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A young wolf

“Native Americans were certain that wolves and many other creatures were people.” ~ John Vucetich, Michigan wolf biologist

Richard Thiel, retired Wisconsin DNR wolf biologist, debuted “Wild Wolves We Have Known: Stories of Wolf Biologists’ Favorite Wolves” at the International Wolf Symposium held in Duluth, Minnesota, in 2013. Twenty-three wolf biologists wrote stories about their experiences working with wolves — work that transformed them into wolf advocates.

The introduction, written by John Vucetich, is a call to human empathy, invoking the moral obligation of man to recognize the fellow humanity of wolves. He writes how knowing individual wolves changed his own life. While acknowledging that humans possess capabilities that wolves do not, he writes: “But it is an entirely separate concern to ask, is a wolf a person?” He poses that wolf possessing these traits — “sensory consciousness, memory, dreams, intentions, personality, emotions — certainly…