ABSTRACT

An abstract of the thesis of Laura Briana Nobel for the Master of Science in Leadership in Ecology, Culture and Learning program of Educational Policy, Foundations and Administration Department in the School of Education presented May 6, 2005.

Title: The Nature of People's Perceptions of Wolves

Once regarded as the "devil in disguise" (Lopez, 1978:140) by European immigrants to the New World, the way we see wolves has broadened as we include knowledge of these animals learned from other cultures and from our own growing scientific body of knowledge. Culturally, our perceptions of wolves have become more complicated and nuanced as our collective awareness of the environment in which we live also gathers complexity. I examine these things in this study which follows on the heels of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's efforts to develop a wolf management plan for the state in 2004. Wolves are returning to Oregon. Since the arrival of wolf B-45 in Oregon, more wolves are expected to cross the border as young sub-adults disperse from Idaho as their population grows from the federal reintroduction effort begun in 1996-7.

This study explores our perceptions of wolves through an empirical, qualitative study. Running in parallel with this main goal, I sought to understand also how these perceptions relate on a larger scale to the ways we understand nature. In exploring these questions qualitatively, I sought to answer the following questions: 1) What ways can story play a role in defining people's perceptions? 2) What lessons can be learned to inform future ecological educators' work to communicate on this or other similarly complex topics? 3) What is the collective story that we can tell each other on the eve before wolves' presence in the Oregon landscape becomes an acknowledged reality once again? 4) Finally, how can what was learned inform future ecological educational programs regarding wolves in the state?

This study explores the above questions. In considering people's perceptions, I attempted to examine whether the desires to exterminate wolves are really gone or if they may lie just below the surface, in an untapped region of our brains. Perhaps, as we learn more about the complex way that wolves interact in the landscape and the various ways that humans react to the idea of them, there now grows a greater complexity in the way we as a whole must inter-relate with them.

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THE NATURE OF PEOPLE'S PERCEPTIONS OF WOLVES

by

LAURA BRIANA NOBEL

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTin

EDUCATIONAL POLICY, FOUNDATIONS, and ADMINISTRATION

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DEDICATION

Despite the fact that I myself was the one who physically embarked upon this journey, it was made possible by many amazing individuals only some of whom I am able to acknowledge on the next page, all of whom supported me in crucial moments with their kindness, energy, persistent good will, humor, and excellent patience. This work I dedicate in honor of these people, and most especially with the interview participants themselves, for all the time, good will, laughter, shared stories and insights, without which the possibility to make many connections would never have occurred. I hope only that I have done justice to words shared between us well enough to pass on the depth of my learning from each of you to others in a new, yet still recognizable form.

Additionally I would like to dedicate this to all members of my ecological communities, for all the innumerable ways we teach each other, whether we like it or not, about the dance. For those who participate daily in the giveaway, it is my hope that we may learn to give something reciprocally in return.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSTo my parents and grandparents whom gave me this life, brought me into this world and have had continued faith in my journey Rachel Leah who called me at all hours and reminded me of the beauty that can be found in death, in life, in moments like thatZachariah for when we saw the sun rise together and seal storiesGaston for his patience, good humor, raincoat and kisses through this process, also for the drive across the country to get me there on timeKristin for reading and discussing the threads in the outlineMany Friends' support (Ariana, Rebekah, Jay, Allegra, June, Britta, etc!)Tim and Brian who by the grace of God shared their family with me and Tim again for all the help packing and loading of boxesall the members of the Wolf Advisory Committee and its supporting staff who put in hours of their time to create the "Wolf Management Plan" of good worth that it may speak to the greater whole for years to comeCharlie for the jump-startCraig for making me feel welcomeRamin and Christine for their support by asking excellent questionsMary for her vivacity and crackling laughter over the phoneGayatri for tending to my soul's care and nourishmentJudy for a walk in the gardenAnn for stories of bluebird boxesClare for the gift of a wolf book she found, also for faith and patienceJason for hearing me out at Common Groundsthe man in Wyoming who gave me insight while on the 70 mile towMax and Thomas for the dinner and also for the Two Wolves storythe LECL crew, new and old, also most especially Dilafruz and Pramodmy Thesis Committee: Rolla, Lisa and Mitch for your critique questionsLola for her unsolicited and utterly valuable adviceAmeer for laughter and gaining perspective in midst of packingTony and Jamie for calling me on my birthday and blueberry pancakes Steve, Amanda, Liliane, Sunshine, Jennifer and their new babies for thoughts towards the next generation, Bob and my grandparents for thoughts of the previous onesSean for the wonder full visit and helping start a fire at sunsetMilt for the space, quiet and outlook of a new yet old dynamic processUs Eatons for dinners, lunches and conversations in OctoberSusan for the time she gave in discussion of wolves and of story before going on to tell them herselfGarth and Chad and the people of PPG who give me hope for the future in fashioning new ways to work with the landHarvey for his endless patience, love, for calling me to come outside in the moonlight, teaching me to listen in a different languagethe cats whose purrs kept rhythm on my lap in the dawning hoursAll the other four-legged, winged or scaled ones who taught me muchPlants I Have Known: for the air I breathe, and for the lessons - that things take time to grow; we all harbor a resiliency within ourselvesand to

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My Interview Participants who for logistical, bureaucratic1 reasons must go un-named, yet in my heart I long to give you that honor, for your time, good will, laughter, shared stories and insights. - Thank You

1 To review specifics on the Human Subjects Review requirements for all Portland State University students please visit the Office of Graduate Studies web site for further information.http://www.gsr.pdx.edu/orsp_compliance_human_process.htmlhttp://www.gsr.pdx.edu/orsp_compliance_human_forms.htmlFor specific questions regarding the HSR application completed for this study please contact the researcher Laura Nobel laura(at)nobel.org or the Office of Research and Sponsored Projects directly at (503) 725-3423 or (800) 547-8887

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A. Seeds: Starting Points B. On NatureC. Language and Relevancy to the Larger WorldD. Tuning the Instrument, Origins of the Researcher

IX. Ch. 3 Methodology ….………………………………………………….1A. Qualitative ResearchB. ParticipantsC. QuestionsD. Interviews E. Strategies to Gather DataF. Strategies to Analyze DataG. Strategies to Synthesize and Interpret DataH. Framing The Study

X. Ch. 4 The Journey: Crossing The Terrain (Autoethnography II)..1A. Setting Out, November 20, 2003B. WAC Meetings Attended in 2004C. Land of the UnknownD. The Columbia PlateauE. Into The Blue Mountains and Out AgainF. Interview Journey

XII. Ch. 5 Ideas of Ecosystems and Ecology……..1A. Definition of An Ecosystem B. Ecology in the Literature

XIII. Ch. 6 Seeing Wolves: Perceptions…………………….…………………….1

A. The Basics: What People KnewB. Ambiguities & DiscrepanciesC. A Discussion of Perception Data & Literature

XIV. Ch. 7 Towards Future Directions ………………..1A. Other Perspectives/Hearing the QuestionsB. Potential Aspects for Educators

1. In Oregon2. Anywhere

C. Considering Change in the SystemXV. Ch. 8 Synthesis - Considering Change In the System

A. An Ecological Viewpoint ReconsideredB. EconomicsC. Adaptive ManagementD. Streams of Thought

XIX. List of References……………………………………………………………1XX. Appendices………………………………………………………………………1

A. Definition of Terms…..……………………………………1B. Question Guide

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LIST OF TABLES

7.2 Wolf Advisory Committee Meetings Attended in 2004……………iii7.1 Interview Journey…………………………….i11.1 Education Dispersal, Reproduction (Salient Points, Audience)

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LIST OF FIGURES

Wolves, Humans…………………………….i Wolves, Perceive, Humans, Perceive…………………………….i The Encounter, This is the WHY…………………………….i

Ecosystem Decision Tree…….People Think About Wolves II (Positionality)People Think About Wolves III (Axial Relations)Wolf Perception: From The Wolf EyesWhy RevisitedQuestions For The Future (Sheep Sketch)

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

1) ODFW: Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife2) WAC: Wolf Advisory Committee3) OWMP: Oregon Wolf Management Plan4) USFWS: United States Fish and Wildlife Services5) Ag land: land used for agricultural purposes6) USFS: United States Forest Service7) NP: National Park8) ESA: Endangered Species Act9) USDA: United States Department of Agriculture10) ADC: Animal Damage Control11) APHIS: Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service12) "The Little Elephants": Our 4 young male neighbors that tromp across their floor, our ceiling, mostly at night, with distinct loud thuds.13) I1F: 1st interview participant, name initial "F."14) I2K: 2nd interview participant, name initial "K."15) I3J: 3rd interview participant, name initial "J."16) I4S: 4th interview participant, name initial "S."17) I5M: 5th interview participant, name initial "M."18) I6Y: 6th interview participant, name initial "Y."20) I7DF:7th interview participant, female, name initial "D."21) I7DM:7th interview participant, male, name initial "D."22) I8C: 8th interview participant, name initial "C."23) I9GF:9th interview participant, female, name initial "G."24) I9RM:9th interview participant, male, name initial "R."25) I10VF:10th interview participant, female, name initial "V."26) I10NM:10th interview participant, male, name initial "N."27) I11R: 11th interview participant, name initial "R."28) I12I: 12th interview participant, name initial "I."

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PROLOGUE

In the beginning it is about the story. The story guides us. It stands on four legs outside the light cast by the shadow at the center of the circle where the fire burns crackling and hot. Barking "Attention!" not much but just enough the story asks to come in. The story asks for us to listen. Reaching deep within us the eyes that stare back at us are wild and unpredictable. They weave a thread of connection from lines we did not know we shared. They pull at our gut and we feel our stomach lurch and our heart leap up, padding along behind singing softly "But that is not what I meant…" but the words have meaning and grow feathers, wings that fly far beyond our wildest dreams. They fly to lands unknown and ears that cock their heads to listen, tune to the cadence in a different sort of way than we would ever imagine. Always the story is running along the paths from here to there, pacing, sometimes visible, sometimes hidden from sight by bushes, trees or shadows. It feeds on the soft meals when people's stomachs lurch in recognition guiding their hearts like a rudder on a massive ship that must turn the course and open the eyes of the humans "above" to see that this, this what is said, this story, these words offered, now for you to digest, they hold truth trapped in the bonds of what makes food sustenance, a life-giving force. Something to chew on, we contemplate now our actions, our perceptions. Will we give back when next we feel our stomach lurch? The story watches us know, now, it wonders. Will we give back gifts ourselves in reciprocity? Hungry, the story wonders if it will feed this night. Hidden it wonders how much crackling splendor it needs to throw off its coat to dazzle the eyes while integral the words jump like jewels given as gifts weaving the many-colored threads of connection that they take from our hands, threads that reach deep inside of us pulling at our gut, calling forth memories of another time, space or landscape. The heart feels the pull of shuttle in the weave between warp and weft. And when the story weaving begins, each of us singing softly stops to listen. Slowly, instead of singing lonely, softly our

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tune changes, our ears tuning and now we hear a humming collected in the rhythm of the story. Padding on four legs just outside the circle from the fire, barking not much but just enough; the story asks to come in. The story asks for us to listen.

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WOLF TRAVELING, CROSSING BORDERS

~~~<<*>>~~~

February 18, 1999: An endangered gray wolf spent Valentine's Day coursing across snow-capped mountains in northeast Oregon and looking for love in all the wrong places. State and federal biologists say B-45, a yearling female, appears to have crossed the Snake River from Idaho and made her way more than 100 miles into the headwaters of the John Day River, apparently in search of a mate. "She presents a somewhat odd situation for us, because Oregon is not part of the wolf recovery effort," said Mark Henjum, a biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in La Grande. (Monroe 1999:D8)

~~~<*>~~~

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCING

In which a wolf enters Oregon in 1999.

In 1999, the appearance of a now famous female wolf dubbed "B-45" by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service ignited the imaginations of many people here in Oregon and foreshadowed the very real possibility that wolves could make a reappearance within the state as they dispersed across the border from the expanding population found in the mountains of neighboring state Idaho. With B-45's remarkable journey as she braved swimming across the waters of the Snake River and the later appearance of two other wild wolves (confirmed, but sighted dead) in Oregon, the question arose immediately in minds as Oregonians pondered the question: what will we do if they arrive?! By crossing the state border between Idaho and Oregon, B-45 now traveled a direct route towards pushing the

envelope of what delineations humans deemed as acceptable habitat in which wolves could dwell.

The state of Oregon from a government standpoint found it shouldered an immense responsibility as it faced a complicated reality in dealing with these animals: wolves were protected federally under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) enacted in 1973. Complicating this logistically, Oregon was not in the scope of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Society's perview as one of the states that had been chosen to support a reintroduced population. The USFWS had chosen to support wolf reintroduction efforts in the lower 48 states primarily in specific designated sites that they had deemed feasible for reintroduction after much debate within the surrounding human communities. Two simultaneous reintroduction efforts began in spring of 1996 in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in Wyoming and amidst the wilderness in the state of Idaho. Oregon lay beyond both these boundaries in new territory, for wolves and humans to coexist, so to speak. So how then, to classify a wolf that dispersed from a "reintroduced population" in Idaho where they been granted experimental nonessential status under section 4(d) of the ESA, over the border to a state where they might be credited with full protection under the federal ESA as a dispersed species?

Additionally, not only were wolves protected federally, but the state of Oregon, always progressive in its policy, had created its own Oregon Endangered Species Act of 1987. Wolves, already listed federally at the time, were automatically included on the list as one of the species previously found indigenous within Oregon prior to eradication. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), sensing potential controversy, stepped up as the responsible agency to examine these complex issues more closely.

Scientists have long studied wolves with an interest in examining their physical characteristics, territorial behavior, prey selection strategies and interactions with other predator species. Such notable scientists as Stanley Young with The Wolves of North America (1944), Adolph Murie with The Wolves of Mount McKinley also

published in 1944, and L. David Mech's compilation The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species first printed in 1970 (in its fifth printing as of 1987), have offered significant contributions to our knowledge of these animals. To some these studies might be classified under the category of biological studies. To others, these first attempts to study and learn of wolves would be considered ecological in their nature.

But wolves, we know, can occupy a sometimes larger-than-life presence in the minds of men and women. They are intricately linked to our own American history. Since the federally mandated effort to reintroduce wolves, a drama has been unfolding across the nation in state after state. At the heart of the controversy, wolves heighten debates in the American people over issues of the commons, property, livelihood, wilderness and our relationship to nature. These ideas are intricately woven into the fabric of our lives and have become part of the underlying structure. We often assume we know and understand the threads within which we live. But wolves are good at crossing borders. In doing so, they raise questions anew and require us to reexamine the assumptions under which we have been operating. The renewed presence of these animals in our landscape offers us an opportunity for greater dialogue on many of the issues that we hold dear.

Wolves present us with difficult ethical and moral challenges. These challenges shift the debate from pure scientific study of an animal's behavior or objective questions of wildlife management to the realm of a controversial political and cultural setting where the arguments are more value-based in character (Nie, 2001:26). Paul Paquet and Marco Muisani maintain that human attitudes will play a pivotal role in the persistence of wolf populations (Paquet & Muisani, 2004). Carter Niemeyer, US Fish and Wildlife Service Idaho Wolf Director, in a presentation on "Wolf-Human Interactions" before the Oregon Wolf Advisory Committee in March 2004 maintained that wolves need two things in order to survive: an adequate prey base and a tolerant human population (Niemeyer, March 19,2004, italics mine).

Here now, we humans enter the picture and the relevancy for this study begins to take shape. When a human meets a free-ranging wolf, several things occur. First there is a process of perception where the senses send data to the brain to signal we are perceiving something. Our brain then works to decode the messages it is receiving and interpret them so that it can understand more fully what it is that is being perceived. As a human perceives the wolf, the wolf also perceives the human. Once interpretation occurs, we move into the stage of the encounter. At this point, an action is either purposefully chosen or instinctual. Wolves also may exhibit actions either chosen or instinctual. From the combination of the simultaneous choices in action by both wolves and humans, there comes an outcome.

The final outcome of humans' actions in relation to wolves is yet unknown. The story continues to unfold. With each twist and turn in the tale, we learn something new, not only about these animals but about ourselves. Here we see how the final outcome determined will be based upon our perceptions.

The purpose of this study was to expand upon what are some of the levels of humans' awareness of wolves through an empirical, qualitative study that explores our perceptions of wolves and how they relate on a larger scale to our perceptions of nature. To do this, this study sought to answer the following questions: 1) What ways can we better understand people's perceptions and possible definitions of ecology? 2) What is the collective story that we can tell each other regarding the "lay of the land" on the eve before wolves' presence in Oregon becomes an acknowledged reality once again? 3) Finally, what lessons can be learned to inform future educators' work to communicate on this or other similarly complex topics?

AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC PROCESS OF RESEARCHER I

~~~<<*>>~~~

I am walking outside on a cold, clear night on the way to the outhouse while on a sleepover at a friend's. She, being used to such things as outhouses instead of a warm inside plumbed "bathroom", had simply opened the door and ushered me outside the house. Illuminating the cold ground with a ray shone from the light inside, she set me straight on a foot path, handed me a flashlight, and pointed me in the direction where the outhouse lay in the thick darkness beyond. "It's just down that way, not too far. Be careful of your steps. Don't stray off the path."

Feeling the way slowly with my feet, I try to bypass any jutting rocks and avoid tripping on the trail. I move slowly and encourage myself that really, "It's no problem. I am alone. There is nothing to be afraid of." For some reason I had waited to inquire where the bathroom was until after dark. Now the matter is quite pressing and I find myself hoping I reach the outhouse quickly.

Before I do, a chorus of howls suddenly erupts from out of the darkness that envelops me. I pause mid-step. What was that!?

OOOOOOooooooooooooaaaaaawawwwoooooaaaawwwOOOOOOOOoooAAAAWAAAAaaawoooOOOOOOoooaaaaWWWWaaaaaOOOOwwaaaoohhOOOooooowwwWWaaaOOAHOHAOHAaaaaaWWWaaaaOOHOahOAHOH

The voices rise and fall around me. With louder and softer volumes, different depths, pitches and timbres, there is more than one but what it is I cannot tell. The loud howls reach through the trees and blend themselves into a full song of dissonant harmonies.

~~~<*>~~~

CHAPTER 2: SEEDS

In which I describe my own autoethnographic process as I approached this study. This is where I acknowledge the origination points for some of my questions, discuss how the idea for this thesis developed, and explore the relevancy of this study to the larger world.

Seeds: Starting Points

The initial seeds to develop this research study came through a cumulative process that first began as I recognized a curiosity and fascination that I harbored for animals from an early age. As I pursued my studies of wolves with research in college by writing my senior thesis on the implications that Mexican wolf reintroduction would have for cattle ranchers in Arizona. At that time, I began to recognize the complexity that surrounds these animals on multiple levels: in the social relations they necessitate between humans with diverse viewpoints; the complex social behaviors they exhibit amongst themselves and also the complexity that has come to light through greater in-depth knowledge of wolves' roles within biological ecosystems. Coupling my biological interest of these animals with my educator's curiousity about how well people in society understand ecological systems seemed an ideal way to explore the intersection point of two topics of interest at once in my masters' thesis studies.

The very title of the paper "The Nature of People's Perceptions of Wolves" has begged me for better definition from the start: What concept exactly was I studying? Is it that I wanted to study the way people perceived nature in particular, and therefore only sort-of "peripherally" wolves? Or was I really more interested in what were natural tendencies by people in the way they perceived wolves? Or, was it more that I had an interest in how people perceived wolves as they related to the perceptions people harbored for nature on a larger

level? In the first phases of my study, I recognized this ambiguity but allowed it to exist as I delved into the topic further. My reasoning allowed for the fact that my choosing of the title was not by random chance but spoke more toward my own questions, that perhaps were not yet verbalized as well and intelligently as my choice for the title.

On nature

Despite the initial perceived ambiguity, I enjoyed the double meaning that the word "nature" took on in the thesis title. "Nature" could be taken to imply that which was all around us, as evidenced by nature - those elements in the environment like the seasons, the climate, the plants and animals around us. Additionally, "nature" could mean the way that one perceives an intrinsic characteristic of an object - that which gives something its particular "nature." It became apparent to me even from these initial humble beginnings centered around one word "nature", much used and familiar to us all, that word choice was going to play a significant role in my study as I attempted to gain clarity on the meaning of things, both for myself and for readers of this thesis. Similarly the word "perception" became a bone that I would chew on for much of the study. I will discuss the implications of this word at a later point.

Language, and the relevancy of this study to the wider world

Language is one of the useful tools that humans rely on to communicate with each other. Language brings with it sound, and a way our mouths and voices shape the words. Most importantly, our language brings meaning and creates a bridge across which we can share our experience of the world with others. It is this medium through which I have asked people to describe their thoughts around how they perceive wolves. Many of these ideas that center around perception, nature and ecology: language, nestedness, self-generating systems, - require a reflexivity in terms of using both a narrow focus

and wider lens that combined, enable us to think about the meaning that is attached and how it then manifests itself into what we perceive as reality in the world. As humans we exist in language and we continually weave the linguistic web in which we are embedded. We coordinate our behavior in language, and together in language we bring forth our world…This human world…includes our inner world of abstract thought, concepts beliefs, mental images, intentions, and self-awareness (Capra, 2002:54)

We use language to describe our experience and voice what we perceive to others around us. Whether The Other we meet turns out to be a wolf, or another human, we are challenged to make sense of their presence and classify the experience immediately as something to trust or as something dangerous. Adler and Birkoff classify the problem how to determine what or whom to trust.

All of us are challenged to make meaning out of the vast amount of sensory data that we encounter each day. Growing up, we learn what to pay attention to, what to ignore, what to react to, and what to file away for future reference. We learn who is similar to us and who is different, who is threatening and who is friendly. We do this by developing frameworks, patterns of thinking, and distinct "ways of knowing"…Behaviorally, they are the unwritten categories we use to sort and construct coherent models of the world. (Adler & Birkhoff, http://www.policyconsensus.org)

Here now we can begin to see the relevancy of this study to the wider world. How people think of wolves depends on the categories that they use to construct the world. In gaining a better understanding of the constructed models of the world that people are operating within, we can learn better the language through which people are "bringing forth our world." Humans have already eradicated wolves from the landscape once - for reasons some may now view as misguided whereas others saw as utterly a matter of necessity and their own survival. Now that wolves have been reintroduced into our landscape it remains to be seen if our perceptions have truly changed enough that humans and wolves might learn to coexist in the landscape.

Tuning The Instrument: Origins of The Researcher

The idea for this study originally sprang from a dream to create a multi-media production that would "tell the story of the wolf" from by tracing its paths from multiple directions of: historical, scientific, mythological and people's own direct experiences. As the first step in that direction, I focused on emergent themes that grew out of direct interviews with participants living in the states of Oregon and Idaho. Awareness comes from asking a question. As I asked questions both of the participants and of myself, a greater awareness of the "lay of land" began to be apparent.

Asking questions is not a new thing for me. My ninth grade English teacher nicknamed me Laura "Question" Nobel for my ability to ask questions. In a similar way, I have always had an interest in animal and human communication.

My own awareness of animals started with things very small and immediate in my surroundings living on a mountain in a desert scrub - juniper-pinon-sage type environment. Red ants bit my legs and toes when I stepped on their hills made of small bits and chips of rock and dirt. Prickly pear cactus were always on the lookout to pierce an unwary tennis shoe, sandaled or bare foot. I recall the surprise I felt when one night a wasp crawled in my nightshirt and stung me as I was getting ready for bed. Dogs weren't exactly always a help to keep on a lookout for danger as even they were susceptible - like our good dog "Roja" who got bit by a diamondback rattlesnake the year we first arrived. Subsequent years proved that rattlesnakes were our repeated neighbors and visitors willing to trespass across our door threshold to declare their presence inside the house. Nature was anything but friendly in these instances. But as much as nature was a force to be reckoned with, it caught my attention and taught me much in lessons about the cycles of life and death: when I felt the heartbeat of a small horned toad lizard in the palm of my hand; or I heard the soft scrabbling and hooting of burrowing owls who had burrowed into the

mud walls of our house to nest; or watched an adolescent goshawk display "manteling behavior" before it ate one of our chickens that it had snagged from the coop.

Direct hands-on experiences working with animals gave me a knowledge of and grounding in the gritty, non-glamourous, yet still rewarding aspects of working with animals that balanced the romanticized animal-oriented stories I read any chance I got. From working at a veterinary clinic in high school I learned such things as how a 110lb Rottweiler dog is not an animal you want to start throwing their weight around. Nor should a person automatically trust the soft looking scared cocker spaniel that wags its tail at you one moment and yet turns to snap at your fingers the next. Although not "wild" the cocker spaniel had its own levels of trust with humans.

Reflecting back on things now, I see how questions of perception, human and animal interaction, communication and interpretation arise as a recurrent themes running throughout my life. It was when the male slow loris - from a pair of the nocturnal animals I had the privilege to study for a research paper in my Animal Behavior class- reached through the bars of its cage and made as if to grab my clothing or hand that I realized there were certain things that I could not describe objectively. Was his behavior a usual pattern that occurred even when I was not in the room or was it subjectively directed at interacting with me? There in that room, I had attempted to "be invisible" and blend into the wall as an objective scientific observer so that the two slow loris could go about their "normal" business without my presence being much noticed. This simple gesture by the slow loris effectively communicated to me I was anything but invisible and the slow loris knew it. The experience remains one I cannot forget. It brought home the lesson to me that as much as I was perceiving the habits of the slow loris, so too the slow loris simultaneously, was also involved in its own perception process and assessment of me.

I have long been fascinated by the idea of animal language and so have pondered whether they could have their own methods of communicating with each other. The question to me is not whether

they do communicate with each other, but rather, given my belief that this occurs, whether it is possible that humans might enter into a successful pattern of communication with them. Successful inter-species communication such as this might be particularly useful when thinking about wolf-human interactions. It was in the process of training my dog Homer in my youth that I first bumped up against these questions. How to successfully communicate to him what it was that I wanted when words had no meaning to his dog ears? In the process of teaching him to sit, he taught me the valuable lesson that he respond more to the tone of voice (kind rather than angry) than to actual verbal words. Much later, in experiences walking with a wolf-malamute-husky mix, Natasha open my eyes to show me how her own encounters with the world occurred at a complex sensory level far beyond my own capacities for sight, sound, and smell. She brought me to the window to gaze beyond my own lived-in experience and so I recognized other animal beings have their own motives and choices that they make in life. She was a patient teacher whose love for humans touched many lives beyond mine. Her smile in an airport radiated across long hallways and brought many visitors curious to come and say hello to her.

Perhaps an interest in animal communication was sparked by that first time that I heard wolves howling. Not knowing what they were, I could not know what it was that they were saying. Their strange howls and song reverberated loudly in the air around me. I did not know whether I should be afraid or just intrigued. I did not know how close they were or what the next steps (theirs or mine) might be. If they suddenly came jumping out of the woods, I did not know if they might next want to attack me. I did not know if I was safe and therefore could go about my own business (the outhouse if you recall) unimpeded. Their howls called me into a heightened awareness of my surroundings. Not just a quiet inky black darkness. Now it had shape, and other shapes moved around in it. What were they trying to say?

These questions became like a locked little box in my own psyche always operating continuously in the background. Like a

smooth stone in your pocket that your fingers return to trace the shape of again and again, repeatedly I returned to questions of wolves as a touchstone where I pondered the meaning and implications of their reintroduction into our landscapes. Following the stories of heated debates and multi-level reactions from different stakeholder groups only affirmed what my gut told me about the complexity of this issue. I could understand both people's fears of not knowing what these animals might actually do while at the same time bear excited witness to an animal returning to inhabit former ecological landscapes and "wild places" that they might have frequented years ago.

At the college level, I wrote my bachelors' thesis on "The Implications of Mexican Wolf Reintroduction for Cattle Ranchers in the Blue Range Mountains, Arizona." Taking it to a new level in my graduate studies, I began the program of Leadership in Ecology, Culture and Learning at Portland State University in late 2002 and conducted a cultural review that researched the portrayal of wolves and human perceptions of them as they appeared in the media. This provided me with further insight into the current issues that had arisen in the seven years since their reintroduction in the 1990s.

This brought me up to speed on the public's reactions to wolves as they had settled in the wilderness of Idaho and in the area around Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. But news articles convey a limited amount of actual information with regards to a particular person's views. Usually news articles tend to portray the issues as black and white without exploring the complexity and nuances that exist. It was within the grey areas that I felt much of the terrain was still relatively unfamiliar. I knew at the time only that I wanted to get a sense of the "lay of the land" through which I hoped to gain a deeper understanding of the story being played out between wolves and humans in our present day.

By November of 2002, it became apparent that not only was my topic relevant on a larger scale, the idea of wolves moving back into the state of Oregon also had some currency at the local and state level. Beginning on November 12, 2002 the ODFW held 15 "Wolf

Town Hall" meetings at locations around the state. A total of 2,027 individuals from across the state showed up to listen to a status report given by ODFW of where wolves were at (none confirmed living) in the state and comment on what to do if wolves start dispersing across the border from Idaho as the neighboring state's population grew. Primarily the educational message content carried by these meetings was that it was not a question of "if" wolves show up but more a matter of "when." Given what was known about the habits and ecology of wolves, it was more than likely that the appearance of the wolf B-45 in 1999 was a good indicator that more were likely to follow in her footsteps, it was only a matter of time. Now was an excellent time to study the situation that wolves might be moving into should they cross the border from Idaho again.

METHODOLOGY (TOOLS)

~~~<<*>>~~~

IGF: Are you asking about somewhat the same questions to everyone?

~~~<*>~~~

Chapter 3

In which I describe my methodology, my reasons for making various methodological choices and acknowledge the research tools I employed to complete this study.

Qualitative Research

I chose to use qualitative research methods for this study since they encourage participants to introduce factors that they perceive to be important and relevant. In this way qualitative research methods allow new constructs to emerge in a way that is not constrained by predisposition of a researcher. As Knight, Nunkoosing, Vrij and Cherryman note: qualitative research methods encourage participants to think about, and verbalize their views with regards to what their attitudes and beliefs concerning animals (Knight et. al., 2003:309). I had an initial premise that humans do not often think about the types of relationships that they hold with animals. Hence, I thought it would be beneficial to allow people to vocalize for themselves the ways that they understood these relationships rather than me pre-defining the types of relationships they might have in a quantitative survey where a participant would simply check off answers set in a gradient by me.

Participants

Five women and ten women were interviewed in twelve interviews. Three interviews involved men and women who wanted to share their views jointly as a couple. They ranged in age from mid-thirties to mid-seventies. Occupations of the people interviewed included: fireman, landscape maintenance, retired former schoolteacher and principal, filmmaker, sound technician, cattle rancher, sheep rancher, truck driver, wildlife manager, farmer, biologist, wilderness advocate, homemaker and college instructor.

Ten were from Oregon and five were from Idaho. Four participants from Idaho were from towns with populations around 3100. One Idaho participant lived and grew up in an urban area of more than 30,000 people but worked in a small rural village with a population of around 1000. Two participants interviewed in Oregon lived in a small rural community with less than 1000 residents. Six participants interviewed lived in communities with populations greater than 10,000. One additional person was interviewed from an urban community with population of more than 500,000. One African-American, and two members of different tribes were interviewed. A table of the interview participants is found in the next chapter.

Questions

Prior to actually speaking to interview participants, I tested the questions with two sample interviews and collected preliminary data for a class in Qualitative Data Analysis. These interviews helped inform the questions used for the actual research interviews. Three primary questions were asked of the interview participants in order to draw correlations of what ways they might perceive wolves: what their memories were of being out in nature, what their definition of what an ecosystem was and if they had ever seen a wolf. From this I encouraged them to explore their definition of an ecosystem and how, through an examination of one animal - the wolf - how they perceived the roles that both they as humans and the animal played within the self-described ecosystem.

Some 56 different questions were asked over the course of the 12 interviews. Most of the earlier "opening" questions were asked of most of the interview participants such as "what is your first memory of being outside in nature?" and the direction of what questions were asked the interviews took from there depended on each participant's answers and things like their verbosity, speed and manner of speech; ideas discussed; threads pursued; and the philosophical level that people wished to explore and answer the questions asked. My question guide is attached as an appendix.

Interviews

Prior to conducting interviews I verbally reviewed with participants the purpose of the study, how their comments will be used, and what possible risk may be associated with the study and gave them a consent form to read that spelled things out in detail. All participants were given the option to request that their answers be kept confidential or semi-confidential. Semi-confidential participants allowed for the use of their initials whereas choice of confidential meant that the participant chose a pseudonym to use. Two participants chose confidential for their interviews. In order to maintain consistency in how participants were coded, I chose a single letter taken from one of the first couple characters of a person's name or their chosen pseudonym to distinguish each interview participant in the thesis. When I interviewed couples simultaneously (M) and (F) were used to differentiate between the male and female voices in the interview. All participants were verbally informed prior to the commencement of the interview that their answers were voluntary to each question. Participants were given the opportunity to review their comments as they will appear in written form and make changes or amendments prior to final publication.

In general the interviews began with open-ended questions to establish background information and have the participant describe their own "situatedness." As the interviews progressed, I narrowed the

focus and introduced the topic of interest. Progressively, I next focused on such topics as wolves, ecosystems and their beliefs regarding interrelationships between humans and wolves. Interviews generally lasted between 45 and 90 minutes depending on the speed of participants' speech patterns and lengthiness of an individual's chosen answers. One exceptional interview with a couple lasted a little more than 135 minutes.

Strategies to Gather Data

Given the small sample size and time availability of the researcher to travel to interview each participant, in order to maximize richness of the data, the interview participants were chosen purposively using a combination of maximum variation, snowball, intensity and opportunistic sampling strategies. In deciding whether a person might be appropriate as an interview participant, I considered such things as a person's background: where they live (urban/rural), occupation, gender, age, cultural ethnicity as well as possible stance they might hold with regards to wolves (pro/con). In addition, since interviews were one strategy for gathering data that I was employing, I had to consider the willingness of a person to being interviewed. Regardless of culture, all participants were asked to speak only for themselves and share views that they personally held rather than act as a representative voice for any larger "constituent" or cultural group.

Thick description, journaling, and a holistic perspective approach were also employed on my part to help with the data gathering and record observations. I traveled in the field to meet and interview participants in a setting of their preference and choosing. This was in part to establish trust and bring an initial comfort level via setting to each interview participant. It also gave me as the researcher an opportunity to experience some of the situatedness of the interview participant - in terms of the aspects of place that a participant may have situated themselves to live (location, vocation, community relations etc.).

In-depth interviews were chosen as the manner in which data were gathered since they allow for context-specific, culturally rich information to be shared and in hopes that this might illuminate how people's knowledge base might be influencing their perceptions of wolves. Although highly emotional topics like this sometimes benefit from study in a focus group setting, depth interviews were chosen as the manner to be used since they are "designed to generate narratives" (Crabtree & Miller, 1999:93). Although a question guide was developed, each in-depth interview followed a flexible format that allowed for the researcher to follow various threads as they arose and for the participant to expand upon ideas important to them.

A small battery-run micro-cassette recorder was used to record the interviews. When recording in the context of the Wolf Advisory Committee meetings, a "Soundgrabber" microphone proved quite valuable to facilitate audible recording of meetings under varying room sound conditions.

Strategies to Analyze Data

Interviews were transcribed verbatim, with double spacing and wide margins to allow space for notes during coding. A Panasonic microcassette transcriber helped transcribe a total nearing 500 pages of notes from the interview tapes. Each interview participant was given a letter-number code, and each line of the text was numbered to facilitate location. Interviews were coded for themes. Themes were clumped into categories and subcategories. Inductive reasoning was a method that I used in the analysis. Once themes were noticed, I returned to the literature to check these themes in the literature.

Strategies to Synthesize and Interpret Data

Being a nonlinear thinker, I used creative synthesis methods that were context-sensitive to map the dynamic systems I noticed emerging from the data. I attempted to pay close attention to voice

and narrative to help convey parts of the collective story that could be drawn from the data and help synthesize areas for further learning that might take place for future investigators.

Framing the Study

This study is interdisciplinary in nature. By studying perception the questions that I ask are partly psychological in nature. In considering the interactions that occur between wolves and humans, I am looking at things from an ecological perspective. In considering how people might be learning and teaching topics of nature I am approaching things from an educational standpoint. From an ethical standpoint good qualitative research acknowledges the framework from which a researcher approaches their study. Since this is an interdisciplinary study, I walked the lines between a few different paradigms: interpretive/naturalistic, critical ecological inquiry and cosmo-ecological inquiry.

Guba defines the idea of paradigm as a patterned set of assumptions concerning reality, knowledge of that reality and the particular ways of knowing about that reality (Crabtree & Miller, 1999:8). In asking what patterns exist in people's thinking in the ways they perceive wolves I chose to use an interpretive paradigm research objective. Paradigm terminology is subjective and depends upon the discipline in which it is used. In other disciplines this might be called "constructivist inquiry," or "naturalistic inquiry." Regardless of which term used, this type of study is often of knowledge that helps humans maintain cultural life, symbolic communication, and meaning (Crabtree & Miller, 1999:9-10). In this paradigm truth is acknowledged to be subjective and rooted in the context of each interview participant's own reality. This subjective truth still has relevance at a larger level when one considers that the work of an educator is to communicate with diverse individuals who all have their own subjective truths. In this way, a careful exploration of the subjective nature is helpful for an educator to understand better the assumptions, initial stance or

knowledge that a particular person might arrive with in a learning situation.

The fact that this study, to some extent also pushes the envelope and researches ways that the more-than-human world is included into our reality and perception, I believe this study also becomes a critical ecological inquiry. In that, it may be necessary for the researcher and readers of this thesis alike to travel in their mind's eye quite like wolves that have dispersed out of what was once their traditional and familiar home range: traveling to explore new territory not yet familiar. Some aspects may be unmapped yet, while other aspects may be well explored previously and therefore recognizable. Other aspects may be perhaps otherwise marked, but in another language different from the ones familiar to our senses initially.

A paradigm that might most closely fit with mine would be something like Thomas Berry's, where he carries these ecological ideas one step further, and places things in context at the meta-level. As he beautifully describes in his book The Great Work, humans have come to a place of great turning where now, more than ever before in history, our actions have incredible abilities to shape life as it exists on this planet. For Berry, this knowledge is not without regard to a greater meaning that the universe itself might hold in store for us. He believes as we move into a new millennium, our work is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period where humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner (Berry, 1999:3). To Berry, one of the most essential roles of the ecologist then is to create the language in which a true sense of reality, of value, and of progress can be communicated to our society (p. 63). He proposes a paradigm which includes cosmo-ecological inquiry that not only takes into account the "other-than-human" world but also allows for other structural frameworks like livelihood in the form of corporations and the university, economic markets, religious traditions and government nested and operating within it (p.73).

Paradigms bound the researcher in neat boxes in terms of what an initial mindset will be. However at the same time, despite all the

theory we propose in our minds, all around us, people move forward in life within their own constructs, whether they are aware of them or not. As I have acknowledged my own here, I hope to remain open to others' in theirs. For this and because of this, I engaged with the data and interview participants using personal experience (mine and theirs), and empathetic mindfulness along with using grounded theory as suggested by Strauss and Corbin (1998).

THE JOURNEY: CROSSING THE TERRAINAUTOETHNOGRAPHIC PROCESS OF RESEARCHER II

I3J: Well then, the rest of the story is that in the uh, summertime, like now, the range down there got too dry. And, impossible to keep your sheep down there so we always took them into the mountains. And in those days, we used to trail them up. And we trailed them acrost Echo, up the Umatilla River, up Cabbage Hill, which is just Immigrant Hill. Across the sheep - they usually had a sheep trail that went across Blues, down into the Grande Rhonde Valley, all the way through it, and back up in near the Mynam River (I3J, 11:12)

Chapter 4

In which the terrain traveled in this study is discussed in order to place readers in the context of the land and the journey.

Setting Out, November 20, 2003

The journey for my thesis began not with the interviews themselves but earlier, with my travels to listen to the meetings of the Wolf Advisory Committee as they set to creating a management plan for the wolf in Oregon. The first meeting of the fourteen member group took place on the November 19-20, 2003. On the evening of the 19th it rained and in the mountains there was snow. Traveling from Portland I set out with two friends to Silver Falls State Park. As we left the interstate, and curved around on the smaller highway we saw fields of the Willamette Valley looking sleepy and dull brown as if they were preparing themselves for the winter. Closer to the park, the land changed again into the dripping temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest. Snow had fallen the night before but in the late morning, it was in the process of a cold wet dripping melt.

My adrenalin ran high for this first meeting. When I approached the room where the meeting was taking place and already in progress,

I had no idea what I would find inside. Two men were standing outside chatting quietly to each other in a conspiratorial way as if the information they were exchanging was important and not for all ears to hear. Entering the room, I had no choice but to make an entrance completely obvious and noted by all. This would not be the last time. The meeting was held in a log cabin with a large room but with fourteen to eighteen participant men and women seated around tables set up in a "circular"-square fashion there was only barely room for observers of the meeting to squeeze themselves into chairs set up along the walls, seated knee to knee. All of us were close to each other, and I think, none were comfortable. It was a case where perhaps people had to sit too close for comfort.

On another level it felt like a womb, dark and as if suddenly in entering the room, you entered into a consciousness of others around you and a knowing that these individual were not of you. Their views and values potentially could be very different from yours. It was an interesting place to welcome in the beginning of a long, arduous ten month "birthing process" for this heady document, history in the making. I was thankful for the rich green smell of the dark wet forest outside and when, on the break, large snowflakes lightly began to fall. They fell like light accents that touched the rich beauty of the moment.

Traversing The State: Attending Wolf Advisory Committee Meetings

WAC Meetings Attended in 2004

January 9 ODFW Commission Mtg

Salem

January 13 WAC Mtg Island City, near LaGrande

2nd day only

February 18-19 WAC Mtg SalemMarch 18-19 WAC Mtg Bend

April 14-15 WAC Mtg SalemJune 30-July 1 WAC Mtg PendletonAugust 19-20 WAC Mtg SalemSeptember 9 ODFW

Commission Mtg

Salem

Subsequent meetings of the WAC unfolded in quick trips made on a monthly basis in the midst of my teaching and classes. Attending meetings involved hugely stretching and pushing aside all other responsibilities. I got up at long odd early hours to drive across the state and arrive in strange towns often stressed slightly as I tried to navigate my way to find the locations of where the meetings were being held. Once I found the sites and arrived, these meetings required adjusting to the spatial layout of a new space, and settling in to listen with a quiet focus for hours at a time. Outside of the meetings, much of the time was spent finding simple things: a place to eat, a relaxing place to walk with my oftentimes traveling companion Harvey-ther-dog, and when I could afford the time for a two day journey, a place to spend the night. Negotiating these things as stranger to these towns I now visited, reminded me on a visceral level of: a) the needs that might occupy a wolf when he/she enters a new area, and b) how so much of our human society has been structured so as to facilitate this finding process, and make recognizable certain landmark or "community nodes" - in short order - to facilitate a new person's "situatedness" when they arrive at new locale and answer their basic needs of survival relatively quickly.

Leaving Portland, involved packing my little 1991 cream-colored Chevy S10 truck. Into the back I put: sleeping bag, set of clothes and toiletries, any relevant books I was bringing with me, and Harvey-ther-dog. In the front cab, I put the bare necessities: a bottle of water, snacks, directions for the meeting and a map of the state. After stopping to make sure that I had a full tank of gas to start the trip, I

would get on the interstate to make a fast exit out of town. Usually heading east, I would pass the familiar suburbs-that-used-to-be-their-own-small-cities of Gresham and Troutdale. I passed the Sandy River which nestled into the hills and carried fast flowing clear cold water from out of the Salmon Huckleberry Wilderness down past thick lush old growth forest and spilled itself out into the 600 acre Forest Service -owned "Sandy River Delta." This delta held special significance for me as a "wilding place" since there I have planted many a native cottonwood and ash and seen the floodwaters rise thick and deep in the springtime. The Sandy River always reminds me of the many more such large tributary rivers that feed the Columbia River on its journey to the Pacific Ocean.

The four-lane interstate leading away from Portland would settle into a two or three lanes and the Columbia River Gorge yawned before me with high cliff sides extending high above my head over my right shoulder. Over my left shoulder the wide Columbia River, fourth longest river in the United States flowed toward the ocean behind me. Gradually most of the traffic that buzzed busily through the Gorge's corridor would settle down to be primarily made up of what I called the "long-haul drivers" - the large semi-trucks that constantly traverse our country reallocating food and supplies around the nation. On my way out of town I was consciously headed toward eastern Oregon but subconsciously I stepped along the same path to backtrack from the directions that Lewis and Clark's party had taken toward the ocean in their journey of discovery westward. For me, my purpose was to rediscover the connection points that lay in lands to the east.

Though only forty-five minutes and approximately the same number of miles away, I always felt like the city of Hood River marked the first shifting of the land away from the steep cliffs of the gorge and the lush temperate rainforest mountains of the Western Cascades. Here I felt as if the land moved into the beginnings of the high Columbia Plateau region made up of large stretched out rolling hills holding golden waving grasses, ample farmland, and a hot beating sun that created what seemed to me to be a much more xeric landscape

where most of the water was held below ground. Now it seemed similar to parts south of Portland in the Willamette Valley that the land again yielded abundant farmland. And so my journeys began and I moved into the land of the unknown.

The Land of the Unknown

In the beginning of this study there were things unknown and many questions to be answered. In exploring and wishing to learn more about the "lay of the land" I wished to do this not only in a mental construct but also a literal sort of way. So initially I reasoned the good it would do to travel closer to the interview participants' own home origination points. My travels led me to experience not only the searing hot summer air of Pendleton on a warm June day. Through learning the collective histories as where shared by my interview participants, I also came to imagine better and further understand the land that also might be the point of entry for wolves when they set their feet in the direction of Oregon. Interestingly, most of my interviews took place with participants that were from and lived in two of the easternmost eco-regions of Oregon that also overlapped with Idaho: the Blue Mountains; and the region of the Columbia Plateau. One interview took place with a couple of participants living in the Idaho Batholith ecoregion and one interview took place with a participant living in the Willamette Valley.

The arid lands of the Columbia Plateau are underlain by lava rock up to two miles thick in some places. Grasses and sagebrush predominate in places. Other areas have been extensively cultivated into fields of wheat particularly the eastern portions of the region where precipitation amounts are greater (Native Seed Network, 2004). As a traveler heads further east the Blue Mountains rise up before them.

I think of these lands now, as I strive to help you imagine them as if you were the one to visit these places, and it becomes difficult for me to adequately describe without weaving in the stories that were shared with me in the process of my journey. For it was in this way, listening to all these different stories told that I first sharpened my own eyes to my surroundings. Only later, when I returned to the literature I found the places where individual participants' knowledge supported

and wove a personal touch to the historical facts found in government reports, and other documents.

Imagine yourself as a child to be growing up, like interview participant I2K, a member of the Cayuse tribe. Your father tells you stories of how it was when he had grown up on a wheat ranch in the reservation.

It used to be one of the largest Indian ranches back in the turn of the century and he was one of the last Indian farmers on the reservation back in the late 60s early 70s. There's a few around now but…

The life was good on the ranch. They could live almost totally self sufficient. such that they would not even want to leave to go to town.

In fact, him and a cousin of his always used to joke around about this - They always would get whippins for not leavin! For not going to town. When before you would get whippins FOR going to town. But they'd never want to leave. Cause, we had the wheat ranch and we had a summer ranch, up in the mountains where they kept the horses, cut the firewood, and raised hay... They had automobiles but they used horses all the time. And then a lot of them up in the mountains [for] hunting, on horseback. (I2K, 5:7)

His mother before that had been raised in a log cabin on the grasslands. In those days there were lots of artesian wells. She remembered having to go out barefoot to get the jars of milk (I2K, 18:14) from the spring they used as a refrigerator. Your father tells you how in those days

During the summer, it was just like a park he said…you didn't even have to shoe your horses. Because it was just, lush meadows all the way through... (I2K, 12:6).

In those days the water moved freely. When Union Pacific built the railroads through the meadows back then, they set them up on

hundreds of trestles to allow for the cricks that curved along across the land and underneath the tracks. That was before the war.

But after World War II,…they civilized the tank… and… developed bulldozers…then Union Pacific..brought in all theirs and just, moonscaped, pushed the river over to one side and then just moonscaped the river bottom (I2K, 12:19).

Growing up playing often by yourself, fed on these stories, living on the edge of the forest, your father gave you boundaries that you could not go past until you were old enough.

…past the wheat field, the edge of the wheat field, and then pretty soon I couldn't go past the breaks of the river, then it was, you know, I couldn't go beyond the river. It kept going. As I got older though, I'd be able to go further. But he would always tell me about these places. And that's always where I'd go - when I was able to go further.

You gained a feeling for the land. You grew to know the land so well that you knew what to do to survive in a blizzard. You could find your way home in the mountains when a fog descended so thick you could not see your feet. Your feeling for the country around you became intricately linked to memories your father shared with you. They became your memories too.

Imagine now you were that child but somewhere else on the Columbia Plateau before World War II. Imagine instead that you were a child from a big family on a ranch like I3J. Growing up, your family's ranch had sheep and a few cattle and a few horses, no wheat at that time (I3J 1:26). In your early years, you spent a lot of time out tending to the sheep. You saw many animals that gave you great delight to see them:

…we had little burrowing owls in the badger holes and uh, we had jackrabbits, we had uh, squirrels, we had birds… (I3J, 8:14).

You would take your sheep with your father and perhaps another herder to help keep track of the bands of fifteen hundred head or so.

You would graze them out for several miles in the open grasslands and bring them in again at night either to a corral at the home ranch or a corral someplace else on the land you owned. At the time coyotes were pretty much the only natural enemy down there (I3J, 10:8).

You know you do see quite a few animals. We, we did have coyotes. Co-yo-tees if you want to call them. Which I think is a type of small wolf, really a prairie wolf, at least related. And we'd hear them out there at night, uh, howling. And you'd see them occasionally. But we kept a pretty good track of our sheep. and, unless there was a stray, you know, left out overnight. Or, a little lamb that got too far away, they weren't a big factor (I3J, 9:8).

In the summertime the range got too dry and it would become impossible to the keep the sheep there so you would trail them up into the mountains.

…we used to trail them up. And we trailed them acrost Echo, up the Umatilla River, up Cabbage Hill, which is just Immigrant Hill. Across the sheep - they usually had a sheep trail that went across Blues, down into the Grande Rhonde Valley, all the way through it, and back up in near the Mynam River (I3J, 11:12)

Traveling on sheep trails in those days took three weeks to get up the mountains.

Each morning you'd throw the pancakes on the little portable stove. And each evening you open the beans and, you know. You don't have a chef's fare there but (I3J, 12: 30)

…we had saddle horses but most of our time was spent leading 'em. Because, when you are trailing sheep you don't just get up there like a cowboy and herd them around. You, you're probably- probably going to be on foot most of the time (I3J 12:5).

…you can have a horse in case you get tired but sometimes it is a situation where you have to be down there with the dogs. Rooting them out. Getting them started again. Sometimes it gets too warm and the sheep don't like to travel when it's too warm. Sometimes you want them to go and they don't want to go (I3J 12:13).

After spending the summer in the mountains looking after the sheep, the time comes to make another three week journey across the mountains home. This homeward journey, might lead you right past the cattle ranch of I4S. Viewing the world as if from her eyes you might look out over the Grande Rhonde Valley, carved once long ago by the movement of a glacier and home now to your family for four generations. In fact the livingroom of the house you live in now is the was once the bedroom where your mother was born. Living in this valley, you come to know the nearby mountains well for it is these hills into which you take the cattle to graze.

The visual swath of the valley floor stretches long and is hugged by the Blue Mountains to the west and the Wallowas to the east. Elk and mule deer populations here are among the largest in the state. These mountains are home to Ponderosa Pine, Pinus ponderosa, woodlands as a climax plant species at the mid level elevations. Mixed conifers dominate at higher elevations (State of the Oregon Environment Report, 2000:195). It is into these mountains that each spring you bring the cattle as the grass comes up. Beginning in the foothills in the spring the calves start on those lower benches and the next month they move back into the mid-country…that is owned and leased land (I4S, 8:13).

It was into these mountains and grasslands that I traveled on my journey to gain an understanding of how people perceive wolves. In between some of the first initial interviews, I camped for a night up in the mountains above La Grande by a rushing river. Waking in the morning I headed down into the Grande Rhonde Valley for a few more interviews and then headed towards the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area and into Idaho. At first Hells Canyon appeared to be

following the form of grasslands similar to the Columbia Basin. Gravel roads led deeper into the hills. Hills rose and gathered at the feet of impressive mountains thrusting steeply upward towards the sky near Joseph, Oregon. I stopped for a night to camp at the top of a hill. The deep purple of the sky and stars curved like a blanket above me. In the morning I awoke to the snorts of three passing deer who when they saw me sitting up under the tree began to pronk into long bounds with all four feet simultaneously hitting the ground at once.

Interview Journey

*W= Has seen a wolf/wolves in the wild*w= Has seen a wolf/wolves in captivity *I = Has seen wolf/wolves by image (TV, journal, magazine, film etc.) K = Has an in-depth knowledge of wolvesk = Has a somewhat knowledge of wolves-N/A- = Question not asked in the course of the interview.

Date Interview Location Vocation State # & Ecoregion Cultural Backgrnd

June 28 I1F

*Wk

Urban >100,000Willamette Valley

FiremanMaleBorn in Connecticut military family moved around Lived in Germany, California, Arizona, Colorado and Oregon

OR

June 30 I2K

*WK

Medium >10,000Columbia Plateau

Landscape MaintenanceMaleBorn in OregonLived in Oregon whole lifeGrew up listening to father's story of how he had grown up self sufficient on a wheat ranch on the Umatilla reservation. Father conveyed a love for the land and an interest to go into the mountains.

OR

June 30 I3J

*ik

Medium >10,000Columbia Plateau

Retired Teacher, PrincipalMaleBorn and raised in Eastern Oregon. Lived there whole life. Family had sheep growing up. Worked on various farms. Went to school and then taught in various towns before settling in an area on Columbia Plateau bordering the Blue Mountains.

OR

July 2 I4S

*wK

Rural <1,000Middle Rockies - Blue Mountains

Cattle RancherFemaleBorn and raised in Eastern Oregon. Lived there whole life in the same house that was born in, same house mother was born in. Son is a farmer nearby. Takes cattle up into the hills nearby as the grass grows longer in the spring. Likes seeing wildlife on their land.

OR

July 2 I5M

-N/A-K

Medium >10,000Middle Rockies - Blue Mountains

ODFW State Wolf CoordinatorGrew up in Willamette Valley, Lived in Oregon entire life

OR

Regional Biologist 20 years with ODFW

July 2 I6Y

*wK

Medium >10,000Middle Rockies - Blue Mountains

Wildlife AdministratorGrew up in Pendleton, Lived in Oregon whole life Wildlife Management 32 yearsInvolved in training a young filly horse.

OR

July 26 I7DFI7DM

*Ww*WwK

Rural ~3,000Middle Rockies - Blue Mountains

FilmmakerMaleGrew up in Florida. Worked later as a wrangler in Wyoming. Starting underwater taking pictures and creating films. Moved toward wildlife films later.

Sound RecorderFemaleBorn in Washington D.C. grew up in Maryland. Interest in wildlife led her towards recording animal sounds for film in order to bring other people closer to having an appreciation for wildlife.

IDID

July 25 I8C

*WK

Medium >30,000 hRural ~1,000 wMiddle Rockies - Blue Mountains

Wildlife BiologistFemaleBorn and raised in a small urban city off of the Nez Perce reservation. Never really got interested in being out in nature until got a job doing summer stream surveys in college. Went to school in Oregon and Idaho. Was a wildlife biologist active with the wolf program in Idaho for five years. Works on other species now.

ID

July 25 I9RMI9GF

*W

Rural ~3,000Columbia Plateau

Farmer MaleBorn and raised in NW Idaho. School in Montana, Washington. Taught for 7 years before buying a ranch to farm in 1966. Been there ever since.

Wife, Mother, Ranch Hand Truck Driver FemaleBorn and raised in city in Washington state. School in Washington. Got married, moved to Idaho to live on farm,

IDID

raise family and drive a truck (on the ranch).

July 27 I10NMI10GF

*ik

Rural <1,000Middle Rockies - Blue Mountains

Sheep RancherMaleGrew up on a desert farm in California near the Mexico border. Went to school in Washington, got married, moved to rural town in Eastern Oregon and been a sheep rancher and general handyman ever since.

Homemaker, Gardener, Active Community MemberFemaleGrew up in Seattle, WashingtonSchool in Washington. Got married and moved to rural Eastern Oregon. Lived there ever since.

OROR

Sep 30 I11R

*wK

Medium >10,000Middle Rockies - Blue Mountains

Wildlands AdvocateMaleGrew up in the suburbs outside of Detroit, Michigan. School in Ohio. Moved to Montana and worked with Wildlife Federation. Moved to Alaska and worked in salmon hatchery doing restoration work. Went to law school, graduated and moved to Eastern Oregon.

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Oct 18 I12I-N/A-K

Medium >10,000 College InstructorMaleBorn in rural northern California. Became a hunter because of grandfather. Pursued career in wildlife management until discovered he really enjoyed teaching.

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IDEAS OF ECOSYSTEMS AND ECOLOGY

Chapter 5

In which themes that emerged from the interviews regarding ecosystems are discussed.

If you recall, I asked three primary questions in my interviews. What were people's memories of being in nature? Could the participant tell me their definition of an ecosystem? Had they ever seen a wolf? In listening to the participants in the interviews, they chose to answer these questions in very different ways. Additionally through the course of the interview there were other instances that people elaborated upon their views to these questions so that the answers as they are presented below are sometimes an amalgamation of their comments.

Definition of an Ecosystem

In asking this question, for myself, I wondered about the boundaries with which people would choose to define an ecosystem. Initially, I expected that people might answer by listing various aspects (soil, water, plants, living, non-living, nutrient cycles, system processes etc.) that they might include in their version of an ecosystem. Additionally, since I was entering the study with an idea that ecology was the study of interrelationships, I expected that an ecosystem would be the place where those interrelationships manifested and therefore could be discussed. Thereby, after gaining a better understanding of what people bounded inside of an ecosystem, I hoped to gain a better understanding of the roles wherein wolves and humans might be placed. People chose to answer this question in very different ways. In listening to the wide variety of ways that interview participants engaged in trying to explain their definition, I started to realize that a) the definition of the word ecosystem is not universally

defined; b) when trying to define the word, people entered into a mental process of asking a series of questions to determine what it is; and c) that the differing answers to this question were intricately linked to their views, values, and ways that people chose to interact with the nature around them. From their answers then, I was able to create an ecosystem decision tree.

Boundaries * varying size implies they are flexible, but located spatially.* are dependent on whether an ecosystem is centered around a single organism's needs or centered around multiple organisms living together.

Some people chose to consider an ecosystem as centering around the needs that an organism might have in order to live and included such things as food, habitat, shelter, etc. Within this definition the size of an ecosystem was described as having the ability to vary from being very small as something for the bacteria in a cow's gut, to quite as large as the earth or even the universe.

I4S: Ecosystems can be anything and there are ecosystems everywhere. From like, we like to say from the gut of a cow to the whole universe. So an ecosystem can be tiny or it can be huge.

For I3J, he defined the term ecosystem simply as our surroundings.

I3J: The Ecosystem?- Well, I think it means, um, our surroundings with all of the things: the animals, the birds, you know birds are animals, but all the plants, the climate, and the everything is part of our ecosystem, including our natural resources. The air above us, and all of it.

I8C, while initially surprised at the question, bounded the idea of an ecosystem by giving the example of a wetland, taking into account the interrelationships between plants and animals.

I8C: Okay, when I think of ecosystem. I think of like, um, like a wetland. That's it's own little ecosystem. And, you

know, there's certain plants and you know there's certain critters in there...

Of the interview participants, there were actually three people trained in wildlife management, one who had worked as a fisheries technician and a fifth who was in the process of a getting a masters degree in Wildlife Resources in Idaho. Even of these four individuals the definition varied from being one that an ecosystem included the habitat needs (food, shelter, water, etc.) for an individual organism (I5M, I6Y) to something describe as the interaction between animals and plants (I8C) to the complex interactions between biotic and abiotic factors (I12I, I2K). Although these individuals were not the only people to describe ecosystems in these different ways, it was interesting to note that these individuals whose education might have included the greatest similarity in terms of biological learning actually had very different ways that they formulated their thoughts regarding ecology.

Humans: * Included or not?* Take precedence or on equal footing?

For other individuals, although perhaps they brought up biotic and abiotic factors or how plants and animals related, often times one of the next questions that helped them define an ecosystem was whether humans were included within or outside of them. This came out in numerous ways and seemed to be an important factor in terms of how they then would relate to other animals. Several people spoke to the defining ways that they saw that humans played a role in or in acting on an ecosystem.

I6Y: There is no ecosystem that is untouched by humans. Humans try to manage those systems compatible with human expectations of the land. Humans have the intelligence capability to manage the outcomes.

I10VF: [Humans] have an internal guidance [from which we] do selfish things or make judgements.

I10NM and I10VF were actually a very interesting couple to interview since they actually had a section from a book prepared to read to me that they felt explained to me not only their thinking on nature and ecosystems but seemed to be a complete incapsulation of their own life philosophy. The quote was The Dream of the Marsh Wren by author Patty Ann Rogers. The main gist of their thinking seemed to be that Nature is everything that is, has been and what is possible including human actions, inventions, creations, and imagination. Patty Ann Rogers and I10NM and I10VF believed that nature includes everything from the good, the bad, the violent, the beautiful, life and death, and even in their eyes, Divinity. Since Divinity is of the universe, it is therefore of nature. From there they reasoned that peoples actions and choices are never for or against nature but rather always a part of the great milieu and have effects that a person may not always recognize. Nature in their eyes encompasses all contradictions.

TraitsWhile some chose to focus on and describe the

things/objects/organisms that were included in an ecosystem, other participants chose to describe an ecosystem more with an eye to certain traits that they might exhibit or as a process that occurs. Ecosystems were defined by whether they were exhibiting characteristics as being healthy/unhealthy, balanced or unbalanced, productive or unproductive, functioning or not. Oftentimes, when people described an ecosystem in terms of balance or imbalance they talked about humans's role/ability to affect the balance as playing an important factor positively or negatively in terms of the health of that ecosystem. When participants used the term balance this also seemed to create a dichotomy between humans and the rest of the natural world, as if we were somehow separate or removed from it.

I1F:…it’s a balance between the land, earth, water, all the natural resources, uh, and man sort of balancing out that

with replenishing and restoring and taking care of what's here..

I9RM: It's a balance between man and nature.

I12I: Ecosystems produce soil, habitat, wildlife, water.

This belief of separation between man and nature was most pronounced in I3J, I8C both of whom specifically admitted that they believed that humans were separate and not a part of ecosystems but rather acted only as factors that influenced the health of ecosystems. I11B was interesting in that he spoke about things not only in terms of health but also levels of wildness. He believed that it was possible to find wild places in the midst of a city but that these places were still quite different than Alaska where he felt animal populations of bear and salmon were more likely to be allowed to live as they otherwise did without human help. He also acknowledged that the term itself was a human defined and created term but that one that called people to think of non-human endeavors, processes, structures within a system. For I2K, ecosystems were defined in terms of whether they were natural functioning or not. For him, a healthy ecosystem consisted of one where there was a full flood plain on the valley floor that allowed the rivers to run free and curving - rather than the straight lines into which humans had pushed them to conform.

I don't believe in the term ecosystem.One participant, I9GF, did not believe in the idea of an

ecosystem. She believed the term had been defined to be something where animals and humans and everything had its perfect place, all with an equal share that all worked together. She held the view that humans took precedence over other beings. For her she also recognized that humans had the potential to hold very different perspectives entirely. What one perceives as a weed, the other doesn't perceive as a weed. Having this discrepancy in views therefore created imbalance in her eyes and led her to conclude that

life is imbalanced. She also felt that humans were designating the idea of an equal share for the rest of nature. Not only did she believe it was unlikely, She also did not believe that this was something that humans could ordain.

Processes, Cycles, Change FactorsMany of the interview participants, even those not quite so well

versed in biology linked the idea of an ecosystem to that of processes, cycles and nutrient flows. For example, I1F brought up ideas of two nutrient cycles: one of photosynthesis and one of how when animals die their nutrients then cycle back into the environment to nourish plants. I7DF brought up the idea of a predator and prey interaction where everything goes around in a circle. I6Y whom earlier I mentioned as being one of the people who concentrated on looking at an ecosystem from the perspective of a single organism's needs still acknowledged that animals consume food, crap it out and recycle the energy to feed back to the trees. As a wildlife manager, his main perspective was that humans have a choice and an ability to manage systems to make them healthier.

Processes were also discussed in terms of ecosystems abilities to change and for change to be affected upon them. Change factors such as fire, pollution, human encroachment on habitat through development, building of dams, railroads and roads into the forrest were all listed as things that had significantly changed the ecosystem.

Ecology in the Literature

Biology as a discipline stemmed initially as a way to describe characteristics of life. What is it? How do we determine and describe when something is alive? It is the job of biologists to solve puzzles… to identify and try to understand those things which influence life (Raven and Johnson, 1989:6). In that, therefore, scientists would concentrate their studies on species that are alive and their subsequent characteristics that defined them as a species: behavioral, physical,

genetic, biochemical. Additionally, biology has concerned itself with phylogenic interests - how to differentiate, name and categorize species as they were defined and redefined over time. Each study added another piece to the growing body of factual knowledge that we as a society could know about wolves from rational experimental data gathered and summarized in books, magazines and scientific journals available to the public to read. Other forms of knowledge also proliferated and perpetuated themselves in our society in the form of cultural myths, visual images, metaphorical language references, some first-hand experience, other stories, and the combinations thereof as might be found in the often exaggerated and sensationalized media. Returning to the biological studies expanding our scientific knowledge, let us remember, these were and have been primarily studies focused on many of the biological aspects of wolves. To better understand where biology leaves off and ecology begins, we must look more closely at the word ecology.

Let us begin at the root, of a word this time, so that we can trace the strands from which these ideas are woven. Ecology, as many texts remind us, is the study of home. "Eco" is derived from the Greek word oikos interpreted into our English language to mean home (Begon et. al., 1986:x), house (Ricklefs, 1993:1) or household (Odum, 1993:23). "Logy" implies: the study of. When you think of your home, and if you were to study it, in your mind's eye, where would be the boundaries you drew to define your own home? Do you define your home as the shelter structure of wooden, stone or metal beams and walls that create an enclosed air space around you as the boundaries of your house or does your home also include your yard, nearby surroundings, neighbors, the town or community in which you live, or more simply and focusing closer in, perhaps just your body? When a college student says "I am going home for the weekend" where do they go and how do they know that they have arrived? In addition to these structural/boundary questions, what inputs into and/or out of this space should be included? Would you include furniture that enables a person to sit in certain locations or perform certain functions as part of

your home? Would you include the kitchen stove as part of your home? How about the often-metaphorical-now-literal kitchen sink? Would you include the food that enters your "home" as well? In many cultures food is an integral part of that which reminds us of home… If we include food, must we then include the water that we must drink daily and is necessary for our survival? Or, what about the unseen elements - the air we breathe, the pipes that carry the water, air ducts, electrical wires and other heat/energy transference mechanisms, the more that may exist beyond our general vision? For each person that you ask how they define their home, you may well come to find that the answer depends on the individual and the context in which a person is asked for the way in which they respond to the question. Some things perhaps are easily and directly associated with the word -say perhaps as we think of the four square walls and pointy roof as we are taught to "draw a house" in school from an early age. Other connected concepts we might only think of if given some time for thought. Perhaps then again we might answer "Why yes! definitely!" to these as well, even though we might not have initially thought of them. The word home is just that: a familiar, well-used term that carries individualized and personal meaning for each of us. It is a term that addresses us in society but reverberates within each of us differently. How then could one endeavor to study it?!

Ecology is the study of home. It is derived from an old Greek word. But here already even with its first use in English, the definition within the scientific community became one at once familiar but nuanced depending on the context. Ecology took on new meaning first when German zoologist Ernst Haeckel gave a broader meaning in 1870 with his scientific biological definition of ecology to be the

…total relations of the animal both to its organic and to its inorganic environment; including above all, its friendly and inimical relation with animals and plants with which it comes directly and indirectly into contact - in a word- ecology is the study of all the complex interrelationships referred to by Darwin as the conditions of the

struggle for existence. (Haeckel in Ricklefs, 1993:1, underline mine)

Subsequent scientists generally agree that the discipline of ecology studies the interactions or relationships between the living and the nonliving components found in the world. Depending on the questions being answered by the research and the focus interest of the researcher, the living aspects could be defined as those comprised by the five kingdoms of Animalia (animals), Plantae (Plants), Protista (single-celled bacteria with nuclei), Monera (single-celled bacteria with no distinct nucleus or other internal parts enclosed by membrane), and Fungi (sometimes recognizable by their reproductive fruiting bodies such as mushrooms). The non-living aspects include such inputs as solar energy, water, air, and the mineral nutrients that are transferred from soil and rocks. So far this seems relatively straightforward.

However, consider now, the possibilities, complexities and debates that can arise if one scientist were to approach an ecological study focusing solely on animals and how they relate to their environment where another's starting point might be tracing the nutrient energy flow of water or even another might view things in terms of the stationary populations of plants in an area. While each of these studies may have points where they overlap, their views, perspectives and subsequent conclusions will draw from their observations made at that level and may be at odds with others if the underlying assumptions differ. These discrepancies carry forward into the way ecological ideas are discussed, taught and defined at a theoretical level as well. In recent years, Gurevitch, Scheiner and Fox speak to the fact that

…ecology is the study of relationships between living organisms and their environments, the interactions of organisms with one another and the patterns and causes of abundance and distribution of organisms in nature. (Gurevitch et.al., 2002:1, underline mine)

Contrast this with how Charles Krebs portrayed ecology simplistically as "the science that deals with the interactions of animals and plants in

natural systems" (Krebs, 1988:1, underline mine). In this definition, the fungi, and bacteria are left out, and the abiotic factors, the student must assume are enveloped within Kreb's term "natural systems."

Eugene Odum also used the term natural systems, but he contrasted these with both domesticated and fabricated systems created by humans. He takes the broader view that oikos as meaning household reflects the ways that plants, animals, microbes and humans live together as interdependent beings here on earth (Odum, 1993:23). Underlying Odum's perspective of this household is the belief that these things make up the life-support system of the planet. He mentions ecosystems in light of their ability to transport and transform energy and also with regards to nutrient flows and gives them their place in an ecological hierarchy as being the next step "up" following population after organism as the underlying defining unit (Odum, 1993:26). The term ecosystem was actually devised by Sir Arthur Tansley in 1935 to include the entire system of living organisms in the context of the physical factors on which they depend and with which they are interconnected (Gurevitch et. al. 2002:295).

The debate now arises. Arguing from a different perspective than Odum, Begon, Harper and Townsend hardly mention the term ecosystem and prefer to think of ecological systems as things that can fluctuate and therefore are present on all levels depending on the researcher's focus between organism, population, and at the community level.

Traditionally, another category of ecological study has been set apart: the ecosystem. This comprises the biological community together with its physical environment. However, while the distinction between community and ecosystem may be helpful in some ways, the implication that communities and ecosystems can be studied as separate entities is wrong. No ecological system, whether individual, population or community, can be studied in isolation from the environment in which it exists. (Begon et.al, 1986:591)

Following a similar line of thought other biological-ecologists agree to the hierarchy with organism as the defining unit from which the life of a being differentiates itself from the environment (Ricklefs, 1993:3, Gurevitch et.al. 2002:1). For Ricklefs, however, this hierarchy does not negate the aspect of an ecosystem.

Every organism is bounded by a membrane or other covering across which it exchanges energy and materials with its surroundings. Its success as an ecological entity depends on its having a positive balance of energy and materials to support its maintenance, growth, and reproduction…Organisms and their physical and chemical environments together make up an ecosystem. (Riklefs, 1993:3)

Fritjof Capra takes the idea of a physical boundary that is separated by a membrane and through which energy and materials transfer across and interprets this at a deeper level. When he attempts to describe the nature of life and living systems, he brings the differentiating unit down to an individual cell. For Capra, it is at this minute level where a membrane has first developed to create a barrier through which materials flow in from the outside environment, that the power to regulate, sustain life and also self-generate first originates. He speaks of autopoesis as a concept developed by biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela that

…combines the two defining characteristics of cellular life,..the physical boundary and the metabolic network. Unlike the surfaces of crystals or large molecules, the boundary of an antipoetic system is chemically distinct from the rest of the system, and it participates in metabolic processes by assembling itself and by selectively filtering incoming and outgoing molecules. (Capra, 2002:10)

Capra goes on to assert that the relationship between internal and ecological simplicity is still poorly understood, partly because most biologists are not used to the ecological perspective. He quotes Harold Morowitz when he explains

Sustained life is a property of an ecological system rather than a single organism or species. Traditional biology has tended to concentrate attention on individual organisms rather than on the biological continuum. The origin of life is thus looked for as a unique

event in which an organism arises from the surrounding milieu. A more ecologically balanced point of view would examine the proto-ecological cycles and subsequent chemical systems that must have developed and flourished while objects resembling organisms appeared. (Capra, 2002:5)

Capra raises a point here now that relates back to the origins of ecology as a term coined by a zoologist (a biologist that concentrates their study on animals). From the time when Haeckel coined the term in the 1800s, the approach that ecologists took to examine ecological concepts remained fairly close to the biological sciences for the next 100 years. Even as recent as 2002, Gurevitch, Scheiner and Fox immediately claim ecology as a subset of biology when they introduce the discipline as the "biological science of ecology," in the opening paragraph of their text The Ecology of Plants. When Begon, Harper and Townsend acknowledge the complexities of this science - for its ability to overlap and with other disciplines - they note that whatever progress is made, ecology will remain a meeting-ground for the naturalist, the experimentalist, the field biologist and the mathematical modeler (Begon et. al., 1986:viii). Although they do mention mathematics, the rest of the vocations listed are still biological in their focus, only differing in approach.

In today's world, information accessibility now allows for greater assimiliation and cross-fertilization between disciplines. As the magnitude of humans' ability to impact and change both the living and nonliving aspects of landscapes takes on global proportions, ecology emerges as a discipline that practically begs a versatility of its researchers and teachers to speak across disciplines and acknowledge connections therein regardless of a researcher's initial focus. How much stronger would a restoration project undertaken be that not only took into account the plant populations indigenous to an area but also was able to look more closely at the hydrology (study of water) as it relates to the underlying geology (study of the mineral earth structure) as well since is it not true that these things necessarily determine and influence each other?

Not only is it relevant to be able to speak the language of a biologist but it is equally important to understand other disciplines - the chemistry and physics that comprise the abiotic aspects of study - by example. Prominent biologist Edward O. Wilson goes so far as to propose in his book Consilience, that the four domains of environmental policy, ethics, social science and biology are so connected as that inquiry in one informs reasoning in the other three (Wilson, 1998:9). People involved in any way with the management aspects of our landscape recognize the growing trend towards increasing social and political involvement in the decision-making process. Cortner and Moote note how obvious a choice and necessary component it is to take into account the knowledge base from other disciplines.

Yet, just as the biophysical world is the basic component of natural resources, politics is the "stuff" of people interacting with each other, their environment, and governmental institutions, all of which affect nature greatly. Resource management is, at heart, a very political process. (Cortner & Moote, 1999:1)

Gurevitch, Scheiner and Fox caution against confusing ecology with such things as environmental or political action. They remind us that ecology is a quest for knowledge and therefore gains its credence from being a science (Gurevitch et.al. 2002:1). The knowledge then, as it is gained, has application across disciplines through action and often it is found that terms from one discipline may be found in another. It is the language we choose to use to better communicate and describe meaning as we have found it. I would agree with both Wilson, Cortner and Moote, yet propose that ecological connections reach deeper into other aspects of our society and are linked to such things as our economic structure, and our philosophical approach to nature. This thinking follows on the heels of such writers as Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder, Theodore Roszak and Naess, who suggest that there are social and economic reasons for the ecological crisis, but at the root, it is not so much a crisis of the environment as it is a crisis of character and culture (Devall, 1988:2). Speaking more to whom should be involved

in the dialogue about ecology, Gary Paul Nabhan lobbies hard for others' involvement:

We must begin to explore metaphors and images that appeal to basket weavers, butterfly farmers, fishermen, and furniture makers in ways that terms like ecosystem services, germ-plasm resources, nontimber forest products, and even biodiversity cannot. Unless we can engage people from all walks of life in the celebration and stewardship of all kinds of life-forms, our epitaph may well read: "They died of a peculiar strain of reductionism, complicated by a sudden attack of elitism, even though there were ready natural cures close at hand." (Nabhan, 1997:28)

Let us pause for a moment before any further discussions of the term ecology, what it might be and how far it stretches into other aspects of society. At this point, the reader can well see that ecology is a decidedly complicated area of study. Given the nearness and similarities of certain components found in both biological and ecological studies, these disciplines are proximal and hence, I believe, often confused with each other. Regardless of what the most basic unit of ecology is - cell or organism - there are many things to learn from the interactions that occur between the living world and the nonliving world. If one recognizes in ecology the ability to connect studies with other disciplines that study various aspects of these things as well, it can begin to be seen how ecology is more concerned with interactions - both intra-species and inter-species - as well as patterns of and influences upon energy flows at they might be occurring entering and leaving a particular area as might be defined by an ecosystem.

WOLVES. HUMANS.

WOLVES PERCEIVE. HUMANS PERCEIVE.

SEEING WOLVES: PERCEPTIONS

Chapter 6

In which themes that emerged from the interviews regarding wolves are discussed.

Now we get to the meat of this study. As such it has definitely been substantial amount for me to gnaw on as I mulled over wolves and what it means to perceive. It was interesting to ask people about their perceptions of wolves since this, like the paradox of the word "nature" in the title of this paper, was also a paradox. I was asking how people perceive an animal that actually was not present at the time of the interviews. So in a sense, it was a hypothetical perception. At the same time, by not having a wolf exactly present at the time (which would have occupied the interview participant's attention in another direction while I was trying to engage them in conversation) it allowed for people to share more of their mental associations that the idea, the mental image of a wolf or wolves brought up for them. However, one of the questions pertaining to wolves was if they had ever seen a wolf at all. So in that regard, when an interview participant shared with me their experiences there, they were in effect sharing their actual (not hypothetical) perceptions as they had been incorporated into their memory.

I chose to use the word perception initially understanding that the act to perceive equated to what I meant when I said "I see" in the metaphorical sense as if I meant to imply "I understand." As I delved deeper into the meaning of the word, the choice of using it brought with it new insights. As the study progressed, more and more this word appeared as one most appropriate to use. The ambiguity that comes with perception mirrors in a certain way the way we "see" wolves. As humans' perceptions of wolves have seemingly diversified, similarly the definition of perception has undergone its own development from being solely a topic of philosophical study to one examined within the

realm of psychology and our every day reality. The complexity of how perception is defined has evolved similarly as we shall later see with the idea of an ecosystem as new scientists added their contributions to ideas regarding the inner workings of the psychological mind.

After I had finished conducting the interviews and in the middle of the transcription process, I researched more deeply into the ways that perception has been used by society. Perceptions of wolves by humans stretch beyond our biological knowledge and our own personal experience of them in the landscape. Perhaps our perceptions precede these instances. Similarly, many of our perceptions may have originated there. What do I mean by this and how could this be? Wolves have long remained a complex subject in our ideology that spurs discussions, political processes, heated debate, story gatherings, and dialogue amongst people. As much so, they also spurred a tremendous eradication effort in the late 1800s, early 1900s. The topic of wolves seems to have only grown more complicated as our collective awareness of the value of the environment around us has grown, and culturally as well, our lives have grown more nuanced and diversified.

The Basics: What People Knew

Interview participants all had something to share with me with regards to their knowledge and way that they perceived wolves. Even those who had never seen a wolf in real life still had insight to share about the mental models they carried from having seen images of them. Of the fourteen interview, six participants described instances where they believed that they had seen a wolf in the wild. Seven participants described situations where they had seen a wolf in captivity. Three shared their insight from having seen images (calendar, painting, film) alone and two were not asked the question during the course of the interview.

I1F *Wk

I2K *WKI3J *ikI4S *wKI5M -N/A-KI6Y *wKI7DF *WwKI7DM *WwKI8C *WKI9RM *wkI9GF *WwkI10NM *ikI10VF ikI11R *wKI12I -N/A-K

*W= Has seen a wolf/wolves in the wild*w= Has seen a wolf/wolves in captivity *I = Has seen wolf/wolves by image (TV, journal, magazine, film etc.) K = Has an in-depth knowledge of wolvesk = Has a somewhat knowledge of wolves-N/A- = Question not asked in the course of the interview.

Most people seemed to know these basics about wolves: a) these animals are a type of canine; b) they hunt for food; c) they are larger than a coyote; and when asked, they could d) generally describe a pointy eared, four-legged animal with tail, head, and shaggy fur.

Ambiguities and Discrepancies

Beyond people's general knowledge however, it soon became apparent that gaps existed and that large areas of ambiguity or discrepancy continued to create gaps in knowledge about these animals. Questions came up repeatedly with regards to a)

identification, b) interpreting behavior, and c) current government status.

Identification

Questions of identification came up in several instances as an important area to consider with regards to wolves. I often queried a participant more closely about how they were able to tell what they had seen was a wolf and not a coyote or hybrid between a dog and a wolf. A common reply that I heard was as I1F said: In my head I know what they look like. I4S was even more specific in describing the ambiguity as she noted for the captive wolves that she had seen at a wildlife refuge:

I'd definitely be looking for more difference than I was, than I saw in those, between a, say a cross-breed malamute and a german shepherd. It could have been any - as far as I am concerned, it could have been any kind of a mix at all. I wouldn't have staked my reputation that that's what a wolf in the wild looks like.

I2K was the only participant who, when he saw a wolf in the wild, actually made an effort to back up his observations by measuring the size of the tracks left behind by the animals against the paw print of his own 120 pound german shepherd. He also noted the ways that the three animals he saw moved (easily) through deep snow in the midst of a blizzard and how his own large german shepherd with him at the time behaved when he saw the animals moving on the trail in front of them:

And he would just - he stopped. He wouldn't go and then I'd go on ahead and he would stay behind me.

But even he, in another sighting when he saw an animal running on the skyline, was careful to recognize that hybrids can resemble wolves very closely:

- it was a big dog. It was a big body. Whether it was a hybrid or a wolf I am uncomfortable to say cuz it moved

across a lot of country real fast.I3J mentioned how he had some familiarity with "brush

wolves" as they had been called where he lived. Brush wolves might be a common term for what are known elsewhere as coyotes. A confusion between coyotes and wolves is also a likely source of ambiguity. I1F, as an urban dweller mentioned how he had seen wolves several times over the years - a few times in New Mexico and once in Canada. While the animals he described sounded similar, most of his sightings were of solitary animals which could either be an example of a dispersing young adult wolf or a coyote as I believe these animals tend to be more solitary in nature (although they too have been known to aggregate in large packs in certain instances). The very fact that some of the sightings took place in New Mexico (a state that wolves were also eradicated) lends more credence to the possibility that these sightings were of coyotes. I1F would have had to have VERY good fortune to get a glimpse of the an exceedingly rare Mexican Wolf in the wild (the last seven known wild individuals were captured to create a breeding program of them.

Other areas of ambiguity included what the wolves might be doing in terms of behavior witnessed, family structure (if they run in packs or not, what is a pack?), and how controlled killing as a management option might affect both relations on a human level (easing the minds of ranchers) vs taking into account relations on a wolf level (disrupting social bonds and pack's structure).

Finally a few last areas of ambiguity were that of "What do they want?" and distinguishing between wolves ability and potential to do harm and their actual desire to do harm (either to cattle or to humans). Several stories were told where the question "What do they want?" arose immediately as one of the first responses to sightings of the wolves. This response is part of what led me to draw the relationship between perception,

interpretation and assessment, the encounter and subsequent action as seen in the perception diagrams. I8C told an amazing story of her first encounter with wolves that really illustrated many of the perceptions that might go through a person's mind when they encounter a wolf in the wild. Her stories served to show how after she had significant experience with encountering them in the wild she moved from a place of fear into an excitement/adrenaline rush whenever she saw them.

I8C: …yeah, there were two sets of - a set of eyes, green eyes looking at us. And then another set. Of course I was like - "hey! hey!" And they both turned and looked and I - I think what I said was - "What do they want?" (laughs) …But it was um, it was sub-adults. Like last year's puppies. And I think there was probably three of them. And they just came to check us out… we just kind of watched them and they eventually just kind of left. Went out - off into the darkness. So then I was freaked. Because its dark. We don't know where our packs are. Its, you know, 11 or 12 at night.

Wolves in the wild were noted to elicit a different response from people perceiving them than wolves in captivity. When participants described their perceptions of the captive wolves they had seen it was often with little or no fear. For the people who described seeing a wolf in the wild the feelings described ran the gamut from a curiosity to observe the wolf as long as the wolf could not see the observer (I6Y) to a startle reaction and fear as when two wolves came up behind I8C and her research partners in the dark when they had gotten lost while they were walking back to their backpacks to set up camp.

After listening to the interviews during transcription, I reconsidered what exactly was meant by perception. After much research, and in analyzing how the interview participants used such things as their own logic (knowledge base), life philosophy/spirituality (beliefs), and cultural background in the form of community relations and livelihood (situatedness), to inform and help them interpret their

experiences, I realized that the the idea of perception needed a deeper introspection.

As the story is often retold in the literature, the wolf appears from the dark forest to embody cunning evil and powerful cowardice (Brick & Cawley, 1996:1). Other documented negative words that people have used to allude to and describe wolves include rapacious (Arnold, 1996:18), Devil in disguise (Lopez, 1978:140), intrinsically evil, destroyers (Kellert, 1996:104), devouring, monstrous (Weide & Tucker; Strauss, 1993:29), and thieves (Klein, 2002:90), to name a few. Other terms easily follow as one allows the mind to wander in that direction: fierce, ferocious, utterly expendable. These were some of the terms used by immigrants from Western European countries as they arrived to find the wolf abundant in North America. These age-old views not only were held in the minds of men but they often spurred hatred - an emotion which incited actions and a specific cruel treatment of wolves. Barry Lopez documented this through his investigations of the literature, tracing historical perceptions, and analyzing personal interviews with people in his compilation book Of Wolves and Men published in 1978. Ian McTaggart Cowan attributes the origins of these negative attitudes to a view that wolves were in competition with humans for food with hunters and by raiding of humans' flocks and herds (Mech, 1970:xiii). But others trace the hatred back to the Dark Ages of Europe when the Catholic Church associated wolves with heretics and subsequently found it easy to associate them as the devil (Strauss, 1996:61; Williams, 1996). Regardless, by 1970 the wolf was extirpated from most of southern Canada and Mexico and from the coterminous 48 US states, except for northern Minnesota (Pacuet, 2004: http://www.wolfology.com)

But running in parallel with this hatred since the 1930s the general perception of these animals began to shift and be redefined beyond these original negative stereotypes by the now settled Western European immigrants and their descendants.

Scientists' attitudes toward wolves began to change in the 1920s and 1930s with improved understanding of the role of predators in

ecosystems...[Public] attitude toward wildlife was continuing to evolve as well, due in part to the near extinction of such species as the whooping crane and the trumpeter swan. As a result of new scientific understanding and public sentiment, an organized constituency arose to demand an end to the government's predator control program. (Klein, 2002:92)

Appreciation and positive sentiments towards wolves and other wildlife continued to increase with the emergence of popular naturalist writing like that of Aldo Leopold in his Sand County Almanac published in 1949; the birth of new wildlife advocacy organizations like Defenders of Wildlife in 1947; the listing of the wolf as an endangered species in 1973.

An additional factor that may have contributed to the increasing diversity of voices heard in how the public perceived wolves may have also come from a greater awareness other cultures and their stories. In a similar time-frame to our growth in awareness of ecology, multicultural education gained momentum as a practice that spun off the American civil rights movement of the 1960s (Gorski, 1999, 2003). This new multi-cultural awareness revolutionized the way that American society was recognizing and acknowledging the contributions made by people of different cultures.

Definitions in the Literature…

As another important word in the title, the word perception required careful exploration and thought so that I could know most importantly what it was that I was looking for in the data and what I would therefore claim as the perceptions of my interview participants from the ideas they share with me. What did I mean when I used the word "perception?" As I searched to find a "true" definition of the word perception, it seemed more to depend upon from which discipline I chose to define it. The Oxford Companion To The Mind, a book full of psychological references, defined this word as intimately tied to our senses and also a mental process differentiated from conception.

Why is perception somehow separate, and in several ways different from our conceptual understanding? Very likely, it is because perception, in order to be useful, must work very quickly, whereas we may take years forming concepts, since knowledge and ideas are in a sense timeless. It would probably be impossible for perception to draw upon all of our knowledge, as it has to work so fast. Rather, it employs a rapid but not deep intelligence with a small knowledge base. (Gregory, 1987:599, underline mine)

David Abram also saw that perception happened simultaneously stemming from sensory input. But as he elaborated in his book, The Spell of the Sensuous, perception involved more than just sight and must necessitate the use of the whole host of our senses - sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. As David Abram pointed out, perception is a synaesthetic process - a blending and overlapping of the senses as what is experienced occurs simultaneously and is recognized by all of our senses in those moments.

By the term "perception" we mean the concerted activity of all the body's senses as they function and flourish together. Indeed, if I attend closely to my nonverbal experience of the landscape that surrounds me, I must acknowledge that the so-called separate senses are thoroughly blended with one another, and it only after the fact that I am able to step back and isolate the specific contributions of my eyes, my ears, and my skin. (Abram, 1996:59-60,underline mine)

Abram takes a very active, sensory, participatory view of what is meant by perception. We will return later to his views as he also reflected upon the ways that story, language and the written word might also factor in as ways we humans are capable of perceiving. For him though, as was also described in the Oxford Companion to The Mind, perception occurs almost immediately through the simultaneous moment of an experienced sensory moment.

In approaching this from another angle, however, it began to seem as if either perception might have multiple definitions, or, that a person's perception might in actuality draw upon other internal resources besides our sensory input. In the study of "Human Culture

and Wildlife Conservation in North America" Kellert, Black, Rush, and Bath found that people's basic values towards animals and nature inevitably affect their perceptions of an individual species. Additionally, they saw that perception are affected by past and present interactions with a particular species. We will return to the relevancy of this in chapter six. This same study however, muddied what they actually meant by perception as they seemed to use the word interchangeably to mean "attitude."

Consider the following two sentences found within the same paragraph:

"We also examined attitudes toward bears.""Today, perceptions of bears range from positive to negative."

(Kellert et.al., 1996:977)

If perception is really more something determined as in an attitude, and not merely having to do with an occurrence of understanding simultaneous from sensory input, this opens up new avenues for us to consider how perception is derived. Following this thread, Kellert et. al. similarly propose that wildlife attitudes (therefore perception) "are significantly influenced by…cultural and historical associations... knowledge and understanding including factual, conceptual, and conservation awareness." (Kellert et. al., 1996:978)

Drawing closer specifically to an examination of wolves, an essay posted on the Wild Sentry website "How Dangerous Are Wolves?" posits that "perception of wolves as rapacious villains or a golden race reveals more about the beholder than it does about the creature of flesh and blood" and later calls these derivatives of our human phantasmagoric whirling imagination (www.wildsentry.org, underline mine).

In a recap now, I see perception has been loaded from all sides: imagination, knowledge and understanding, cultural and historical

attitudes and associations, sensory input, values, past and present interaction. Is there anything that could have been left out?

In reading the famed ecologist Aldo Leopold, in his Sand County Almanac, and Sketches From Here and There, he offers further insight.

We come now to another component: the perception of the natural processes by which the land and the living things upon it have achieved their characteristic forms (evolution) and by which they maintain their existence (ecology). That thing called 'nature study, ' … constitutes the first embryonic groping of the mass-mind toward perception…The swoop of a hawk, for example is perceived by one as the drama of evolution, to another it is only a threat to the full frying-pan [when it steals a pigeon you would have shot for your dinner]. (Leopold, 1989:173)

In this instance, Leopold uses the term more to mean to mean the way an action - in this case, the swoop by a hawk - is interpreted. Linda Hogan uses the term in a similar manner when she speaks of how townspeople, uncertain of what biologists studying wolves are up to, complain that they are trying to deify the wolf. With this, the townspeople are described as having a perception of the way an action (the study) is interpreted (deification of the wolf). In her eyes she calls this perception both extreme and irrational (Hogan, 1995:66). It is good to note that Aldo Leopold also uses the term perception to describe the way that natural processes maintain their existence as well. In this sense, perception occurs in humans when we focus our attention not only regarding a living being (hawk or person) but also towards processes and how they might be functioning. If we followed this thought further it could lead us back towards our previous exploration of the meaning of the word ecology.

Instead however, let us now proceed to explore perception and ecology from a human psychological perspective. Drawing on theories of James Gibson and William James, Harry Heft relates how humans perceive situations of significance, plan and execute purposes activated in the environment. From this, Heft defines ecological psychology as the study of information transactions between humans

and their environments. To James Gibson, perceptual learning denotes a type of change in the relationship between the perceiver and its environment and not merely a change in the perceiver.

The perceiver(animal) and the environment exist as a reciprocity. The animal is described as an integration of capacities and ways of life actualized within an environment. The animal perceives, but perception is ecological, for example, humans walk, but walking occurs within an environment. Perception is animal awareness of the environment. (Lombardo, 1987:330)

Abram attributes this interpretation of our environment as one of being in relation to Merleau-Ponty and explains it thus.

Where does perception originate? I cannot say truthfully that my perception of a particular wildflower, with its color and its fragrance, is determined or "caused" entirely by the flower-since other persons may experience a somewhat different fragrance, as even I, in a different moment or mood, may see the color differently, and indeed…any bumblebee that alights on that blossom will surely have a very different perception of it than I do. But neither can I say truthfully that my perception is "caused" solely by myself-by my physiological or neural organization -or that it exists entirely "in my head." For without the actual existence of this other entity, of this flower rooted not in my brain but in the soil of the earth, there would be no fragrant and colorful perception at all, neither for myself nor for any others, whether human or insect. Neither the perceiver nor the perceived, then, is wholly passive in the event of perception... (Abram, 1996:53)

What Abram speaks of then is a reciprocity where not only is he perceiving the flower but the flower also is in the act of being perceived. This he describes as an ongoing interchange happening between his body and the entities that surround it - a "sort of silent conversation" or "continuous dialogue that unfolds far below…verbal awareness" (Abram, 1996:51).Abram carries this idea of ecological relation further psychologists previously. When Roger Barker and James Gibson assumed that natural processes are structured in nested levels of organization (Lombardo,

1987:237), Bronfenbrenner picked up on the idea and theorized how people perceive their world at nested levels of concentric circles. At the center of Bronfenbrenner's ecological self stands the individual. Rippling outward from there in concentric circles, the individual relates on levels of: micro (family), meso (neighborhood, church, or school), exo (town), and macro (societal structure like government or economy) to their surroundings.

I was first exposed to Bronfenbrenner's idea of the ecological self in a class on Family Studies at Portland State University. I was quite excited - to see the idea of thinking ecologically had gained currency and was deemed relevant not only by biologists now but was also being taught in the social sciences. But however my intrigue, when I reflected critically on Bronfenbrenner's ecological self, I could see that he while he had adopted the idea of nesting the self within society "ecologically", what he deemed ecological also subtly shifted the focus away from the original biological definition. Bronfenbrenner's psychological use reinterpreted what students might think of as "the environment" and that which is "ecological" to pertain only to that which is in our human-cultural world.

Conversely in another class on the Ecological Cultural Foundations of Learning, I had just finished reading Fritjof Capra's book The Hidden Connections and learned through that how other cognitive scientists were now grounding our own human ability to reason not solely from our brains' abilities as they were provided to us at birth from our genetic makeup. Rather instead, reason, they concluded, is shaped crucially by our physical nature and our bodily experience. Capra quotes two leading cognitive linguists Mark Johnson and George Lakoff:

The evidence is based, first of all, on the discovery that most of our thought is unconscious, operating at a level that is inaccessible to ordinary conscious awareness. This "cognitive unconscious" includes not only all our automatic cognitive operations, but also our tacit knowledge and beliefs. Without our awareness, the cognitive unconscious shapes and structures all conscious thought.

This has become a major field of study in cognitive science, which has resulted in radically new view of how concepts and thought processes are formed…The same neural and cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and move around also create our conceptual structures and modes of reason. (Capra, 2002:61, underline mine)

Spinning our lens now to take a wider focus on these revelations found in Capra, we can infer that not only is the "environment" in which a person lives and grow up integral to the makeup of their logic, but through Capra, we can scientifically link together our perception and reasoning both integrally and literally.

As I continued in experience of the Family Studies class but also drawing upon classes I had taken earlier on Conflict Management and with regards to Qualitative Research and Analysis, my thesis thoughts began to revolve around the process of critical thinking and logic patterns as humans employ them as they experience the world. Critical thinking has long been held high as an important practice in our ability to reason intelligently. Often times this is one of the most highly esteemed skills that colleges and universities can impart to their students.

Vincent Ruggiero in his book Beyond Feelings: A Guide to Critical Thinking infers that critical thinking skills help us in our ability to solve problems and make decisions. He makes the case that our individuality as we actually realize it is made up our likes/dislikes, values, attitudes, beliefs. In the same way, details of the family a person grew up in also can influence a person's identity: race, religion, national origin, political affiliation, economic level and attitudes toward one another (Ruggiero, 2004:5). But Ruggiero makes the case that these things influence our thinking as it comes in the form of reasoning - as the active form of thinking - and that perception works more upon our intuition.

Ruggiero notes that intuition is commonly defined as the sensing or understanding of something without the use of reasoning. However, he also acknowledges that some breakthrough ideas are things that have occurred with people utilizing what might appear to be intuition.

A often noted example of a person using intuition to solve a problem is that of the German chemist Kekule who found the solution for the structure of the benzene molecule when the image of a snake swallowing its tail came to him in a daydream. But Ruggiero posits that breakthrough ideas like this favor trained, active minds whose unconscious, once absorbed into the problem may then continue working on the problem long after a person has turned their conscious attention elsewhere (Ruggiero, 2004:20-21).

Diane Halpern in her book Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking also uses the example of Kekule but instead of attributing his breakthrough idea to intuition, she highlights the use of imagery of how he envisioned the snake seizing its own tail as a method Kekule's mind was using to "work at" the problem (Halpern, 1984:9). Both Halpern and Ruggiero caution that spontaneous and intuitive thinking is frequently wrong and therefore not reliable as method to accurately discern reality. To offer a contrasting argument, I could argue that even the most rationally explained arguments also have the potential to turn out wrong - say, for instance, when a longstanding theory (the world is flat) is disproven years later by someone who takes a different approach to perceiving and experiencing, therefore proving the world. To both methods of thinking, I would argue that for the conscious processes of our awakened mind and the meditative intuitive type of thinking in our subconconscious - in both instances, the mind is working. The conclusions that our mind may draw are merely and most importantly, based on the prior assumptions that are believed to be true. Active, conscious mental critical thinking is a practice that purposefully employs investigation, interpretation and judgement. Intuitive thinking may employ a more metaphorical imagery approach toward how we shape and understand our experiences in "reality" but at times, this too can be crucial to our understanding and making sense of the world around us. Capra even reminds us that the metaphors we use relate back to an actual original spatial experience.

For example, when we distinguish between "inside" and "outside," we tend to visualize this spatial relationship in terms of a container with an inside, a boundary, and an outside. This mental image, which is grounded in the experience of our body as a container, becomes the basis of certain forms of reasoning. (Capra, 2002:63)

In thinking about how perception works, I came to realize, as I drew upon the way it was used by the interview participants, that both wolves and humans perceive. This act of perception requires a quick mental assessment of the situation from which both humans and wolves have the power to act in either of two ways - either instinctually or by a specifically chosen action. These processes for both humans and wolves are outlined in my perceptions figure drawings.

PERCEPTIONS SKETCHED FOR PARTICIPANTSI1F: not afraid (based on experience. assumes that this is what would probably happen … unless he had something the wolf wanted like food)influenced by situatedness (in Canada, in a car) If closer to home would be more worried. wolf appeared would mean they are desperate. (territoriesI2K: survival, gift, they never leftI3J: spooky picture. not really a problem tempest in a teapot. if problem, control them. I4S: angry if near, curious if elsewhere, rude animals, just like dogs, no mystique. we are doing fine without them. just creates conflict around management of wild lands. effect of efforts to interfere with our lives. I6Y: submissive/dominance saw heightened interaction in captive wolves (he also wanted to be in role of a dominant person for training of his filly) thinks numbers of cattle killed by wolves will be low. I7DF & DM these are highly intelligent social compassionate animals (from experience) nice to see animals in wild acting similar to their captive ones. I8C first fear, subsequent adrenaline/excitement

I9RM: scared if outside encounter with them (belief they eat humans)I9GF: depends on situation (not scared when was in house, would be scared if out side)I10NM: Scarey when you hear them howl, doggin you. Acknowledged difference between archetype mental perception and what might actually happen in real life.I10VF: scared if I saw them. knees might be like jelly. Especially afraid for daughter who would walk to bus stop every day. WHAT IF…?!I11B: excitement awe humility uh, respect and feeling of alive for encounters

with wild animals. Captive wolves different feeling.

HUMAN PERCEPTION

WOLF PERCEPTION

BEYOND PERCEPTION = APPLICATIONS

XIV. Ch. 7 Beyond Perception = Applications ………………..1A. Additional Connections

1. Livelihood2. Transportation3. Mentoring4. Stories, Trust & Sources

B. Surprises: Dynamic RelationshipsC. Potential Aspects for Ecological Educators

1. Anywhere 2. In Oregon

Additional Connections

Livelihood

As I traveled to new locations, I ruminated over questions in my mind on what people decided to do for a living and how much that depended on the area in which they lived. As interview participant I3J replied when asked why he spent so much time out-of-doors in his youth growing up:

…why was I outside? That's what Ione guys do! Down there in the summertime. There are no jobs inside!...it was a natural thing to do. (I3J, p.4:26)

For other participants when asked why they did what they did for a living, the ranchers' and farmer's answers alluded to their situatedness in terms of the fact that they had a deep love of the outdoors and therefore had made purposeful choices in livelihood so that they could live where they did and work that into their lives. For example, the two ranchers (one cattle, one sheep), the farmer (who also ranched cattle some) and two of their spouses that I spoke to all expressed a deep love of being outside and "seeing things grow."

It's a lot of work but when you love what you are doing you know. There just can't be any better life than that. To be what you love to do. And uh, we love to see things grow, we love to create new things. (I4S, p.7:25)

But the answers to why a person might choose a particular line of work are complex. And to pin it all down to the fact that farmers and ranchers like to watch things grow leaves out many other aspects of why they choose such a vocation. I4S astutely noted that for ranchers

I think you probably get as many different answers for as many different people that you ask that question to. (I4S, p.7:11)

I4S noted that part of why she did ranching as a livelihood is because she also had a mate that loved ranching. That they chose cattle ranching instead of farming because they would "rather ride a horse than a tractor" suggests a personal preference also toward working with live animals rather than spending a lot of time with machinery. This was a personal preference on their part. Their son, it turns out had chosen to be a farmer.

The farmer and his wife to whom I interviewed spoke in similar terms of loving to watch things grow but for him, learning about new mechanization added to the challenge of the work.

Cuz it’s a beautiful way of life. It's interesting, it's outdoors, it's challenging, I love to see things grow. Uh, keeping up on the modern technology whether it be in agronomy or in mechanization is, very interesting. (I9RM p.6:12)

Maintaining the Lifestyle

It was interesting to note upon meeting the farmer and his wife that they had had a number of kids, none of whom had made the choice to return to help with the farming except for the youngest daughter who was living in the home at the time. In speaking casually with her outside of the interview, it was obvious that she loved the way of life it represented but for her to continue on with it depended on her being able to find a husband who shared a similar love since the task of being able to work such a large farm using the heavy machinery required too much for a single person to handle all the aspects on their own. The farmer's wife I9GF alluded to this need to help with the farming also when she mentioned that her work was a mixture of part homemaker raising a family and part being a harvest truck driver.

I9GF and her husband I9RM, spoke further about it being a way of life. They had met in college and gotten married and then moved back to the area where IGRM had grown up to live in northern Idaho. I9RM described an opposite pattern from that of interview participant I3J, when he described of sheep ranching at an early age and making the choice to become a teacher as a later vocation. I9RM had similarly grown up farming and ranching and later became a teacher for seven years after college also. But when he saw his chance to become a farmer he took it and had been a farmer ever since. For him, he believed that farming was a true way of life:

It's like a logger. Once you get the sawdust in your blood, you can't get it out! Once you get farming dust in your blood, it just becomes a part of you. It's a part of our nature. (I9RM p.6:20)

But as much as farming was a way of life, his wife I9GF noted that this had the effect of becoming a double-edged sword.

It's a two-edge sword because it's a way of life and that's one of the reasons you do it but also, um, it's a business. And so, you are - but you are so tied to it - because it's a way of life- that it's even hard to make business decisions sometimes because you - if it was just a business, you might close it up. But you won't because you love it, because it's your way of life. And so the two are- welded there. (I9GF p.6:25)

The sheep rancher I10NM and his wife I10VF also mentioned similar choices that they had made in becoming situated as they had with their vocation and location. They had gotten married pretty much straight out of college and purposefully moved out to eastern Oregon with high ideals of getting "back to the land" and creating a self-sufficient style of livelihood.

Well,…our views. Since we've become agricultural people. And we came into this situation as hippies. Back in the old days, when he wanted to have a yurt. And um, you know, it was like, "Back To The Land" and we were going to do everything ourselves and we were going to grow our own food - all our own food and, we're gonna make everything ourselves and - all that stuff. And so, we came, and we came from an academic situation. Intellectual. You know, bla-di-blah all talking about all this stuff. About how everybody is trying to mess up the world, and, um, we were going to do our part to make it better. (I10VF p.12:5)

What they found when they settled was that to do that involved a tremendous amount of hard work, having the creativity to solve numerous problems on your own, and the flexibility to find multiple ways of getting an income.

So we moved down here and we know absolutely nothing about anything…Thank goodness he's really good at doing things. I mean, he's really smart about manipulating the environment..thank god for that, cuz if he hadn't been good at that we woulda just- I mean, we woulda left…Cuz it was too hard…like…you have to drill your own well, you have to put your own electricity in, you have to put our your own sewer system in, you have to do everything yourself. Nobody is gonna do it for ya. (I10VF p.12:18)

As they engaged in the process, they found that their original views and values changed over time.

While sheep ranching may have been the primary way that he spent his time, it was not, as he acknowledged, their only source of income.

It's a two-edge sword because it's a way of life and that's one of the reasons you do it but also, um, it's a business. And so, you are - but you are so tied to it - because it's a way of life- that it's even hard to make business decisions sometimes because you - if it was just a business, you might close it up. But you won't because you love it, because it's your way of life. And so the two are- welded there. (I9GF p.6:25)

While the cattle rancher and farmer mentioned previously had both been born and grown up in the area where they lived, the sheep rancher and his wife shared with me their story of graduating college, getting married and specifically choosing to move into the very rural location where they lived so that they could go "back to the land."

Surprises

DYNAMIC RELATIONSHIPS PERCEPTION DEPENDS ON how many there are (I3J, I6Y, I9RM, I9GF, I10NM, I10VF, what the situation is that they are returning to (I7DF, I7DM, can the ecosystem support them (I4S) or are they going to be desperate (I1F)where observer is: in their territory, in car, near far, at home, Alaska, interpretation of observer (out of place, in their place, life philosophies ie. who has right., in wilderness, iin Alaska) how much money has been spentif system is in balance or not

I10VF: I don't care because I don’t' think it is out of balance) it's sort of a spiritual thing, too - it's like - that ecosystems find their balance because things want to be alivenature of the animal:

I10NM: the violence potential is there. and in us too.keep from becoming a menace (I3J

how portrayed by educatorsnot cute and fluffy (I9GF, I10VF)

realisticallycredibility of speaker

Potential Aspects For Ecological Educators

Anywhere+Teaching Awareness & Observation Skills+Teaching Critical Thinking

In Oregon I2K: the education part is more important than we first realized or I first realized. getting that word to these smaller communities. And we have the eyes and ears out there. And I think a bigger percentage than we realized are willing to do that. Its just - cuz they're the minority - they are the ones that don't have livestock but they're the ones out there on the land.

AXIAL RELATIONSHIP

BUTTERFLY SEEN/UNSEEN

THIS IS THE WHY

SYNTHESIS - WHAT WOLVES TEACH US

XV. Ch. 8 Synthesis - What Wolves Teach UsA. Considering Creative Ecological Change In the SystemB. Economics, Policy & Adaptive ManagementC. Streams of ThoughtD. Future Questions

Finally, in my concluding thoughts I wrap it up. In this, I outline some future directions that the knowledge presented here may inform endeavors and directions not only of educators, but also policy makers, biologists and hopefully others with whom wolves have interconnections within their daily lives.

Well, at this point you have read my thesis so far. As you can see there are parts that still need to be developed. And I need to trace better my thought process that brought me too the conclusions that I did. What are my conclusions? At this point they are this:

Crossing Borders

Wolves are an animal that crosses borders. They are intrinsically "generalists" that can adapt to living in many different habitat environment. They are predators. And, they are mobile. Their abilities to cross large distances at a time plus their high intelligence make them an animal that is not easy to "control" with the same methods that are employed to control. In terms of education with regards to what ways educators might prepare people to see wolves in the landscape I have three recommendations:1) teach students to think critically so that when they perceive a wolf in their midst their first step is to carefully assess the situation rather than immediately put a hand on the trigger. Perhaps like in the instance of I8C the wolves are sub-adults and merely curious. To understnd that wolves have their own perceptions that are supported by wolves' knowledge base, beliefs and situatedness may perhaps be some of the first steps towards creating tolerance. 2) Fostering a better awareness of the wolves in our midst. When wolves return to Oregon it seemed that most challenging thing that interview participants encountered when considering wolves was a fear of the unknown and not knowing what the wolves might do. If more hands-on knowledge of wolves could actually be promoted so that the wolves then become individuals rather than mythologized into our old fairy tales of the "Big Bad Wolf."

Appendix A DEFINITION OF TERMS

Air jkljlk

Allopoetic jkljlk

Autopoetic jkljlk

Belief Interpreted using the second definition found in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language as what is "the mental acceptance of and conviction in truth, actuality or validity of something."

Belief - of Mind Intelligence In creating a category for this type of belief I presumed mind intelligence was possible in two ways: first for humans perceptions of each other's relative intelligence (common sense, smart, stupid, etc.) and secondly with regards to when individuals were heard to describe animals as thinking/feeling compassionate beings of their own accord. While in a purely biological study this might be construed and degraded as "anthopomorphism" (humans attributing human like qualities to animals), it might alternatively be argued that humans making judgements of anthropomorphism have their own human-centric bias that rules out intelligence abilities in other species rather than actually acknowledging behaviors that might demonstrate innovative thought or compassion. In some studies, animal intelligence might be found to appear as the term "Belief in Animal Mind" whereas in perhaps more anthropological-cultural studies animal intelligence may be described in terms of animism. Animism, it is to be noted actually denot to found to have an impact on how an animal was perceived and also determine the tenor of various inter-species relationships."Belief in animal mind" (BAM) is one term used in an attitudinal study that explores people's attitudes concerning animals. This term describes people's belief in the mental abilities of animals. Do we believe that animals are self-aware, capable of solving problems, or experiencing emotions such as fear or sadness? (Knight, Nunkoosing, Vrij, and Cherryman, 2003) Although not explored to a great degree within the scope of this study, "animism" as a concept might be argued to carry the degree intelligence through one step further through conferring on natural, non-human phenomena (abiotic and biotic) the attribution of life/spirit or divinity. Since this seemed more to be a belief that conferred a "spirit" onto something I classified what others may call animistic as either a type of spiritual belief or something that stems more from an individual's relationship to nature.

Belief - Life Philosophy This term was used to code for moments when an sentiment expressed was deemed to refer back primarily to an individual's philosophy about the way the world and therefore "Life"

works. It may or may not pertain to knowledge held that supports this belief and can be linked to whether a person perceives life as functioning in a static/fixed or linear pattern, with regards to inputs-outputs, or as something more dynamic, in-process, cyclical, or as preliminary data suggested, as part of a "dance."

Belief - Relationship To Nature These beliefs have been perceived as the various ways that different people relate to nature. While some typify their relationship to their surrounding in a hierarchical fashion termed "dominionistic" by some scholars (Nie, Kellert etc.) Others, as have been noted for some Native American cultures may be more relational (Lopez,), survival-focused, utilitarian,

Belief - Spiritual I defined these beliefs to be those that hinge loosely around ideas of God(s), divinity, religion and/or the spirit as it may manifest in life or energy around us.

Culture was defined for the scope of this study as anything as indicated by a particular language, values held by an individual that might speak to deeper societal or group values (ie. family, religious, vocational). This term is probably most aptly defined by Gary Paul Nabhan as he implied that this is when "we learn from our elders and neighbors a way of living in a place that is more refined or better adapted than our genes alone can offer." (Nabhan, 1997:3) Wendell Berry speaks of the "Belief in culture…[as work that] consists of the accumulation of local knowledge in place, generation after generation, children learning the visions and failures, stories and songs, names, ways, and skills of their elders, so that the cost of the individual trial-and-error learning can be lived with and repaid, and the community thus enabled to preserve both itself and its natural place and neighborhood." (Berry quoted by Burleigh, 2000)

Critical Thinking jkljlk

Dynamic Processes jkljlk

Ecological Self jkljlk

Ecology, as is so often acknowledged, stems from the combination of the latin root word oikos meaning "home" and logos variously interpreted to mean "to study", "logic" or "thought." As a word that has gained some currency in our North American society, it has been variously interpreted by different scientific disciplines to mean slightly different things. In its most general sense, it can be taken to mean the study of connections that exists and the interplay that occurs between two things or entities. In psychology, when a researcher speaks about the ecological self, they tend to mean study of individuals as they relate to their greater human context. In biology, study of ecology has focused more on the connections and interactive

processes that exist between the biotic (living) and abiotic (nonliving) factors within our environment, also known as our natural surroundings. Ecological studies in biology have been interpreted to take place at the individual, population, and community level within an "ecosystem." In seeking to explore the places that humans and wolves interact and from whence perceptions are formed, I have had to acknowledge both types of ecological interpretations. Due to my own apriori assumptions, I have taken more of a qualitative, biological-ecological approach to humans' perspectives and tried merely to acknowledge potential areas where a person may have expressed more cultural-psychological-ecological sentiments without analyzing in any great depth the specific cultures from which each individual came. Rather, these sentiments expressed were seen to contribute to an individual's own "situatedness" in the context of this study.

Ecosystem jkljlk

Feeling jkljlk

Inter-species Community Relations jkljlk

Intra-species Relationship jkljlk

Knowledge jkljlk

Interaction jkljlk

Language jkljlk

Perception jkljlk

Past Experience jkljlk

Situatedness- Community Relations Since culture seemed to be a term that influenced multiple mental processes such as beliefs, values, and language in many of the ways that humans relate to things, I came up with a more specific term that focused specifically on humans and the ways that they relate to the animate beings in their lives: themselves (inner = with self), other humans (intra = between humans), and other species (inter = between other species). Of course, if a person happened to not view themselves in relation to other species, this last category might be pulled out from "Community Relations" but still remain under Situatedness as another thing that affects their surroundings.

Situatedness - Location

Situatedness - Vocation jkljlk

Relationship Assumed to be when something is exchanged between two individual entities. It could be something tangible such as oxygen, nutritional energy,or warmth; or the exchange could imply the give and take of ideas that occurs when a person is mentally "relating" to something.

Terrain

Thought jkljlk

Values jkljl

Water jkljlk

APPENDIX D. QUESTION GUIDE

1. "Please tell me about yourself and where you grew up."

2. "Please tell me about a typical day in your life these days."

3. "Why do you do _______? Tell me more about that."

4. "What is your first memory of being outside (in nature)?"

5. "What were some of the feelings you experienced then?"

6. "How have your feelings when you are outside in nature remained the same or have they changed?"

7. "You described the feeling of _______________, can you tell me a bit more about how and where this occurred for you?"

8."One of the words that people toss around these days is the word ecosystem. What is your understanding of what an ecosystem is?"

9."Do you know what a wolf is? Can you describe it for me?"

10."Have you ever seen a wolf? If so, where? What happened?"

11."What is the closest you have ever come to a wolf?"

12."Tell me about the first time you ever saw a wolf."

13."What was your reaction when you saw the wolf?"

14.Or, if they have never seen a wolf: "How would you feel if you encountered a wolf in real life?"

15."What is the role that you see wolves playing in relation to the ecosystem in which they live?"

16. "What do you think of wolves settling into Oregon (or Idaho)?"

17. "Do you care to go further and think about it now? Imagine a scenario... would you have different reactions depending on the scenario?"

18."Can you describe for me similar instance where you have also felt this feeling ________?"

19. "So if you met a wolf, say in the wild, you might have more feelings of ___________?"

20."What would you do if you realized wolves were near where you lived? What would be your first steps?"

21."What does wilderness mean to you?"

22. "You said earlier.... It seems to me that your initial reaction to wolves might be _______"

23. "I hope I am not upsetting you or flustering you but can you describe what a wolf looks like. Can you describe what you are envisioning when you say that a wolf is (big, scary, loyal, amazing, etc. - feeling stated here drawn from previous comments)."

24."Have you seen wolves in other instances?"

"Getting back to the idea of ecosystems, ... how do you think that you as a human may be related in any type of ecosystem way to a wolf? Where would the wolf be? Where would be say, touch-points where a human and a wolf might interact?"

25."I heard you say - .... (give examples of different places that participant may have listed as interactions between humans and wolves so far.)... Can you think of any others?"

26. "Can you think of positive (or negative) effects that wolves might have on an ecosystem?" I will ask the opposite of things they may have previously mentioned.

27. "What is your understanding of balance within an ecosystem(or life structures if they do not know what an ecosystem is...)?"

28."In your culture, do you think that people see themselves as separate from or do you always feel like you are around and in an ecosystem?"

29."What type of ecosystem do you live in? What are elements of wild-ness that exist within this?"

30."Where are the humans in this ecosystem, in this scenario?"

31. "When you say.... do you mean?"

32. "What are some of the factors that come into the choices you make with regards to how you as a human interract with (your ecosystem)?"

33. "You say that you feel when you see (these wild elements- birds, insects, gophers, etc.) what do these things do for you?"

34. "Do you feel connected to them?"

35. "What things do you feel connected to in this life?"

36."What is your philosophy on learning?"

37. "How does it happen for you?"

38. "What subjects interest you?"

39. "How do you like best to learn?"

40. "What is your philosophy on change?"

41. "What feelings does it bring up for you?"

42. "How is this similar or different to feelings you have about wilderness?"

43. "What are examples in your life where you have lived through a change that has been positive for you?"

44.“How does your understanding of the concept of an ecosystem relate to your life?”

45.“Describe the community you live in. Describe your ideal community. How do these two compare?”

46.“So, do you have any animals in your life that you have a relationship with? What is that like?”

APPENDIX EDEEPER DISCUSSION OF ECOSYSTEM AND PERCEPTION

In which I explore the emergent themes that appeared in the data. Additionally this is where the different ways that people think about wolves and ecosystems (nature) are compared. I discuss these ideas in relation to the appearance of wolves in the literature, ideas of perception and shine the light on what may be the hidden assumptions that people have unknowingly incorporated into their own world view.

By attempting here to trace the connection between theoretical standpoint and its expression in the narratives I hope to show how the one may influence the other and thereby subtly perhaps influence the outcome, what is in effect, our perception of reality in "life as we know it to be."

In exploring ideas that connect perceptions of wolves, nature and ecosystems, and people's interactions or ways that they relate to animals, several interesting themes arose out of the data. Under the Ecosystem category, subcategories arose centering around ideas of livelihood; change; ecosystem definition, beliefs and values; helping others; safety; transportation; ownership and territories; wild-ness levels, policy and management. With regards to Perception, subcategories arose around wolf identification, proximity, interaction, source of perception (knowledge, belief, values, situatedness, experience), amount a person cared about them, as well as how much a person was affected by them (directly, indirectly, or not affected). Finally with regards to the emerging category that addressed Opportunities For Education, there were several subcategories that included who yielded influence as educator; the power of story narratives on both a literal and meta-level to challenge and educate; and type of information that might be perhaps most effectively conveyed. In exploring the themes that came out of the data, we will also look more closely at the ways each word "ecosystem" and "perception" are defined in the literature.

Perception

I chose to use the word perception initially understanding that the act to perceive equated to what I meant when I said "I see" in the metaphorical sense as if I meant to imply "I understand." As I delved deeper into the meaning of the word, the choice of using it brought with it new insights. As the study progressed, more and more this word appeared as one most appropriate to use. The ambiguity that comes with perception mirrors in a certain way the way we "see" wolves. As humans' perceptions of wolves have seemingly diversified, similarly the definition of perception has undergone its own development from being solely a topic of philosophical study to one examined within the realm of psychology and our every day reality. The complexity of how

perception is defined has evolved similarly as we shall later see with the idea of an ecosystem as new scientists added their contributions to ideas regarding the inner workings of the psychological mind.

Perceptions of wolves by humans stretch beyond our biological knowledge and our own personal experience of them in the landscape. Perhaps our perceptions precede these instances. Similarly, many of our perceptions may have originated there. What do I mean by this and how could this be? Wolves have long remained a complex subject in our ideology that spurs discussions, political processes, heated debate, story gatherings, and dialogue amongst people. As much so, they also spurred a tremendous eradication effort in the late 1800s, early 1900s. The topic of wolves seems to have only grown more complicated as our collective awareness of the value of the environment around us has grown, and culturally as well, our lives have grown more nuanced and diversified.

As the story is often retold in the literature, the wolf appears from the dark forest to embody cunning evil and powerful cowardice (Brick & Cawley, 1996:1). Other documented negative words that people have used to allude to and describe wolves include rapacious (Arnold, 1996:18), Devil in disguise (Lopez, 1978:140), intrinsically evil, destroyers (Kellert, 1996:104), devouring, monstrous (Weide & Tucker; Strauss, 1993:29), and thieves (Klein, 2002:90), to name a few. Other terms easily follow as one allows the mind to wander in that direction: fierce, ferocious, utterly expendable. These were some of the terms used by immigrants from Western European countries as they arrived to find the wolf abundant in North America. These age-old views not only were held in the minds of men but they often spurred hatred - an emotion which incited actions and a specific cruel treatment of wolves. Barry Lopez documented this through his investigations of the literature, tracing historical perceptions, and analyzing personal interviews with people in his compilation book Of Wolves and Men published in 1978. Ian McTaggart Cowan attributes the origins of these negative attitudes to a view that wolves were in competition with humans for food with hunters and by raiding of humans' flocks and herds (Mech, 1970:xiii). But others trace the hatred back to the Dark Ages of Europe when the Catholic Church associated wolves with heretics and subsequently found it easy to associate them as the devil (Strauss, 1996:61; Williams, 1996). Regardless, by 1970 the wolf was extirpated from most of southern Canada and Mexico and from the coterminous 48 US states, except for northern Minnesota (Pacuet, 2004: http://www.wolfology.com)

But running in parallel with this hatred since the 1930s the general perception of these animals began to shift and be redefined beyond these original negative stereotypes by the now settled Western European immigrants and their descendants.

Scientists' attitudes toward wolves began to change in the 1920s and 1930s with improved understanding of the role of predators in

ecosystems...[Public] attitude toward wildlife was continuing to evolve as well, due in part to the near extinction of such species as the whooping crane and the trumpeter swan. As a result of new scientific understanding and public sentiment, an organized constituency arose to demand an end to the government's predator control program. (Klein, 2002:92)

Appreciation and positive sentiments towards wolves and other wildlife continued to increase with the emergence of popular naturalist writing like that of Aldo Leopold in his Sand County Almanac published in 1949; the birth of new wildlife advocacy organizations like Defenders of Wildlife in 1947; the listing of the wolf as an endangered species in 1973.

An additional factor that may have contributed to the increasing diversity of voices heard in how the public perceived wolves may have also come from a greater awareness other cultures and their stories. In a similar time-frame to our growth in awareness of ecology, multicultural education gained momentum as a practice that spun off the American civil rights movement of the 1960s (Gorski, 1999, 2003). This new multi-cultural awareness revolutionized the way that American society was recognizing and acknowledging the contributions made by people of different cultures.

Definitions in the Literature…

As another important word in the title, the word perception required careful exploration and thought so that I could know most importantly what it was that I was looking for in the data and what I would therefore claim as the perceptions of my interview participants from the ideas they share with me. What did I mean when I used the word "perception?" As I searched to find a "true" definition of the word perception, it seemed more to depend upon from which discipline I chose to define it. The Oxford Companion To The Mind, a book full of psychological references, defined this word as intimately tied to our senses and also a mental process differentiated from conception.

Why is perception somehow separate, and in several ways different from our conceptual understanding? Very likely, it is because perception, in order to be useful, must work very quickly, whereas we may take years forming concepts, since knowledge and ideas are in a sense timeless. It would probably be impossible for perception to draw upon all of our knowledge, as it has to work so fast. Rather, it employs a rapid but not deep intelligence with a small knowledge base. (Gregory, 1987:599, underline mine)

David Abram also saw that perception happened simultaneously stemming from sensory input. But as he elaborated in his book, The Spell of the Sensuous, perception involved more than just sight and must necessitate the use of the whole host of our senses - sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. As David Abram pointed out, perception is a synaesthetic process - a blending and overlapping of the senses as what is experienced occurs simultaneously and is recognized by all of our senses in those moments.

By the term "perception" we mean the concerted activity of all the body's senses as they function and flourish together. Indeed, if I attend closely to my nonverbal experience of the landscape that surrounds me, I must acknowledge that the so-called separate senses are thoroughly blended with one another, and it only after the fact that I am able to step back and isolate the specific contributions of my eyes, my ears, and my skin. (Abram, 1996:59-60,underline mine)

Abram takes a very active, sensory, participatory view of what is meant by perception. We will return later to his views as he also reflected upon the ways that story, language and the written word might also factor in as ways we humans are capable of perceiving. For him though, as was also described in the Oxford Companion to The Mind, perception occurs almost immediately through the simultaneous moment of an experienced sensory moment.

In approaching this from another angle, however, it began to seem as if either perception might have multiple definitions, or, that a person's perception might in actuality draw upon other internal resources besides our sensory input. In the study of "Human Culture and Wildlife Conservation in North America" Kellert, Black, Rush, and Bath found that people's basic values towards animals and nature inevitably affect their perceptions of an individual species. Additionally, they saw that perception are affected by past and present interactions with a particular species. We will return to the relevancy of this in chapter six. This same study however, muddied what they actually meant by perception as they seemed to use the word interchangeably to mean "attitude."

Consider the following two sentences found within the same paragraph:

"We also examined attitudes toward bears.""Today, perceptions of bears range from positive to negative."

(Kellert et.al., 1996:977)

If perception is really more something determined as in an attitude, and not merely having to do with an occurrence of understanding simultaneous from sensory input, this opens up new avenues for us to consider how perception is derived. Following this thread, Kellert et. al. similarly propose that wildlife attitudes (therefore perception) "are significantly influenced by…cultural and historical associations... knowledge and understanding including factual, conceptual, and conservation awareness." (Kellert et. al., 1996:978)

Drawing closer specifically to an examination of wolves, an essay posted on the Wild Sentry website "How Dangerous Are Wolves?" posits that "perception of wolves as rapacious villains or a golden race reveals more about the beholder than it does about the creature of flesh and blood" and later calls these derivatives of our human phantasmagoric whirling imagination (www.wildsentry.org, underline mine).

In a recap now, I see perception has been loaded from all sides: imagination, knowledge and understanding, cultural and historical attitudes and associations, sensory input, values, past and present interaction. Is there anything that could have been left out?

In reading the famed ecologist Aldo Leopold, in his Sand County Almanac, and Sketches From Here and There, he offers further insight.

We come now to another component: the perception of the natural processes by which the land and the living things upon it have achieved their characteristic forms (evolution) and by which they maintain their existence (ecology). That thing called 'nature study, ' … constitutes the first embryonic groping of the mass-mind toward perception…The swoop of a hawk, for example is perceived by one as the drama of evolution, to another it is only a threat to the full frying-pan [when it steals a pigeon you would have shot for your dinner]. (Leopold, 1989:173)

In this instance, Leopold uses the term more to mean to mean the way an action - in this case, the swoop by a hawk - is interpreted. Linda Hogan uses the term in a similar manner when she speaks of how townspeople, uncertain of what biologists studying wolves are up to, complain that they are trying to deify the wolf. With this, the townspeople are described as having a perception of the way an action (the study) is interpreted (deification of the wolf). In her eyes she calls this perception both extreme and irrational (Hogan, 1995:66). It is good to note that Aldo Leopold also uses the term perception to describe the way that natural processes maintain their existence as well. In this sense, perception occurs in humans when we focus our attention not only regarding a living being (hawk or person) but also towards processes and how they might be functioning. If we followed this thought further it could lead us back towards our previous exploration of the meaning of the word ecology.

Instead however, let us now proceed to explore perception and ecology from a human psychological perspective. Drawing on theories of James Gibson and William James, Harry Heft relates how humans perceive situations of significance, plan and execute purposes activated in the environment. From this, Heft defines ecological psychology as the study of information transactions between humans and their environments. To James Gibson, perceptual learning denotes a type of change in the relationship between the perceiver and its environment and not merely a change in the perceiver.

The perceiver(animal) and the environment exist as a reciprocity. The animal is described as an integration of capacities and ways of life actualized within an environment. The animal perceives, but perception is ecological, for example, humans walk, but walking occurs within an environment. Perception is animal awareness of the environment. (Lombardo, 1987:330)

Abram attributes this interpretation of our environment as one of being in relation to Merleau-Ponty and explains it thus.

Where does perception originate? I cannot say truthfully that my perception of a particular wildflower, with its color and its fragrance, is determined or "caused" entirely by the flower-since other persons may experience a somewhat different fragrance, as even I, in a different moment or mood, may see the color

differently, and indeed…any bumblebee that alights on that blossom will surely have a very different perception of it than I do. But neither can I say truthfully that my perception is "caused" solely by myself-by my physiological or neural organization -or that it exists entirely "in my head." For without the actual existence of this other entity, of this flower rooted not in my brain but in the soil of the earth, there would be no fragrant and colorful perception at all, neither for myself nor for any others, whether human or insect. Neither the perceiver nor the perceived, then, is wholly passive in the event of perception... (Abram, 1996:53)

What Abram speaks of then is a reciprocity where not only is he perceiving the flower but the flower also is in the act of being perceived. This he describes as an ongoing interchange happening between his body and the entities that surround it - a "sort of silent conversation" or "continuous dialogue that unfolds far below…verbal awareness" (Abram, 1996:51).Abram carries this idea of ecological relation further psychologists previously. When Roger Barker and James Gibson assumed that natural processes are structured in nested levels of organization (Lombardo, 1987:237), Bronfenbrenner picked up on the idea and theorized how people perceive their world at nested levels of concentric circles. At the center of Bronfenbrenner's ecological self stands the individual. Rippling outward from there in concentric circles, the individual relates on levels of: micro (family), meso (neighborhood, church, or school), exo (town), and macro (societal structure like government or economy) to their surroundings.

I was first exposed to Bronfenbrenner's idea of the ecological self in a class on Family Studies at Portland State University. I was quite excited - to see the idea of thinking ecologically had gained currency and was deemed relevant not only by biologists now but was also being taught in the social sciences. But however my intrigue, when I reflected critically on Bronfenbrenner's ecological self, I could see that he while he had adopted the idea of nesting the self within society "ecologically", what he deemed ecological also subtly shifted the focus away from the original biological definition. Bronfenbrenner's psychological use reinterpreted what students might think of as "the environment" and that which is "ecological" to pertain only to that which is in our human-cultural world.

Conversely in another class on the Ecological Cultural Foundations of Learning, I had just finished reading Fritjof Capra's book The Hidden Connections and learned through that how other cognitive scientists were now grounding our own human ability to reason not solely from our brains' abilities as they were provided to us at birth from our genetic makeup. Rather instead, reason, they concluded, is shaped crucially by our physical nature and our bodily experience. Capra quotes two leading cognitive linguists Mark Johnson and George Lakoff:

The evidence is based, first of all, on the discovery that most of our thought is unconscious, operating at a level that is inaccessible to ordinary conscious awareness. This "cognitive unconscious" includes not only all our automatic cognitive operations, but also

our tacit knowledge and beliefs. Without our awareness, the cognitive unconscious shapes and structures all conscious thought. This has become a major field of study in cognitive science, which has resulted in radically new view of how concepts and thought processes are formed…The same neural and cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and move around also create our conceptual structures and modes of reason. (Capra, 2002:61, underline mine)

Spinning our lens now to take a wider focus on these revelations found in Capra, we can infer that not only is the "environment" in which a person lives and grow up integral to the makeup of their logic, but through Capra, we can scientifically link together our perception and reasoning both integrally and literally.

As I continued in experience of the Family Studies class but also drawing upon classes I had taken earlier on Conflict Management and with regards to Qualitative Research and Analysis, my thesis thoughts began to revolve around the process of critical thinking and logic patterns as humans employ them as they experience the world. Critical thinking has long been held high as an important practice in our ability to reason intelligently. Often times this is one of the most highly esteemed skills that colleges and universities can impart to their students.

Vincent Ruggiero in his book Beyond Feelings: A Guide to Critical Thinking infers that critical thinking skills help us in our ability to solve problems and make decisions. He makes the case that our individuality as we actually realize it is made up our likes/dislikes, values, attitudes, beliefs. In the same way, details of the family a person grew up in also can influence a person's identity: race, religion, national origin, political affiliation, economic level and attitudes toward one another (Ruggiero, 2004:5). But Ruggiero makes the case that these things influence our thinking as it comes in the form of reasoning - as the active form of thinking - and that perception works more upon our intuition.

Ruggiero notes that intuition is commonly defined as the sensing or understanding of something without the use of reasoning. However, he also acknowledges that some breakthrough ideas are things that have occurred with people utilizing what might appear to be intuition. A often noted example of a person using intuition to solve a problem is that of the German chemist Kekule who found the solution for the structure of the benzene molecule when the image of a snake swallowing its tail came to him in a daydream. But Ruggiero posits that breakthrough ideas like this favor trained, active minds whose unconscious, once absorbed into the problem may then continue working on the problem long after a person has turned their conscious attention elsewhere (Ruggiero, 2004:20-21).

Diane Halpern in her book Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking also uses the example of Kekule but instead of attributing his breakthrough idea to intuition, she highlights the use of imagery of how he envisioned the snake seizing its own tail as a method Kekule's mind was using to "work at" the problem (Halpern, 1984:9). Both Halpern and Ruggiero caution that spontaneous and intuitive thinking is frequently wrong and therefore

not reliable as method to accurately discern reality. To offer a contrasting argument, I could argue that even the most rationally explained arguments also have the potential to turn out wrong - say, for instance, when a longstanding theory (the world is flat) is disproven years later by someone who takes a different approach to perceiving and experiencing, therefore proving the world. To both methods of thinking, I would argue that for the conscious processes of our awakened mind and the meditative intuitive type of thinking in our subconconscious - in both instances, the mind is working. The conclusions that our mind may draw are merely and most importantly, based on the prior assumptions that are believed to be true. Active, conscious mental critical thinking is a practice that purposefully employs investigation, interpretation and judgement. Intuitive thinking may employ a more metaphorical imagery approach toward how we shape and understand our experiences in "reality" but at times, this too can be crucial to our understanding and making sense of the world around us. Capra even reminds us that the metaphors we use relate back to an actual original spatial experience.

For example, when we distinguish between "inside" and "outside," we tend to visualize this spatial relationship in terms of a container with an inside, a boundary, and an outside. This mental image, which is grounded in the experience of our body as a container, becomes the basis of certain forms of reasoning. (Capra, 2002:63)

The Data Subcategory - Perception Definition

Returning now to the question of what is perception? After the interviews were finished I returned to literature and proceeded to assimilate the current views of perception some of which are presented above. I maintain that perception is a process in which first, our body mentally absorbs input from all of our senses in the way that David Abram describes synaesthesia. Second, as the senses now send messages through the neural framework of our body, we immediately engage in interpretation of what the messages mean. As is illustrated in Figure 5.1, since perception is what happens most immediately in a quick assessment, the mind draws upon the prior knowledge, beliefs, and what I call "situatedness." These three things work in two ways: first to generate our values and associated feelings that come with the interpreted meaning of past experiences; and second to generate an appropriate response of what our mind is reading from the messages picked up by the senses. This second option is what I maintain is happening in the cognitive unconscious which Capra mentioned. It is here, in our perception, that an individual formulates and perceives the "Other" beyond the boundaries of our selves. The mind then either moves the body into action with thought provoked by "logical" choices made or, with a "startle," instinctual response that originates more from our metaphorical and physical gut.

Examples of the startle response "in action" can be noted by both I8C and I9GF's responses when they were initially saw a wolf.

I8C: I don't know what made me shine my light behind us. I think I heard something. And so I shined it back. And yeah, there were two sets of - a set of eyes, green eyes looking at us. And then another set. Of course I was like - "hey! hey!" And they both turned and looked and I - I think what I said was - "What do they want?"…We just kind of watched them and they eventually just kind of left. Went out - off into the darkness. So then I was freaked. Because its dark.

I9GF: I think that there were 3 of them in our yard the other day. I thought they were coyotes but I thought- I think they were bigger than coyotes…I thought they were coyotes. And I - because they came right next to the house! This one did - right outside the window. And there were two more coming across the field. And I thought - "That is the biggest coyote I have ever seen!" I was thinking "What have they been eating?!" Because usually a coyote is so little and scrawny… And then by the time I ran to tell somebody or something and came back they were gone.

In both narratives their minds did not stop working despite the fact that the perceiver was initially startled. And it seems from the narrative that the feeling (fear for I8C) It could be hypothesized and a case for future study to look into whether the subsequent action that originates from a startle response might differ or tend to pattern itself similarly depending on each individual.

********** WILL SEND MORE SOON.

With regards to Perception, subcategories arose around wolf identification, proximity, interaction, source of perception (knowledge, belief, values, situatedness, experience), amount a person cared about them, as well as how much a person was affected by them (directly, indirectly, or not affected).

Ecology and Ecosystem

The DataSubcategory - Ecosystem Definition

subcategories arose centering around ideas of livelihood; change; ecosystem definition, beliefs and values; helping others; safety; transportation; ownership and territories; wild-ness levels, policy and management

Definitions in the Literature…

This thesis study concerns itself with the "patterns of and

APPENDIX FMY INTELLECTUAL ANCESTORS

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Our educational institutions need to see their purpose not as training personnel for exploiting the Earth but as guiding students toward an intimate relationship with the Earth. For it is the planet itself that brings us into being, sustains us in life, and delights us with its wonders. In this context we might consider the intellectual, political and economic orientations that will enable us to fulfill the historical assignment before us - to establish a more viable way into the future.

As in creating some significant work the artist first experiences something akin to dream awareness that becomes clarified in the creative process itself, so we must first have a vision of the future sufficiently entrancing that it will sustain us in the transformation of the human project as it is now in process. Such an entrancing vision we propose here as the Ecozoic Era, the period when humans would become a mutually beneficial presence on the Earth. (Berry, 1999:x)

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In this chapter I ground my studies by acknowledging from whence I came: my intellectual ancestors that have helped spur this study, informed my own thought and challenged my own initial beliefs and perceptions. Of course, there are many individuals that I can claim for this status. The ones named here have most strongly fed my own perspective prior my encounters with other literature and the interview participants. This is where I acknowledge my own apriori research viewpoint.

I feel lucky to have had many wonderful philosophical/ storyteller/theoretical/ecological/scientific/life teachers that have influenced my own intellectual development and informed my learning. In approaching this study, my viewpoint has been shaped by an interest in ecology at the community level and wanting to know more what systems are in place that people utilize to create positive feedback between efforts they expend and their relationship with other beings in the natural environment. I was in high school on a retreat when the idea was introduced to me that humans could actually play a positive role in natural systems. Since then I pursued studies in biology and ecology. The individuals that have most influenced my thinking are those that also believe in this possibility like Thomas Berry quoted aboved from his book The Great Work. Thomas Berry as an ecological philosopher offers up hope and points us in the directions that education must take if we are to achieve a time where humans are a mutually benefical presence on the Earth:

...the time has come to study the Earth for the purposes of the Earth. The well-being of the Earth depends to an extensive degree

on our understanding of the planet in its global extension, in its bioregional diversity, and in the intimacy of the component parts of the whole. We depend on this understanding of the Earth in all its diversity if we are to know how humans are to be present to the planet in some mutually enhancing manner (Berry, 1999:96). .

For additional life teachers of the highest quality, I would credit my fifth grade teacher Kathleen Dexter and high school biology teacher Mrs. Linda Cunningham as two teachers with this honor. They both ability to speak across the automatic student-teacher power structure that is naturally created in the classroom setting to acknowledge life in all its richness as something that happens on numerous levels at once, all the time. They both were real with their students as well as being excellent educators who treated their students with respect for their unique personalities. They always found many ways to make learning an enjoyable and interesting process for their students.

Two notable people have admirably blended ideas of wolves, ecology, and the art of storytelling: Barry Lopez and Aldo Leopold. Barry Lopez wrote Of Wolves and Men, published in 1978. In that, he raised awareness about the ways that wolves have been historically perceived and treated by humans. The fair assessment he gave of wolves weaves rich imagery and story together with factual accounts, the results of scientific studies and additionally of some cultures' mythology of wolves. Still, Barry Lopez reminds us to pay attention.

To allow mystery, which is to say to yourself, "There could be more, there could be things we don't understand," is not to damn knowledge. It is to take a wider view. It is to permit yourself extraordinary freedom: someone else does not have to be wrong in order that you may be right (Lopez, 1978:284).

Aldo Leopold's oft quoted line "Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf" reverberates so often amongst wolf conservationists and advocates that sometimes I wonder if his original meaning has gotten lost in the rhetoric. A closer reading of Aldo Leopold's essay speaks more towards how mountains might harbor a secret opinion of wolves that is separate from the obvious and immediate effects they may have with members of their close and immediate surroundings (hunter, coyote, deer). In this he paints a masterful portrait for any amateur to understand more deeply the intricacies of an ecosystem when he speaks about how mountains without wolves may become overbrowsed by the deer.

I now suspect that just as a deer lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades. (Leopold, 1989:130).

Aldo Leopold held a degree in wildlife biology and acted as a manager in forestry long before his well known naturalist book "A Sand County Almanac and Sketches from Here and There" was first published in 1949. He is claimed by biologists, ecologists, naturalists, wildlife managers, and conservationists as one of their own. To be able to

write as eloquently in plain language that touched the hearts of so many as he did would be an accomplishment to which I one day hope to aspire.

Of other scientists and ecologists - such as L. David Mech, and Fritjof Capra - we will hear more from in other areas of this thesis but here I think it is deserving to note one of the first ever wolf ecologists. As a game biologist, Adolph Murie for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), conducted an in-depth scientific study of wolves in 1939, to be published in 1944 as The Wolves of Mt. McKinley. As David Mech notes, Adolph Murie became the first biologists ever to conduct an intensive and objective ecological study of the wolf (Mech, 1970). Murie also employed noninvasive observation techniques to study the animals in his report. He turned his eye toward interactions and relationships that were observable between species and also certain relationship patterns different species had to the land in Alaska. Murie's focus on wolves and their prey species of dall sheep, moose, and caribou expanded beyond simple counting of numbers in presence and absence but also qualitatively looked at habitat use, interspecies relationships and seasonal patterns. He also recorded observations of other predator species like the grizzly, red fox and the golden eagle's habits as well as additional prey species of porcupine and snowshoe hare. Murie models the persistence of early biologists to observe the world around them as comprehensively as possible in the ways it presents itself to our senses.

Of storytellers, I have been gifted sit at the feet of such masterful storytellers as my own "Popa Joe," and the old and endlessly wrinkled white-haired Kathleen Abbot. Each of them had their slow and delightfully specific ways of speaking. With each sentence they used a vivid imagery that sharpened my imagination and fostered my own love for the practice. Their sense of humor helped shape the stories they told. Hearing them tell stories also taught me things beyond the content of what their actual stories contained. As storytellers, they also taught me about the reciprocal listening created that granted a space for something more to be communicated - an unseen element, (perhaps it was just the space and time created in the moment?)- that allowed the story itself to leap into life.