I don’t normally do book reviews or devote an entire post to one, but today is an exception. If you read no other book in your life, please buy and read “The Kootenay Wolves” by John Marriott – either from your local bookstore or from an online source!
Worth the Read – and then some
The Kootenay Wolves
Five Years Following a Wild Wolf Pack
By
John E. Marriott
Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve been fascinated by wolves. Hearing the story of ‘Little Red Ridinghood’, I always felt that the wolf was a much-maligned character. Throughout history, they’ve been reviled as the very essence of evil and cruelty. It is not so.
We, the so-called superior human race, are that embodiment. We invade their homes and territories, slaughter their children, and then accuse them of atrocities?
Paul Paquet’s eloquent Introduction to the book sets the scene for what is to follow. As a respected scientist and life-long researcher, his expertise on all things ‘wolf’ in Canada is unassailable. He points out that “Managing for the well-being and benefit of wolves with a focus on their persistence…is quite different than managing wolves for the benefit of people.” Our relentless persecution of this apex predator is not only detrimental to the individuals and pack families, but it also affects an entire ecosystem.
The book’s author, John E Marriott, is a professional wildlife photographer who has devoted his life and career to respecting the natural world and wolves in particular. His approach to observing, to seeing, the wolves involves the highest standards of conservation ethics so as to neither disturb nor habituate the wolves to a human presence that could ultimately lead to their demise and failure as a species.
Marriott’s photos of these magnificent creatures are compelling. Each image reaches out to touch the viewer’s soul – some with joy, some with awe, all beautiful, all telling the story of the wolves’ daily lives and struggles to survive.
His writing is concise and direct. He pulls no punches in narrating this story. “The three biggest killers of Kootenay wolves over the decades since they returned to the park are all human-caused: hunting, trapping and vehicle collisions.”
My respect and love for wolves have been dramatically heightened thanks to Marriott’s words and images. I appreciate that he has deliberately obfuscated the actual locations of his sightings and photographs so well-meaning but less skilled photographers and tourists won’t further disturb the lives of these and other wildlife species just trying to survive.
If you care about the natural world around you, all I can say is, “Buy this book!” It will touch you profoundly. Hopefully, you will join the many across this great country of ours who speak out in support of the protection of these and the rest of the wildlife species that we have so cavalierly attempted to eradicate in the name of progress.
There are a few photographers both nationally and internationally whose work I admire and follow. John Marriott is one. Another wildlife photographer, from the Maritimes, whose work also touches me is Simon d’Entremmont. Although I am not a wildlife photographer myself, I greatly respect what these two gentlemen, and others like them, do and how they approach the natural world around us. They truly ‘see’ it. May the rest of us learn from them and their ilk.
Capturing Cherished Memories 