Predatory Bureaucracy: The Extermination of Wolves and the Transformation of the West

by Michael J. Robinson

Predatory Bureaucracy is the definitive history of America's wolves and our policies toward predators. Tracking wolves from the days of the conquistadors to the present, author Michael Robinson shows that their story merges with that of the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey. This federal agency was chartered to research insects and birds but - because of various pressures - morphed into a political powerhouse dedicated to killing wolves and other wildlife. Robinson follows wolves' successful adaptation to the arrival of explorers, mountain men, and bounty hunters, through their disastrous century-long entanglement with the federal government. He shares the parallel story of the Biological Survey's rise, detailing the personal, social, geographic, and political forces that allowed it to thrive despite opposition from hunters, animal lovers, scientists, environmentalists, and presidents. Federal predator control nearly eliminated wolves throughout the United States and Mexico and radically changed American lands and wildlife populations. It undercut the livelihoods of countless homestead families in order to benefit an emerging western elite of livestock owners. The extermination of predators led to problems associated with prey overpopulation, but, as Robinson reveals, extermination and control programs still continue. Predatory Bureaucracy will fascinate readers interested in wildlife, ecosystems, agriculture, and environmental politics.

Genres: Wolves, Nonfiction, Natural History

494 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 2005

Reviews

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe not the most digestible of books at all times, but a very thorough coverage of the history of the US war on predators and the politics behind it. Robinson pulls from the biographical histories of key people involved in various conflicts and movements, using an approach that places much more emphasis on individual humans than I've seen from other histories talking about the conflict between wolves and governments. I was skeptical at first (how important can an individual really be? who and what are we ignoring by spending 5 pages on one dude's life story?) but he's so thorough in covering what looks like every relevant person that it works. He still talked about general cultural shifts and the impact of agriculture and ecology, but he also traced the history carefully through all the government agency changes (lumping, splitting, name-changing, moving between departments, etc.) and seemed to be willing to branch off and dive backward in time into a new biographical history and mine it for influential details whenever a person's name appeared in the main timeline of US predator control.

You can't read about wolves in the US without running into Stanley Young, but I had no idea how much of a constant presence he was until I read this book. Everywhere you turn for 5 decades, Stanley Young is there stirring up trouble (and revising his own history to make it seem like he had a master's degree-- a lie of omission that Robinson notes in newspapers and magazines and that even shows up on Young's Wikipedia page today). Another name you can't avoid when reading about wolves in the US is Aldo Leopold, and this book points out that his influence was exaggerated, and that the ecological epiphany he recounts in "Thinking Like a Mountain" didn't actually happen until decades after he says it did-- much of Leopold's career was spent within the antipredator agenda and other people were promoting a land ethic long before he coined the term.

I also found this book relevant for getting perspective on current events. The kind of political nonsense we often think of as a recent-ish development-- powerful lobbies managing to control decisions, suppression of facts, propagation of fake news, and government agencies engaging in what's commonly known as "shady bullshit" -- is nothing new. And neither are the strategies that can get around government nonsense: a hugely important player in ending the war on predators was the Emergency Conservation Committee: just three persistent people who were committed to holding entities (governments, agencies, and groups like the Audubon Society) accountable for their actions and associations and willing to demand real solutions rather than watered-down, politically correct messages. The ECC stood out to me as an important model for people dealing with current events today in wildlife management, conservation, or any political issue. The advice one can take from the ECC and especially Rosalie Edge mirrors advice I've heard from people who have been working in conservation more recently. Make connections, disseminate information however you can, and most importantly, keep your message undiluted; advocate for the decisions you actually want to see and leave the compromising to politicians.

[Mike Courson]

From my review of Rick McIntyre's Reign of Wolf 21:
When I first visited Yellowstone (it's 18 hours away) in Sept. 2019, I had no interest in wolves. When watching nature shows about the park to get a lay of the land, I actually hated the wolves. Still hated them for a while after.
A few months later I read Death in Yellowstone. Then Death in Grand Canyon. The author of the latter book casually mentions Michael Robinson's Predatory Bureaucracy about the drive to kill wolves in the west. I found that big can bring high prices and managed to find a copy for under $10. My love of wolves began.
Review: I like an underdog. Watching those nature shows, the wolf surely never takes on that role. Robinson's book is a dramatically different take. Many know what happened to the bison as settlers moved into the West. A lesser-told story is what happened to the wolves. And why.
The writing can be quite dry at times - a lot of history packed into not-so-many pages. Reading really picks up when Robinson highlights certain famous wolves. The rest is just, well, how someone killed said wolves.
Given the intelligence and social nature of wolves, the extermination methods seem particularly cruel. Having watched and read many shows on wolves at this point, I understand it's a tricky situation. Farmers want to raise livestock. Wolves can eat livestock. Robinson does not necessarily get into all that, but after reading this book, I root for the wolves.

[Juancobravo · Rating 4 out of 5]

An essential book to understand the history behind the near-extinction of carnivores in North America and the public agencies and employees directly responsible for it.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most depressing story about wolves I have attempted to read so far. It's basically the history of predator extermination in this country. Filled with cruel and gruesome accounts of hunting and trapping wolves in the west.

I've been picking at the many chapters now and then for several years. I did not finish reading this book - I simply decided to stop. I'm pretty sure I get it by now. Economics before conservation - it's as simple as that. And nothing has significantly changed since the early 1900s.