From Big Bad Wolf to Ecological Hero: Canis Lupus and the Culture(s) of Nature in the American–Canadian West

Abstract

From devil incarnate to ecological saint, Canis lupus, the gray wolf, has proved an object of intense fascination for the North American imagination. This essay plots changing attitudes toward wolves in four national parks along the Rocky Mountains with a view to exploring ideas about wilderness, conservation policy, animal crossings, and the frontier. Yellowstone and Glacier in the United States and Banff and Jasper in Canada witnessed first the deliberate extermination and then the canonization of wolves in a little over a century. Choosing to follow the contours of the Rockies rather than the latitudes of the nation-state, I compare shifting policy and cultures of nature across boundaries, pointing to the value of transnational perspectives on the history of the American–Canadian West and the necessity of a borderlands approach when studying an animal prone to roaming across our political demarcations.