Never Cry Wolf is a book by Canadian author Farley Mowat, first published in 1963 by McClelland and Stewart. It was adapted into a moderately successful movie of the same name in 1983. It has been credited for dramatically changing the public image of the animal to a more positive one. It is presented as a first-person narrative of Mowat's research into the nature of the Arctic Wolf; however, there is some debate over how much of the book is indeed factual.

Plot

Based in 1948-9, Canada's Dominion Wildlife Service assigns the author to investigate why caribou herds are declining, and to find out if wolves have any role in the shortage. Upon finding his quarry near Nueltin Lake, Mowat discovers that rather than being wanton killers of caribou, the wolves subsist quite heavily on small mammals such as rodents and hares, even choosing them over caribou when available. He concludes that "We have doomed the wolf not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be -- the mythological epitome of a savage, ruthless killer -- which is, in reality, no more than the reflected image of ourself." Mowat comes to fear an onslaught of wolfers and government exterminators out to erase the wolves from the Arctic.

Impact

Never Cry Wolf was a commercial success in Canada. Shortly after its publication, the Canadian Wildlife Service received a deluge of letters from concerned citizens opposing the killing of wolves. Though generally well received by the public, Mowat's allusions of the Canadian Wildlife Service as an organisation set out to exterminate wolves was met with anger from Canadian biologists. CWS staff members argued that the agency had never demanded the extermination of the wolf, which was recognized as an integral part of the northern ecosystem. They further countered that Mowat's remit had not been to find justifications for wolf extermination, but to investigate the relationship between wolves and caribou.

Mowat’s book became a popular hit in the Russian SFSR. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union took advantage of the book's message that wolves were harmless mouse-eaters and prohibited all reports of wolves attacking, injuring or eating humans, keeping such records secret. It was revealed by biologist Mikhail P. Pavlov after the fall of the Soviet Union, that this was done in order to effectively confiscate firearms from rural citizens without any resistance, as it was not in the Communist Party's interest to have an armed citizenry. The book also had the added effect of decreasing the popularity of Russian wolf management in the 1960-70's.

Reception

Positive

Naturalist Barry Lopez in his 1978 work Of Wolves and Men called the book a dated, but still good introduction to wolf behaviour.

In a 2001 article of The Canadian Historical Review entitled Never Cry Wolf: Science, Sentiment, and the Literary Rehabilitation of Canis Lupus, Karen Jones lauded the work as "an important chapter in the history of Canadian environmentalism";

Negative

Canadian Wildlife Federation official Alexander William Francis Banfield, who supervised Mowat's field work, characterised the book as "semi-fictional", and accused Mowat of blatantly lying about his expedition. He pointed out that contrary to what is written in the book, Mowat was part of an expedition of three biologists, and was never alone. Banfield also pointed out that a lot of what was written in Never Cry Wolf was not derived from Mowat's first hand observations, but were plagiarised from Banfield's own works, as well as from Adolph Murie's The Wolves of Mount McKinley. In a 1964 article published in the Canadian Field-Naturalist, he compared Mowat's 1963 bestseller to Little Red Riding Hood, stating that;

In the May, 1996 issue of Saturday Night, John Goddard wrote a heavily researched article entitled "A Real Whopper", in which he poked many holes in Mowat's claim that the book was non-fictional. He wrote

Mowat denied Goddard's criticisms but did not refute the specific accusation. Although Goddard was criticised for sloppy journalism by Val Ross in The Globe and Mail, specific rebuttals against his comments regarding Never Cry Wolf were absent.

Ethologist Dr. Valerius Geist of the University of Calgary Alberta, who had himself experienced aggressive behaviour from wolves in his home on Vancouver Island and was heavily involved in investigating the Kenton Joel Carnegie case, called Mowat's book "..a brilliant, literary prank..".

L. David Mech, an internationally recognized wolf expert who has researched wolves since 1958 in places such as Minnesota, Canada, Italy, Alaska, Yellowstone National Park, and on Isle Royale, stated that Mowat is no scientist and that in all his studies, he had never encountered a wolf pack which primarily subsisted on small prey as shown in Mowat's book. In his 1970 publication The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species he wrote;

Linguist and former veterinary biologist Will Graves, who spent 42 years reading and compiling information on wolves in Russia from news reports, scientific articles, and interviews with Russian biologists, game managers and hunters flatly stated in an interview with journalist Peter Metcalf "His [Mowat's] book is fiction". In his book Wolves in Russia: Anxiety throughout the ages, Graves expressed similair views to those of David Mech, citing numerous cases in the former Soviet Union indicating that wolves feed heavily on medium sized ungulates, contrary to what Mowat wrote.

References