The howl of the wolf at night, it is both chilling and awe inspiring. It seems to be a sound that is targeted at the most primordial part of our brain. Perhaps that is why we hunted and killed them so mercilessly.

The area surronding the town of Banff, Alberta, Canada once played home to wolves but humans hunted them to local extinction. The wolf was not the only animal to suffer from the unbalancing of the ecology that this practice caused. Elks, the principal prey of wolves, flourished to the detriment of many other species. This burgeoning elk population devasted the local willows killing saplings and undermining the welfare of beavers and willow warblers to name but two species that relied on the willows.

Wolves are magnificent wild creatures and their removal from an ecosystem is not only devastating to the balance of the ecosystem but a serious reduction in the quality of wildness. Thankfully for Banff, wolves are resourceful creatures and they are naturally repopulating this area and the balance is returning.

What failing is it in the human psyche that causes us to feel that we must destroy wildness. We repress it in ourselves and we punish any species that forces us to confront the magnificence of wilderness and its great predators. In Australia the eastern grey nurse shark is in even more peril that the Canadian wolf. Admittedly they do eat the occasional person but usually it is a mistake, they mistake us for seals. We must seriously question the value of venegence when it is causing the extinction of the worlds other great predators.

As confronting as you may find it, we are just another animal in the ecosystem and all through evolution we have been food for other animals. What has changed is that technology allows us to deny our animalness and to drive to extinction any other animal that dares to remind us of it.