Wolf Spirit NWF Priority - Nez Perce Indians saving gray wolves

National Wildlife, August, 1998

The Nez Perce Indians bring a spiritual dimension to efforts to restore endangered gray wolves to former habitat

Levi Holt raises a hand-carved flute to his lips and blows long, plaintive notes into the chilly Rocky Mountain air. A hundred yards away, several gray wolves materialize from the forest and run to the edge of a 20-acre fenced enclosure, seemingly transfixed by the haunting tune.

"Here is the center of the Earth for the Nez Perce," says Holt, the rising sun silhouetting his large-brimmed felt hat and long black braids against the sky. "In the time of the wolves' absence, the tribe has suffered--a vital link in our sacred circle has been broken." With the recent return of wolves to Idaho, however, "the Nez Perce have been given some of their medicine back."

Holt is an elder of the Nez Perce, a tribe of about 3,500 Indians, including about 2,000 living on a 760,000-acre reservation in central Idaho. As manager of a wolf education center, which includes a pack of 11 captive-raised gray wolves, Holt is also part of a historic conservation experiment. For the first time, the federal government has contracted an Indian nation to manage the recovery of an endangered species. The tribe's duties include not only helping to educate the public about wolves, but tracking and studying several dozen wild canids that have been released in nearby national forest lands. In spite of opposition and legal challenges to the program, the wolves are flourishing under the Nez Perce's unique brand of wildlife management, which blends traditional wisdom and modern science.

Holt explains that there has always been a close relationship between native people and wildlife in the United States. "My traditional name, Black Beaver, comes from the animal side of the world," he says. "We gain strength and power from these names."

The histories of wolves and the Nez Perce have many parallels. For centuries, the Nez Perce (the name given them by French trappers, for the shells some of the Indians wore in their noses) lived peacefully in the country around the Clearwater River in Idaho, hunting and trading with other tribes. They welcomed and fed Lewis and Clark in 1805, marking the beginning of a half century of peaceful coexistence with white people.

But, starting in 1855, a series of treaties were forced on the Nez Perce. The treaties called for the Indians to relinquish control of 95 percent of the 13 million acres where they had lived, hunted and fished, and to settle on a small reservation in Lapwai, Idaho. Bridling at these and other injustices, the Indians ended up in a war with the United States in 1877, during which the vastly outnumbered Nez Perce bested the U.S. Army in several battles while marching to the safety of the Canadian border. They were surrounded just south of the border, however, and Nez Perce Chief Joseph reluctantly surrendered.

At the same time that the Nez Perce were being "pacified," white settlers were also waging war on the gray wolf. These settlers viewed Canis lupus (the ancestor of domestic dogs) as a menace to both people and livestock. This attitude, coupled with a demand for wolf pelts, led to killing on a massive scale in the late 1860s. Hunters would kill a bison, lace the carcass with strychnine and return the next day for wolves poisoned by scavenging on the carcass. At the peak of the practice, "wolfers" commonly killed 1,000 wolves a winter this way.

The near-elimination of the bison led to a lull in wolf killing, only to be revived in the 1880s and 1890s as livestock owners successfully lobbied for bounties on dead wolves. In Montana alone, more than 80,000 wolves were killed by bounty hunters between 1883 and 1918. The federal government entered the fray in 1915, hiring hunters and trappers to kill wolves and other predators deemed a threat to western livestock. By the early 1930s, gray wolves--which had once inhabited much of North America from the Canadian Arctic to central Mexico--had been eliminated from most of the 48 states.

In 1978, the federal government listed the wolf as an endangered species in the 48 states (except for a remnant population in Minnesota that was classified as threatened). Two years later, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which is responsible for protecting endangered species, produced a recovery plan for wolves in the Rocky Mountains. The plan was revised in 1987, calling for three new populations of wolves: one each in northwestern Montana, central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. The proposal languished for years because of opposition from western members of Congress, who were concerned about potential land-use restrictions and wolves killing livestock.

A plan to bring gray wolves from Canada to Yellowstone and central Idaho was finally signed in 1994 by Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt. The plan called for state agencies to manage the wolves once they were released, but the states declined to cooperate. "The issue was too hot to handle," says Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for FWS in Helena, Montana. "In Idaho, the tribe said OWe'll be glad to handle it.' They had reservation lands in the area and treaty rights in central Idaho where the wolves were to be put. And they put together a good plan for wolf management, so we contracted them to manage the program."