Never Cry Wolf
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First edition
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| Author | Farley Mowat |
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| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Autobiography |
| Publisher | McClelland and Stewart |
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Publication date
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1963 |
| Media type | Print (hard & paperback) |
| Pages | 256 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 48027680 |
Never Cry Wolf is an account of the author’s experience observing wolves in subarctic Canada by Farley Mowat, first published in 1963 by McClelland and Stewart. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1983. It has been credited for dramatically changing the public image of the wolf to a more positive one.
In the book, Mowat describes his experiences in a first-person narrative that sheds light on his research into the nature of the Arctic wolf.
In 1948–1949, the Dominion Wildlife Service assigns the author to investigate the cause of declining caribou populations and determine whether wolves are to blame for the shortage. Upon finding his quarry near Nueltin Lake, Mowat discovers that rather than being wanton killers of caribou, the wolves subsist quite heavily on small mammals such as rodents and hares, "even choosing them over caribou when available."
He concludes: "We have doomed the wolf not for what it is but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be: the mythologized epitome of a savage, ruthless killer—which is, in reality, not more than the reflected image of ourselves. We have made it the scapewolf for our own sins." Mowat writes to expose the onslaught of wolfers and government exterminators who are out to erase the wolves from the Arctic.
Mowat's book says that:
Barry Lopez in his 1978 work Of Wolves and Men called the book a dated, but still good introduction to wolf behaviour.
In a 2001 article of The Canadian Historical Review entitled Never Cry Wolf: Science, Sentiment, and the Literary Rehabilitation of Canis Lupus, Karen Jones lauded the work as "an important chapter in the history of Canadian environmentalism";
The deluge of letters received by the Canadian Wildlife Service from concerned citizens opposing the killing of wolves testifies to the growing significance of literature as a protest medium. Modern Canadians roused to defend a species that their predecessors sought to eradicate. By the 1960s the wolf had made the transition from the beast of waste and desolation (in the words of Theodore Roosevelt) to a conservationist cause celebre....Never Cry Wolf played a key role in fostering that change.
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Wikipedia