The American Gray Wolf
I have said that the most important wild animal of the Dog Tribe is the wolf. Wolves are found in every continent—Europe, America, Asia, and Africa. And there are many species of wolves in these continents. I shall tell you more about them in another book, but now I must tell you about the American gray wolf.
There is in the United States one of the most wonderful animals in the world—the American gray wolf. He is perhaps the only animal in the world that has beaten man!
I mean this: Man has killed off many four-footed wild animals; that is, he has killed so many of those animals in a place, that they have died out in that place. He has not succeeded in killing off the American gray wolf.
In some places man has almost killed off certain animals, even when he did not want to do so. He killed the animal merely for sport or for profit—but he did not want that species of animal to die out altogether; for then he could not have any more sport or profit from it. And yet, the hunter killed so many of that species of animal that it has almost died out in some places. In this manner, as I have already told you, almost all the elephants have been killed off in parts of Africa, for the sake of sport or for the sake of the tusks. In the same way, the buffalo has almost disappeared from the United States.
Gray Wolf
From a photograph copyrighted by the New York Zoological Society.
But in the case of the American wolf, man wanted to kill him off altogether as a race of animals; and yet he has not been able to do so. At first the hunter may have killed the wolf only for the sake of its fur; but in the last few years the American farmer and the ranchman have tried to wipe out the wolf altogether as a pest—because the wolf kills their sheep and cattle. And yet, the wolf flourishes in the West. He has beaten the farmer and the ranchman.