution of our wolves today. They have gone through so much and yet continue to meet the survival challenge. Can’t wait for the next one.