Ep. 159: Rick McIntyre on What We Can Learn from Wolves
This episode of Health Gig features Rick McIntyre, author, and former ranger-naturalist and wolf researcher. His work with the National Park Service lends incomparable insight into American wolves, why studying them is important, and how humans and wolves are alike. Listen in as we discuss the preservation of wolves and what we can learn from them.
More on Rick McIntyre:
Website: www.yellowstone.org/rick-mcintyres-notes-from-the-field/
Amazon: www.amazon.com/Rick-McIntyre/e/B0878ZWV3P%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
YouTube Author Talk: https://youtu.be/cBd38Hq_iNU
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Quotes:
“Wolves are social animals just like people are.” Rick McIntyre
In watching Wolves the impression I get is that the alpha female is always mindful of her agenda and the males just kind of say, “Oh, okay,” and go along with it. Rick McIntyre
“Wolves have given me a gift over the many, many years they've allowed me to witness how they live out their lives.” Rick McIntyre
Show Notes:
Rick McIntyre: I'm in a little tiny town in Montana, it's called Silvergate in the summer, it's kind of geared toward tourists, so we have a lot of nice visitors here. But in the winter there's only about seven of us.
Rick McIntyre: I worked for the National Park Service for a long time and other parks, including Denali in Alaska Glacier in Montana, Death Valley and California, a number of other places.
Rick McIntyre: I started here in 1994, which was the year before the wolf reintroduction. And because I had been around wolves in other national parks, Denali and Glacier, I was designated the wolf interpreter.
Rick McIntyre: Normally, if you are working or visiting a place like, let's say Glacier National Park, you almost never see them because they live in the forest. But Yellowstone is mostly open country, and the wolves spent most of their time in places where we could see them.
Rick McIntyre: I attracted a lot of attention back in those days, but it was all for a good cause because I got to give people one of their peak experiences of lives coming to a national park and getting to see wolves.
Rick McIntyre: English settlers had already exterminated wolves in their home country. So when they arrived in the new world, they were taken aback when they realized that wolves were still here. So one of the first things the pilgrims did on arrival was to pass a cash bounty to encourage people to kill wolves.
Rick McIntyre: If you think of the lower 48 states, wolves were native in every one of them, including Florida. And when the government finally wound down the killing of the wolves in the late 50s and into the early 60s, the only ones that were left were in the lake states.
Rick McIntyre: That's a very sad part of Yellowstone history, if you think that even the Park Rangers in Yellowstone believed that the right thing to do was to exterminate wolves.
Rick McIntyre: Wolves are social animals just like people are.
Rick McIntyre: The Rise of Wolf Eight, is about one of the original Canadian rules that was brought down, and he was the runt of his litter. He was picked on and bullied, but grew up to be a huge, hugely successful wolf. So I always have a soft spot in my heart for him because of how far he got.
Rick McIntyre: I think he just grew up with an understanding OK, you have responsibilities in life to protect your family, to feed your family when he was young. Eight would play with him a lot. So when twenty one was a father himself, he carried on that tradition.
Rick McIntyre: 302 was just totally drop dead gorgeous. He would just show up in your territory and the mating season and all of twenty one's daughters would just fall in love with them and flock over.
Rick McIntyre: In addition to twenty-one raising his own pups, his own sons and daughters, he had to raise five that had been born to the no good boyfriend.
Rick McIntyre: When I do talks for kids, I say if there was any human character real or fictional that was maybe like twenty-one, I would have to say Superman.
Rick McIntyre: He would start playing with the pups so he would have a group of them, and he would suddenly pretend that he was afraid of them and he would run off with a tuck tail.
Rick McIntyre: Wolves have given me a gift over the many, many years they've allowed me to to witness how they live out their lives. Many, many generations of wolves and I now have over 12000 pages of single spaced notes on wolf behavior in Yellowstone.
Rick McIntyre: I would give something like 200 talks to park visitors, but I really needed to get the information out. In a much wider range in the sense that publishing books.
Rick McIntyre: The fourth book is done and you'll be pleased to know that that's on Alpha Female wolves.
Rick McIntyre: We knew her as the 06 female, and I have to explain that for a moment, she was born in the year 2006. She was a strong willed female, and she just wouldn't take any guff from any guy.
Rick McIntyre: This sometimes happens with people as well. There's a wolf that's born, and maybe it just doesn't have very good social skills and it has a hard time fitting in.
Rick McIntyre: There's a lot of life lessons that we can learn from Wolves.
Keywords:
TriciaReillyKoch, DoroBushKoch, Health, HealthGig, PersonalGrowth, Wellness, MentalHealth, Health, Routine, Wellness, Mindfulness, RickMcIntyre, Yellowstone, Wolves, NationalParkService, AmericanWolves, WolfPreservation