Wolf Stories

Abstract

* Jickling, Faculty of Education, Lakehead University, 955 Oliver Road, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada P7B 5E1 (bob.jicklin@lakeheadu.ca); Paquet, Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4 (ppaquet@sasktel.net). Jickling, a long-time Yukon resident, taught environmental ethics and environmental education at Yukon College for many years. He now divides his time between his home in Whitehorse, Yukon and Thunder Bay, Ontario where he recently accepted a faculty position at Lakehead University. His research interests include philosophy of education—particularly conceptual analyses of key concepts, environmental ethics, relationships between ethics and education, and relationships between ethics and epistemology. He is also the founding editor of the Canadian Journal of Environmental Education. Paquet is a conservation biologist specializing in large carnivores living in human dominated systems. He has written extensively about carnivore ecology and coexistence of humans and carnivores. Paquet has degrees in philosophy of science, wildlife biology, zoology, and behavioral ecology. Wolf stories, including the systematic and government-sponsored killing of Yukon wolves, provide a context for the examination of assumptions about Western epistemology, and particularly science, in light of the “ethics-based epistemology” presented by Jim Cheney and Anthony Weston, with implications for research, responsibility, and animal welfare. Working from a premise of universal consideration, and minding the ethical basis of knowledge claims, enables richer conceptions of environmental ethics and creates new possibilities for animal welfare and managing for wildlife.