The Redemption of Wolf 302

August 1, 2021
Retired National Park ranger McIntyre continues his deeply revealing series on wolf behavior with this fine portrait of a lobo who makes good. In Yellowstone National Park, McIntyre writes, several packs compete with each other for territory and food supplies, raiding for female wolves so that--unlike wolf populations at places such as Isle Royale, Michigan--the gene pool doesn't become so shallow that natural fitness declines. In many ways, by the author's account, the wolf population of Yellowstone, first reintroduced in 1996 after having been extirpated seven decades earlier, is thriving. In this follow-up to The Reign of Wolf 21, McIntyre focuses on Wolf 302 (Yellowstone wolves are assigned numbers and not names, though names are occasionally bestowed), who initially comes across as a bit of a rou� as wolves go: He steals food from babies and mates with anything that moves. When he arrived in the Druid pack, his reputation preceded him: "The wolves in the Druid pack," writes the author, "were already acquainted with 302 because he had made frequent visits to the Druids the previous year and gotten several of 21's daughters pregnant. Their father took an instant dislike to 302 and tried to chase him off." Even so, the charmer won dad over, in part by turning on a companion wolf that was his nephew, in human terms, and attacking him to indicate that he was on the Druids' side. "I had never seen such bizarre behavior in a wolf," McIntyre writes. That wasn't the only surprise 302 would spring on his pack mates and human observers, and though he was a coward and a sneak at first, eventually he rose to the occasion and became an honorable alpha male. McIntyre tracks 302 over the course of a decade, writing of this unexpected transformation appreciatively while backing up his tendency to anthropomorphize with solid science. A great choice for anyone who has a fondness for wolves and an appreciation of good natural history.

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