The Art of Rewilding: The Return of Yellowstone’s Wolves

The format of The Art of Rewilding: The Return of Yellowstone’s Wolves will likely be a new experience for most of the book’s intended audience as, physically, it’s an accordion book that folds out. And it’s actually two books in one with one side of the book providing a largely visual portrayal of the rewilding of Yellowstone National Park, a portrayal that is narrated from the perspective of a wolf. Getting to the end of the book, readers can begin again with the other side providing the factual information concerning the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone.

The excerpt above is taken from the wolf’s perspective. While the panels flow from one to another as the narrating wolf and the rest of the pack fluidly move through the ranges of the park, readers should not think of the events the wolf describes as occurring in a tight time frame. Instead, readers need to view the illustrated pages as a type of time lapse photography that has compressed the period it actually took for Yellowstone to be restored to the state it had been in prior to the park’s original wolves being eradicated.

The pages on the reverse side of the wolf’s story begin by providing the factual backstory as to why wolves came to be reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park. In the 1920's, all the “big, bad” wolves in the park were killed. The result:

Their extinction caused the disappearance of biodiversity throughout the territory, leaving only barren land. Without wolves to hunt them, the elk ate all the vegetation. Without vegetation, the birds could no longer find shelter or feed, the beavers had nothing left to eat, and the rivers dried up.

Without wolves, an entire ecosystem was turned upside down, destroyed.

In 1995, 14 Canadian grey wolves were released into the wild of Yellowstone in what turned out to be a successful effort to undue the harm that had been done some 70 years before. Much of the rest of this section’s text follows the cascade effect of the wolves’ reintroduced presence, beginning with the elk:

BEFORE THE REINTRODUCTION OF WOLVES
Following the eradication of the Park’s wolves, the elk (Canadian deer) population increased dramatically. Without their main predator around, it reached as many as 20,000 elk in 1994.

AFTER THE REINTRODUCTION OF WOLVES
Once wolves were reintroduced, the elk population dropped by 50% after a number of years. These deer now prefer the shelter of the undergrowth or hiding themselves up high. Consequently, their new movement patterns have enabled other animals to return.

Nadja Belhadj continues this “before/after” text pattern with a number of other creatures, including Yellowstone’s coyotes, birds and beavers. The text also speaks to some rewildings that have occurred in other locations in the world, such as the bearded vulture in the Alps and the Pyrenean brown bear in France.

Majewski’s colourful art, while very busy, accurately reflects the positive ongoing changes caused by the reintroduced wolves. Having read the “second” text, readers will undoubtedly want to revisit the wolf narrated portion of the book, a section to which they can now bring their new knowledge and understandings.