The Hunt

About this book

In a work of "exquisitely reported" (Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts) narrative journalism, The Hunt tells the extraordinary inside story of the deadliest wolf hunt in the history of Yellowstone National Park, in which a fifth of the park's wolf population was decimated in the winter of 2021-2022, a drama of conservation, corruption, and centuries-old battles to decide the future of wild creatures and wild spaces in the American West. By the 1930s, the United States government had largely completed what westward settlers began a century before: total eradication of the wolf from the Lower 48. Sixty years later, a historic revolution in environmental thought spurred the government to reverse course, undertaking a dramatic wolf reintroduction initiative in Yellowstone National Park and surrounding areas in January 1995. In 2020, the Yellowstone Wolf Project celebrated its 25th anniversary, which had ushered in an ecological transformation and tourism boom. While researchers documented behavior rarely witnessed by human eyes, families flocked from around the globe to glimpse newborn pups taking their first steps into the wider world. But the very next winter, the park's border became a killing field, with a fifth of Yellowstone's world-famous wolves shot or trapped in a matter of months. Never before had there been a hunt so aggressive, so effective, and so deadly. It was an unprecedented blow to the most celebrated and controversial comeback story in American conservation history, but it was much more than that. Set in a rapidly changing corner of southwest Montana, where wildlife is big business and a source of cultural identity, The Hunt is a story of politics, power, and polarization in the American West. With wide-ranging access to key sources, award-winning journalist Ryan Devereaux shows how the spasm of killing on Yellowstone's doorstep--the product of a political backlash decades in the making--became a mirror reflecting back on a divided nation. Tracing the social, cultural, and economic forces behind this environmental battle, Devereaux reveals how the wolf is a cipher for a deeper fight over how the West should be run. The result "is a riveting tale that teaches us as much about the complexities of human society as it does about Canis lupus" (Karl Jacoby, author of Shadows at Dawn), and the rupture that threatens the country's last wild spaces.