Book Review: The Last Wolf by Jim Crumley

 

More wolf non-fiction because this genre makes me thrive. 

In The Last Wolf, Jim Crumley discusses the species, particularly in Europe (mostly Scotland and Scandinavia). He talks about what wiped out the last wolves in Great Britain and goes to look for possible locations of where the last individual could have been killed. He delves into what is fact and fiction regarding the extinction of wolves in Great Britain, and later looks into a possible re-introduction of the species to the land and what its effects could be, and how the return of the species has been handled elsewhere (mostly Norway).

Just a good non-fiction. I have read wolf non-fiction before (obviously), however most I've read either are about wolves in North America or wolves in and around my own country, the Netherlands. So seeing a take on the wolves in Great Britain and their extinction there makes for a nice change of pace. 

Of course, the tale in Great Britain isn't all that cheerful either, much like in the Netherlands for the longest time: wolves were hunted to extinction there (and here) a long time ago. Heck, even the Netherlands has (so far) a happier ending to the tale, with wolves returning by themselves after 100+ years of absence. With the sea separating the British Isles from mainland Europe, the return of the species without human assistance is impossible.

Crumley explores the possibility of re-introducing wolves in Britain, using (among others) the successful Yellowstone wolf introduction project as example. Whether or not things would actually go well if a re-introduction were to actually be done on the British Isles of course remains to be seen. Great Britain has the downside of being more densely populated than certain parts of North America, and of course with each re-introduction/return of wolves to a certain area there are a lot that protest it because "think of the livestock/children" or other excuses.

I overall liked reading this book. The author had a writing voice I could get into, and I particularly liked the chapters that really delved into the history of the wolves in Britain, and the chapters where Crumley goes to look for the facts and fiction surrounding the death of the last British wolf.

I did, however, spot a small mistake the author made: he very blatantly states that there are no black wolves in Europe, and that therefore an entire tale in which a black wolf is said to have played a role is bogus. Are black wolves in Europe a thing? Rarely, but it's not impossible. It also depends on where you look.

In the Eurasian subspecies (the one the author was hinting at), black individuals are indeed incredibly rare. Not unheard of, but there's little to no black wolves of the Eurasian subspecies. However, this doesn't mean that they don't exist. Also: wolf-dog hybridizations, though rare, are a thing. The black wolf in question in the story could have either been an incredibly rare Eurasian or possibly a hybrid.

However, if we travel further south in Europe to Italy, we encounter the Italian wolf subspecies, which actually has a decent amount of melanistic individuals. So, the statement "there are no black wolves in Europe" is a very broad generalization. It should've probably been "it is very unlikely to find a black wolf in Europe" or "melanism rarely ever occurs in the Eurasian subspecies without hybridzation with dogs". I totally get what he was getting at, black wolves are very rare in Europe outside of the Italian subspecies, but that doesn't mean that there's none and the wolf in the story couldn't have been black.

But overall it's a good read and I do recommend it to people who want to get a picture of the extinction and hypothetical re-introduction of wolves on the British Isles.

Rating: 4/5