Youth inspired to coexist with wolves

You nev­er know who’s go­ing to show up or what will hap­pen when on book tour. In Squamish, BC I was pleas­antly sur­prised to see a fair num­ber of chil­dren at­tend­ing my present­a­tion “In Search of the Real Wolf.”

I could tell by their faces that they loved the wolf im­ages on the big screen. But even though my talk is geared to an adult audi­ence, the nine- to thir­teen-year old crowd asked the most – and the best – questions.

“Do male wolves kill their pups?” “Like lions, do young­er male wolves come in and take over from the lead wolf?” “Do wolves only eat meat?”

But the very best ques­tion of all was, “Is not feed­ing wolves and scar­ing them away if they come too close all we have to do to co­ex­ist with them?”

The young girl made co­ex­ist­ence sound so simple. And, to a large ex­tent, it can be, if every­one un­der­stands how to be­have around wildlife.

Afterwards, Cinnamon, Vanessa, Lennox, Angus and oth­ers had their par­ents buy Return of the Wolf and brought their cop­ies up to me to sign. It was all very grat­i­fy­ing but I wondered if any of them would ac­tu­ally read the book.

Two days later I re­ceived an email from Liesl Lockhart in north­ern Saskatchewan. “I ab­so­lutely love your book,” she wrote. “My nine-year old daugh­ter is cur­rently de­vour­ing it and lov­ing every page. Her teach­er wants to read it and share some in­sights for sci­ence class. Talk about in­spir­ing the next generation!”

I must ad­mit, the in­terest from youth and that en­dorse­ment from a nine-year old warms my heart more than a five-star review.

Banner photo by Cheryl Alexander