Cry Wolf The possible return of a long-lost predator means many different things to residents of Northern New England
It’s an uncommonly warm early September morning. The clouds hang low over the rolling mountains of New Hampshire’s Great North Woods. A brief, but strong thunderstorm has just passed through the North Country, dropping heavy rain over the forests. On N.H. Route 26, the wind whips through the rugged mountain pass of Dixville Notch. Thunder can still be heard in the distance, rolling its way over the terrain.
Farther west in the town of Colebrook, one of the larger towns in New Hampshire’s Coos County, sheep farmer John Harrigan also notices the strong winds that follow the storm. He stands just outside his 1850 colonial home, surveying his 450-acre farmland, squinting into the wind. His salt and pepper hair blows in all directions as the swirling wind picks up intensity. A strong gust of wind blows through and snaps a few tree branches.
“The wind’s coming right out of Quebec,” Harrigan notes. “Strange weather we’re having.”
Outside the house Harrigan shares with his wife, Nancee, and her two children, farmland stretches all around. The deep Boreal forest, common to northern New England, acts as a boundary between civilization and wilderness at the edge of the fields. There is no sign of any sheep, nor any other farm animals in his possession. They can all be found down the hill in a lower field, protected by a series of gates and electric fences.
The miles and miles of electric fences border all of his land, which can be found on both sides of the road. The fences deliver up to 4,300 volts of electricity to whichever unlucky animal makes contact with them. Harrigan has amusingly called two of his pastures protected by these electric barriers “Alcatraz” and “Sing-Sing,” on account of how secure they are. Local predators, such as coyotes and black bears, who eye Harrigan’s sheep as tasty dinners are successfully kept away thanks to the shock they receive by the perimeter fences. Coyotes, especially, remember the electric shock and have learned to stay away.
“If it weren’t for the electric fences and my guard dogs, these sheep wouldn’t last long against the predators,” Harrigan says.
Soon, Harrigan may have another predator in the woods to worry about. The gray wolf, which used to call the woods of New England home before its eradication in the late 1800s, may soon reclaim its ancestral home. With wolf packs living near the Canadian border, just north of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, it may only be a matter of time before the howl of wolf will echo through the Great North Woods.
Harrigan believes he has already heard that howl recently. It came on a warm August night when the coyotes were particularly active, most likely teaching their young to hunt. Their yelping and high-pitched cries bounced through the hills outside of Harrigan’s farm. His guard dogs got in on the fun and began to bark into the night, warning the coyotes they were also in neighborhood.
“All of a sudden, this howl comes across the field,” Harrigan says, eyes wide as he remembers that night. “It wasn’t very far either, my woodlot maybe, and that big dog was talking, no doubt about it. Nancee and I both sat bolt upright in bed and I said ‘did you hear that?’”
The coyotes and dogs heard the cry and became very quiet. “It was like someone threw a blanket over it all, dead silence,” Harrigan adds.
While there have been no confirmed sightings of wolves in New Hampshire, there have been in Vermont and Maine. On the flip side, there have been no confirmations that wolves have officially moved back to New England, to once again call the region home. Many that live in the northern New England believe that the wolf has either already returned to stay or will return permanently very soon. This very fact has excited some residents and has made others concerned, especially in regards to the way the wolf may return. Will it be through natural recovery or through government-sponsored reintroduction? And how will the wolves be treated once they return?
The Ancestral home
Wolves once ranged from coast to coast, inhabiting all of the Rocky Mountains, Great Plains and the Appalachian Mountains. Carrying on an almost mythical quality with many Native American tribes, the wolf was both feared and respected. Wolf symbols have been found on totem poles in the Pacific Northwest, on petroglyphs in the deserts of the Southwest, and on ceremonial head gear of the Plains Indians. The gray wolf, also known as the timber wolf, symbolized the wilderness within the United States during the early days of the country and, to some extent, continues to do so. Traveling in packs ranging from populations of 10 to 35, wolves were known to take down large deer and even the occasional moose. While their main food source is typically field mice, rabbits and beaver, wolf packs would routinely take down large animals to feed the pack. In these large family groups, the wolf was lethal to any prey it would choose to attack. As civilization encroached on their habitat, wolves began to attack livestock and cattle, soon putting the human population at odds with the animal.
In northern New England, gray wolves roamed the forests, hills and mountains of the region. By the mid 1800s, logging operations began to move north into the region, as did farms. As the land was heavily logged and stripped of vegetation, the habitats of wolf prey, such as deer and moose, began to quickly disappear. Wolves began attacking farmers’ livestock as their food sources disappeared. In response, farmers began killing any wolf that wandered anywhere close to their farm. The last wolf to roam New England was killed around the turn of the twentieth century.
By the 1930s, wolves had been eradicated from the lower 48 states, save for a tiny piece of Minnesota, where a few small packs still roamed near the Boundary Waters on the Canadian border. In 1973, the U.S. government listed the gray wolf as an endangered species. Once the wolf became endangered, it was then illegal to kill or harass the animal (unless it directly threatened the livelihood of an individual, such as a farmer).
Since being put on the endangered species list, the gray wolf has extended its range in the Great Lakes states to include more of northern Minnesota as well as part of northern Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan. It is estimated that more than 3,500 wolves inhabit the Great Lakes region. Because of this, the National Fish and Game Department reduced their status from “endangered” to “threatened” in their 2003 National Wolf Rule. The Endangered Species Act (ESA) lists a species “endangered” if it is in danger of extinction within its range. “Threatened” means that it could be come endangered within its range if steps are not taken to avert this. The government imposes fewer restrictions on a threatened species.
A Struggle to Return
The 2003 National Wolf Rule quickly brought about a lawsuit from the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), a 65-year-old non-governmental organization that works to protect wildlife within the United States. The real problem with the wolf’s reduction in status for the NWF was the Northeast range that the government considered appropriate. The wolf’s range, according to the wolf rule, extends from the Dakotas east through the Great Lakes and into New England. It’s a tremendous swath of land that includes 20 states. While the wolf has made a successful comeback in the Great Lakes, the northeastern United States still does not have a wolf population. For the NWF, the gray wolf is hardly considered “threatened” in the Northeast, but rather very “endangered.”
“The Fish & Game Department did not follow the ESA,” says Peggy Struhsacker, the NWF’s Wolf Team Leader for the Northeastern United States. “Their wolf rule is now null and void.”
In late August of this year, a federal judge in Brattleboro, Vt., ruled in favor of the NWF, stating that the Bush Administration violated the Endangered Species Act with its reduction in the gray wolf’s status. The government has now been ordered to step up recovery efforts by drawing up a new and improved wolf rule.
Stuhsacker, whose office is based in Montpelier, Vt, has been exploring the northern forests of the Northeast for three years, searching for evidence that the wolf is making a foothold in the region. Struhsacker hopes the federal government will change the rule by focusing recovery region by region, instead of publishing a national wolf plan. One such region she hopes will be created is the Northern Forest, an area which encompasses over 26 million acres, stretching from New York’s Adirondack Mountains to the northern forests of Maine. Over 70 million people live within day’s drive of the area. The Northern Forest Alliance, a non-profit organization that strives to protect the region from development as well as foster economic growth for local communities, has been on board to help in the recovery of the gray wolf. Both Struhsacker and the NFA hope the government will consider their region and once again give the wolf “endangered” status.
“They got in trouble because they encompassed the wolves’ ranges into a too large an area. They won’t do that again,” Struhsacker says. “The courts have blasted them because of it.”
Recovery vs. Reintroduction
But while the court ruling has been a victory for the NWF and other wildlife groups, Struhsacker has been mostly busy on what she calls “damage control.” When the Associated Press got a hold of the NWF press release regarding the court ruling, it changed the wording from “wolf recovery” to “wolf reintroduction,” a statement that has two very different meaning and very different repercussions. This was mostly reported in Vermont, but residents of northern New Hampshire and Maine also got wind of it.
Recovery, Struhsacker points out, means that the wolf would return to the region on its own, without any outside help. Reintroduction means that the government would physically move wolves from another location and drop them off in the North Country to start again.
In early September, Struhsacker was busy doing damage control at the Northern Forest Alliance’s headquarters in Stowe, Vt. Stuhsacker talked to the crowd of local residents and college students about what the return of the wolf might mean. Sitting in the middle of the crowd, Struhsacker informed the crowd of what a wolf looks and sounds like with a power point presentation. She even had brought along a wolf skull and fur sample for those interested in a very “hands on” presentation. Eventually, the presentation turned its attention to what was meant by “reintroduction.”
“It’s not like these black helicopters will start flying around the area dropping off wolves at random,” Struhsacker told the crowd. “But that’s what some people think.”
Harrigan understands completely where the trouble lies with the choice of words. Traveling north from Colebrook along the rolling two-lane blacktop of N.H. Route 145 towards the hamlet of Pittsburg, Harrigan points out that the word “reintroduction” is a word that everyone is trying to avoid.
“But can you come up with a better [word]…restoration?” Harrigan questions. “Recovery is OK, because you can say ‘well, were just setting the stage and making sure that everything is there in place’ so if the Wolf wants to come back, it’s gonna happen. But the general public sees these as complete buzz words.”
Harrigan enters Pittsburg and heads up a local hill to a 58-acre piece of property he owns in town. The property is mostly a forest consisting of hardwoods and evergreens. A nearly impassable dirt path winds its way into the land. From a clearing in his land, one can get an expansive view looking south into the Upper Connecticut River Valley. As Harrigan takes in the views, he considers what it means to live in the region where an old neighbor may once again be returning.
“What a time to live here and be a sideline observer,” Harrigan says proudly. “I get to watch it all, and be part of it all. I’m a hunter and a sheep farmer. I’m the guy who is supposed to hate wolves. Here I am, cheering them from the sideline.”
Harrigan’s pro-wolf stance seems to go against the grain of what a sheep farmer and hunter might think of the animal. But to be honest, Harrigan, who was born and bred in northern New Hampshire, is not your typical sheep farmer. He has also been a long time columnist for the New Hampshire Sunday News. His weekly column, “Woods, Water and Wildlife,” has been appearing in the paper since 1972. He has been mostly a newspaper man all his life, getting started with the Nashua Telegraph in 1968 with “no prior reporting, or even typing skills.”
“I just went in there and convinced the editor that I could do the job, even without any experience, and so he took a chance on me.”
After living “down below” (Harrigan describes this as the region of New Hampshire south of the White Mountains), he returned to Colebrook to take over the Colebrook News and Sentinel from his parents in 1991. For a time, he also owned two weekly papers just south in Lancaster. In 2003, Harrigan sold the News and Sentinel to his oldest daughter, Karen and focused more of his attention on “working the land.” His column still appears in the N.H. Sunday News as does his other column, “North Country Notebook,” which appears weekly in several Salmon Press Newspapers. For many, he is considered the definitive voice of New Hampshire’s North County.
“I have two loves, writing and working the land,” Harrigan says. “This is a great place for it.”
Pittsburg, New Hampshire’s northernmost town, is surrounded by Quebec to its west and north and Maine to its east. Containing the headwaters of the Connecticut River, Pittsburg is mostly made up of lakes and forests, with most land owned by timber companies. Much of the headwaters region is recognized as conservation leaving the woods relatively untouched. If and when wolves return to New Hampshire, it will most likely happen first in Pittsburg.
Harrigan and other residents of northern Coos County know this, and have been paying attention to the wolf issues. Some residents are cautious about the possible return.
“Yes, a lot of people here have misgivings about the wolf coming back,” Harrigan says. “I would submit that if you get a lot of those people in a room and quiet them down and start having a dialogue with them, a lot of those people will walk out of that room not feeling the way they did when they walked in. But that’s a very idealistic scenario. I’ve gotta live with reality. The reality is that most people are apprehensive about the wolf coming back.”
Reintroduction for New England
One issue that tends to “ruffle feathers” with some North Country residents is how the wolves will return. No one seems to mind if the wolf comes walking in on its own two feet, but if the government intervenes with reintroduction, then watch out.
“There are a lot of people running around like me who truly understand the history of the wolf and love the fact that it could come back and occupy its rightful, ancestral place,” Harrigan says. “Rightful, ancestral place… those are powerful words. History with the people is important around here They are very proud of their history. They may not love the wolf, but they respect its place. It’s a very vociferous, well-versed segment of people out there that know the history and would jealously protect the wolves’ right and ability to come back. They are just as militantly going to fight against some kind of artificial solution.”
This fight against reintroduction in New Hampshire proved to be successful, but for many wrong reasons. In 1999 the state legislature passed a law prohibiting the reintroduction of wolves. The law came about in response to the U.S. Fish and Game Department’s intentions on developing a wolf recovery plan for the Northern Forest region. Harrigan found the law ridiculous upon first learning about it, feeling that the bill was formed out of fear that the wolves would halt logging operations and decimate the deer and moose population, not out of respect that the wolf should make recovery on its own.
“It was an ignorant ruling from Concord,” Harrigan says. However, he grudgingly admits that “on the other hand, it did guarantee that the wolf will come back on its own.”
The law also insures that New Hampshire will be spared the reintroduction problems that has plagued the western United States in recent years. 1995 saw the first reintroduction of the gray wolf in United States’ history. Twenty-nine wolves were relocated into Yellowstone National Park in northwest Wyoming, as well as some being relocated to the forested regions of central Idaho. Another 37 were relocated to the same regions the following year.
Both sets of populations have done surprisingly well in recent years. The wolves bred quickly in Yellowstone and Idaho and survived well, preying on the large populations of elk and deer. It was a success story in Yellowstone as several packs formed and the population leveled off at just under 200 wolves. Idaho, which has a larger wilderness habitat than Yellowstone, now has over 700 wolves. But ranchers living on the outskirts of the wilderness are waging war against the predator for attacking their livestock, having killed hundreds of wolves in the past year alone.
Struhsacker points out that the Idaho problems would not be an issue in the East. First off, the East does not have vast amounts of livestock like the West does. Secondly, in order to reintroduce a species, it must be done on public land, something the Northeast has very little of.
“You might be able to get one landowner to cooperate with the government and allow a reintroduction,” Struhsacker says, adding “but for a successful reintroduction, you would need two or three more landowners to sign on. That just wouldn’t happen.”
And those states that do not have anti-reintroduction legislation, such as Vermont and Maine, want to make sure that reintroduction does not happen. George Smith, executive director for the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine (SAM), has made it quite clear what position his club has on reintroduction. SAM is Maine’s largest hunting organization, with over 13,000 members. In 1998, when there was talk of reintroduction in Maine, SAM released a statement highlighting its opposition. The statement suggested that wolves would (a) deplete the Whitetail Deer population in northern Maine, (b) would burden Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Department by having to implement a wolf recovery plan, and (c) would impact hunting, trapping and snowmobiling, taking a toll on Maine’s outdoor economy.
According to Smith, the statement was written to combat the threat that organizations, such as the NWF, wanted to reintroduce the predator into Maine. By using his organization’s political muscle, Smith has “scared” away attempts at reintroduction. Seven years after the statement was released, Smith no longer believes that reintroduction will occur in Maine, crediting himself and his organization for “waging the battle against the environmentalists,” and winning. Instead, Smith would rather discuss what should be done about the wolf when and if it returns to Maine. His views on what to do with wolves have put him at odds with environmentalists and wolf biologists throughout New England.
Problems with Recovery
Smith, who has been a hunter all of his life, resides just outside Maine’s capital city of Augusta, SAM’s headquarters. He is friendly and outgoing, eager to help out his fellow sportsman. In his late 40s, Smith is high-profile conservative and a well-known outdoor columnist for the Kennebec Journal. For Smith, hunting and fishing has always been the backbone of New England and its how the region’s first settlers were able to tame the wilderness, by controlling the wild game that lived in the woods. Hunting provides a huge economic boost to the state, bringing in over $454 dollars a year. For Smith, the wolf could be a huge problem if Maine’s big game became constant prey to the wolves. And since the government does not recognize the wolf as an “endangered” species, then Maine hunters should be able to protect their game to the fullest extent of the law.
“They should be treated as any other game animal because they aren’t endangered and they should be hunted and trapped if they ever manage to get here,” Smith says. Wolves cannot be shot and killed in the Northeast because they are considered “threatened.” A Maine hunter found that out in 1993 after he shot and killed a wolf. He was subsequently fined a large sum of money.
“We don’t think they belong on the endangered species list because they’re not endangered,” Smith adds. “One of the problems we have with the endangered species list is that it fails to recognize that some of these animals have a greater range than just the United States.”
A wolf’s range has been studied at being between 30 and 100 miles. In other words, a wolf pack could be living within the Canadian wilderness and still roam into U.S. territory without setting up shop. For Smith, an animal that just wanders between international boundaries should not be considered endangered in the northeast. It would be a waste of time for the government to classify the wolf as endangered.
“The feds wouldn’t look at the populations in Quebec,” Smith argues. “They would spend incredible amounts of money on an animal that will probably never return in big numbers in the state of Maine. It would be a waste of our resources.”
New Hampshire hunting groups also share the same concerns that SAM does, although on a lesser scale. Kenneth Kreis, president of the New Hampshire Wildlife Federation (NHWF), is very concerned about what the wolf might do the livestock and big game in the north. NHWF represents over 80 hunting groups in the state, covering over 10,000 members.
“We don’t really have a predator up there that would do damage like the wolf might,” Kreis says. “If three wolves try to start a pack in the North, it wouldn’t be a huge impact. But once you get a pack of five or more individuals, they can start taking down deer or small moose.”
Kreis sees this as a potentially hazardous event for New Hampshire’s northern regions. If deer populations decrease because of wolves, Kreis says, then hunters won’t travel the long distance to Coos County.
“The North Country relies on moose and dear for income, so there would be a definite impact,” Kreis says.
As for the impact on livestock, Harrigan thinks it would hardly be a problem. Sitting down for lunch at a local diner in Canaan, Vt., Pittsburg’s neighbor to the west, Harrrigan shrugs his shoulders at the thought.
“There’s hardly any farming left around here,” he says.
Much of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, as well as northern New Hampshire and Maine is largely forested and owned by timber companies. Harrigan’s farm is one of the largest in the Upper Connecticut River Valley for both New Hampshire and Vermont. As long as farmers keep a tight lid on their livestock, then there shouldn’t be a problem. However, if a wolf does kill a sheep or other livestock, the government will pay the farmer an amount of money the animal would fetch at the market. This practice occurs in the upper Midwest where wolves roam in Minnesota, Wisconsin and northern Michigan. The wolves that live in the Great Lakes region have all made a natural recovery, and residents have coped with their return remarkably well. There’s even a large wolf center located in Ely, Minn. to help drive tourism to the area.
Harrigan also sees a problem with the way hunters have been considering the wolf, especially George Smith and the members of SAM. Even casual hunters in New Hampshire have the same fears as members of SAM.
“They may not be a real active hunter, but they believe that, because no one has ever told them that no predator ever out eats its food supply,” Harrigan explains. “Wolves are responsible breeders. If they’re prey falls in numbers, then they have fewer young. If they get threatened, they’ll have more litters with more pups.”
Harrigan points out that most people have never heard of the Isle Royale National Park story, which is good example of wolves controlling their own numbers. In 1949, when wolves crossed the frozen Lake Superior to a small island off of the upper peninsula of Michigan, they found a growing moose herd with no natural predators. By 1980, 50 wolves in four packs roamed the island, but there were few moose to be had because the wolf packs began to stretch thin their resources. The wolf population dropped by half and the moose population doubled over a 20 year period. Today, there are 30 wolves on the island and the moose herd has grown to manageable level. Biologists believe that now the wolves have controlled their own population and food source and the numbers will stay steady from now on for both the wolves and the moose.
Harrigan believes that Isle Royale is a perfect example of how the wolves may return to the area, by fluctuating their numbers until they reach equilibrium with their prey. But a bigger question with Harrigan is not how the hunters and farmers will be affected, but how another predator of the woods will be affected by the return of the wolf.
Wolves vs. Coyotes
Another sensitive issue concerning the wolf is how residents will now regard the coyote. Due to their huge numbers, there is a constant hunting season open on them, meaning that it’s legal to shoot a coyote 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This non-native canid has is an incredibly adaptive animal, especially with the hunting and trapping that goes on. Coyotes came into New England from the West in the 1900s. They cross-bred with wolves and grew larger than their coyote cousins in the West upon their arrival. These animals have been known to kill a small deer occasionally in the north woods, which is a rarity for other coyotes in the rest of the country.
In Maine, coyotes have become a particular threat to the fragile deer herds of northern part of the state. George Smith and SAM have been actively trying to get rid of the coyote through hunting and trapping.
“We’ve had real controversy over the coyote population and our aggressive measures,” Smith says. “Now we’re can’t trap coyotes anymore. It was suspended two years ago in response to a threatened law suit over snaring.”
Snaring is a popular way of trapping and it ensures certain death of the animal trapped. It is the principal way of trapping coyotes and wolves in Canada. Snaring is a particularly brutal method of catching an animal. A coyote, for instance, would get it’s head trapped through a barbed-wire lasso, which tightens around the animal’s neck as it struggles to get free. The coyote will either strangle itself or bleed to death in its attempt to escape.
Struhsacker pointed out in her talk in Stowe that the more people kill the coyote, the more their numbers will grow. There is simply no way to eradicate them. But when the wolf returns, will the year-round hunting season on coyotes end and how will public opinion change towards these unpopular animals? It’s an inconsistency is some people’s thinking that Harrigan, who believes coyotes have a rightful place in the wilds, loves to expose.
“People don’t like it when you point out the inconsistency in their thought process,” he says. “And they absolutely don’t like it when you point out a bias. They especially don’t like it when it’s a species bias between two close cousins who look very much alike. You’re supposed to loathe, revile and persecute one, and we’re supposed to adore, protect and emote with the other.”
Harrigan shakes his head in disgust.
“Ahh, it’s just disgusting,” he adds “Makes me want to throw up!”
Struhsacker believes that when the wolf returns, coyote numbers will dwindle by 50 percent, much like they did in Yellowstone National Park. In the park, the wolves quickly showed the coyotes who was boss by killing many and sending the coyotes scrambling for a safer habitat. Coyotes in Yellowstone ended up moving closer to human developments, such as roads, campgrounds and visitor centers. Struhsacker believes that the same would happen in the Northeast, with coyotes moving closer to human habitation. This could have a negative effect on the human population, as coyotes might be more driven to attack livestock. Seeing that coyotes carry such a negative image, it would be likely that the effort to eradicate them would increase. This could cause more of a chance for wolves to be killed by those farmers and hunters who would have a hard time distinguishing between a coyote and wolf. It’s an issue that leaves many questions unanswered and, as Harrigan points out, “we’ll all just have to wait and see the outcome.”
An Imminent Return
No matter who you talk with – farmer, hunter, or biologist, you still get the same response. The wolf will inevitably be making a comeback to northern New England and much sooner than later. With a small wolf pack living within 10 miles of Vermont on the Quebec shores of Lake Memphramagog, a lake that shares it waters with Canada and the United States, it seems ignorant to assume that wolves have not already explored into northern New England. A pack is also confirmed 30 miles north of the New Hampshire border in southern Quebec. Wolf scouts have been most likely roaming the woods, crossing back and forth between the international border. They would account for the large tracks that snowmobilers have seen and the loud howl that Harrigan heard that warm, August night. Even biologists who have not seen any evidence of wolves in northern New England concede that they probably have visited.
Will Staats, a biologist with the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, has not seen evidence, but believes what he hears from local residents.
“I’ve always maintained that the stage is set for wolves,” Staats says. “There’s a good deer population, a good moose population and a good beaver population. If there is a pack 30 miles north of Pittsburg, would I be surprised to see wolves coming into that area? Absolutely not.”
Struhsacker agrees with Staats, but maintains that it will take a lot of time before there is a sizeable wolf population in the North. Packs in southern Quebec are quite small and always in danger of being killed off. In Canada, there are no laws against killing or trapping wolves. With over 60,000 wolves in Canada, most living in the far northern regions of the country, the Canadian government sees no need to impose restrictions. Quebec trappers, who trap coyotes and wolves for their fur, set up snares near deer feeding grounds in hopes that the allure of prey will be their undoing. The snares are a huge limiting factor for wolves, even if they set up a home in the United States. It would take external pressure from the United States for the Canadian government to stop the hunting and trapping of wolves, but Struhsacker believes this will not happen.
Wolves also need large areas relatively free from humans. While northern New England is sparsely populated now, properties are being bought up in these rural locations, as more and more people look for second homes. The appeal of the wilderness has stretched beyond the popular Green Mountains of Vermont and White Mountains of New Hampshire and Maine.
But once they are here, both Struhsacker and Staats believe that northern New England has enough wildlife to sustain sizeable wolf packs. Some north woods residents, like Harrigan, believe that wolves are already here. He notes that locals in the Rangeley Lakes region of Maine, just east of the northern New Hampshire border, have been saying wolves live in the area for over five years. With tens of thousands of acres of forested hills and mountains in that region, it’s easy to believe they are right. Driving along the Vermont side of the Connecticut River, looking back into Colebrook, N.H. and the mountains in the distance, Harrigan admits that he’s for the wolf to make a successful return. He also believes that once residents in northern New England are educated about the wolf, they may embrace what the wolf means to the wilderness.
“Once myths are dispelled, people around here may hope to see a wolf,” he says with a smile.
As the sun breaks through the clouds, Harrigan crosses over the Connecticut River into New Hampshire. He slows his truck over the bridge, looking north up the river along the Vermont – New Hampshire border, towards Quebec. When the wolf returns, he says, it will be “a tremendous victory for Mother Nature.” He hopes people will appreciate that New England is once again returning to its wild roots and that the homecoming of an animal once lost brings hope for the future.
