Your invitation to Wolf School
Over six episodes, you can listen and engage with scientists, Indigenous community members, photographers and others with a range of perspectives on wolves.
Sights and sounds of wolves, even their mere mention, evoke powerful emotions in we humans. My own curiosity spiked on seeing the wolf on my school crest in Ulverston, England, at eleven years old. The town’s name comes from either the Norse, “Ulfarr”, for wolf warrior, or the Old English “Wulfhere”, with tūn “ton” for homestead or farm.
I still remember a vague folk tale telling that the last wolf in England was killed, in my home county, in 1390, after being chased across the Coniston fells (mountains and hills) for over 30 miles. The truth about the last English wolf is different, but we often choose what we want to believe; that’s the nature of tales and the strongly divergent human views of wolves.
Ultimately, reading about more modern stories of BC wolves through research by Raincoast scientists Chris Darimont, Heather Bryan and Paul Paquet, in no small part motivated me to move to Canada to support Raincoast’s work.
With close family ties and complex communication, wolves live lives that humans can easily empathize with across cultures. Yet, the wolf is still persecuted, including here in BC.
Raincoast’s Informed Advocacy approach is one we apply to our Wolf Campaign. Our aim with Wolf School is to tell the story about the wolf now, here in BC and beyond. Over six episodes, we will provide you the opportunity to listen and engage with scientists, Indigenous community members, photographers and others with a range of perspectives. Hopefully, this can help us understand a wild creature whose domestic cousin we happily call our best friend.
We are excited to be co-presenting Wolf School with our friends, Wolf Conservation Center. If you think there are others who would like to come to wolf school with you, please share the link. Shifting public attitudes, and ultimately policy, for BC’s wolves is going to take time, effort and commitment. Your sharing the invite is the low hanging fruit.
For the wolf that is not in your living room.
You can help
Raincoast’s in-house scientists, collaborating graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and professors make us unique among conservation groups. We work with First Nations, academic institutions, government, and other NGOs to build support and inform decisions that protect aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and the wildlife that depend on them. We conduct ethically applied, process-oriented, and hypothesis-driven research that has immediate and relevant utility for conservation deliberations and the collective body of scientific knowledge.
We investigate to understand coastal species and processes. We inform by bringing science to decision-makers and communities. We inspire action to protect wildlife and wildlife habitats.
