Brian Viner: Which pack do I join in the great wolf debate?
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
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Nothing is as it seems. The wolf, demonised as the mortal enemy of mankind in the works of Aesop, the Brothers Grimm, Sergei Prokofiev, Walt Disney and John Landis, to name only a few examples, is now being acclaimed as the potential saviour of our ecological heritage. Moreover, Neil Hutt, a director of the Minnesota-based International Wolf Centre, who was at a conference in Berkshire at the weekend recommending the reintroduction of wolves into the Highlands of Scotland, turns out to be a female former teacher from Virginia. Roaming packs of wolves are a jolly good thing? A woman called Neil? Just when I thought I understood the world, everything is turned upside down.
A decade ago, apparently, wildlife experts released 31 wolves in Yellowstone National Park. There are now hundreds of them all over Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, and they have been most helpful to the ecology of the region, because their favourite meal is elk and coyote, and elks do untold damage to willow and aspen, while coyotes prey on the elegant pronghorn antelope. Since the wolves were brought back, the area's vegetation has flourished, which in turn has boosted birds and insects, and the steady decline in antelope numbers has at last been arrested. Also, there has been an increase in packs of tourists, hoping to spot a few wolves, albeit from inside their Freightline Coronado motorhomes.
Whether all this constitutes a good enough reason for wolves to be returned to the Scottish Highlands after 300 years is currently the subject of much earnest discussion. The Royal Society, no less, has backed the idea, while it has been "vigorously opposed" by walking groups. I can quite understand why there might be some disquiet among the ranks of the cagouled, who wouldn't necessarily want to be ululated at while eating their cheese and pickle sandwiches, or feel the scrutiny of 30 pairs of yellow eyes while standing in a dappled glade unfolding an OS map, but those who know about these things insist that the danger to humans is negligible.
Moreover, in recent years there has been an alarming proliferation of wild deer in the Highlands, and like their north American cousin, the elk, they wreak terrible damage on plants and trees. Another way of culling them would be to encourage shooting parties, but the toff with a shotgun, unlike the pronghorn antelope, is a diminishing species. Besides, hunting can get out of hand, and indeed was responsible for wiping out wolves in the first place. In England and Wales they had been hunted to extinction by about 1550; in Scotland it took about two centuries longer.
As a country-dweller myself, I have mixed feelings about the wolf debate. I can understand why some folk say we should reclaim our ecological roots, and support the reintroduction of wolves as part of this process. On the other hand, I was once the owner of a kindly golden retriever and a sweet little Jack Russell terrier who between them ran amok in a field of sheep, killing about 10 outright and fatally wounding 15 more. The vet blamed the carnage on the pack instinct, and if a retriever and a Jack Russell can decimate a flock of sheep, what might 50 or 100 wolves achieve?
Still, while pondering the scary wolves in popular culture, I also remembered Mowgli in Kipling's The Jungle Book, who received an excellent upbringing from wolves. So I am prepared, mindful of both the man cub and the Neil woman, to revise my opinion.
A goal celebration to cherish
The scorer of the winning goal in the greatest of all FA Cup finals – Blackpool 4, Bolton Wanderers 3 – was the South African-born winger Bill Perry who died last week, aged 77.
Four years ago, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of that 1953 final, I went to Blackpool to interview Perry. He was endearingly gentle and modest, and cheerfully bemused by modern football.
His famous goal secured a £20 bonus for him and his teammates, exceeding his own weekly wage, yet even with such an extravagant reward in prospect, his teammates merely trotted over, shook his hand and patted him on the back. These days the scorer of such a goal would lose a diamond earring in the kerfuffle.
* My wife Jane and I have just returned from a couple of days on the beautiful island of Capri, where the Emperor Tiberius and Gracie Fields used to live, although not together. To make the most of our short time there, we relied on Fodor's Guide to Naples, Capri & the Amalfi Coast, the introduction to which urges readers to write in.
"You and travelers like you are the heart of the Fodor's community," it says. "Make our community richer by sharing your experiences. Be a Fodor's correspondent."
I am tempted to respond to this clarion call by describing Capri as singularly dull, not because it was, but because the guide book is full of such hyperbole. According to Fodor's, Tiberius's villa "was famous for its sybaritic living, thus sounding a leitmotif whose echo can be heard at the luxurious hotels of today". Over a sybaritic bowl of pasta, deafened by an echoing leitmotif, Jane and I coined the verb "to Fodorise", meaning to write bollocks.
