The New Wolves: Reintroduction of the Mexican Wolf in the American Settlement - Hardcover

Bass, Rick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1558216979 ISBN 13: 9781558216976

Publisher: The Lyons Press, 1998

Synopsis

Lobos, or Mexican wolves, once roamed freely throughout Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas until they were hunted to extinction when big cattle interest came to the Southwest. Now, a Mexican wolf reintroduction -- similar to the Yellowstone efforts for its cousin the gray wolf -- is underway in the Blue Mountains of Arizona. But cattle have overgrazed the fragile land, damaging the ecosystem that barely sustains their vast numbers. Can this environment sustain wolves?With the literary talent and naturalist's sensibility he brought to his highly praised 1992 account of a family of wolves in Montana, The Ninemile Wolves, Rick Bass examines the circumstances of the Mexican wolves' arrival: the exhausted soil of the land, the behavior and requirements of wolves, and the concerns of ranchers and environmentalists. "The New Wolves" brings to life a place -- its people and its wildlife, its past and its future. Bass articulates the land's need for wolves to maintain balance, while masterfully depicting the modern conflict between nature and our need to control it.Part meditation, part probing journalism, "The New Wolves" is an important new chapter in the drama of wolves and the American West.

About this title

Review:

"A lyrical narrative along the boundaries of nature essay, character portraiture and eco-philosophy ... Bass mines the layers of political, social, economic, cultural and ethical relevance with a unique poetic voice, and, in the end, it is the wolves who most vigorously capture his imagination and fascination. This is a ballad of a book, a hymn to the gloriously defiant power of survival that transcends the single issue this is its putative subject." --Publishers Weekly "The New Wolves is an enthralling and brilliant book on the reintroduction of wolves in the American Southwest ... written out of the activist lineage of Edward Abbey and Douglas Peacock, it is especially passionate but with the novelist's eye for vivid details." --Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall --"In Bass's chest beats the heart of both the poet and hunter, he is lyrical and sentimental, and that rare combination whets a sharp edge on his prose." --Chicago Sun Times --"What's exhilarating about Rick Bass's stories is that they show every hallmark of 'the natural'--that lucid, free-flowing particularly American talent whose voice we can hear in Twain, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway." --Chicago Tribune

From the Back Cover:

In The New Wolves, author Rick Bass turns his naturalist’s eye to the Mexican wolves that once roamed freely throughout the Southwest, until they were hunted
to extinction when cattle came to the region. As in his other nature writings, Bass observes the often conflicted interaction between species preservation and ecological recovery.

Bass’s passionate and beautifully written account of the wolves’ return is one that few readers will ever forget.

|In The New Wolves, author Rick Bass turns his naturalist’s eye to the Mexican wolves that once roamed freely throughout the Southwest, until they were huntedto extinction when cattle came to the region. As in his other nature writings, Bass observes the often conflicted interaction between species preservation and ecological recovery. Bass’s passionate and beautifully written account of the wolves’ return is one that few readers will ever forget.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Lyons Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1558216979
• ISBN 13: 9781558216976
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 128