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1-Page Summary of Never Cry Wolf
Overall Summary
Never Cry Wolf is a book by Canadian environmentalist Farley Mowat. In it, he tells the story of his first time in the wilderness and how he interacted with Ottawan forest officials. It’s one of the earliest books to advocate for active study and preservation of natural relationships, and was met with harsh criticism when published. Nevertheless, it sold more than 250 thousand copies worldwide. The popularity helped make him one of the most well-respected environmentalists in mid-twentieth century Canada.
Mowat tells the story of how he became a forest ranger. He was young and inexperienced at first, but he learned from his mistakes. For example, when he received a radio for communication with headquarters, he modified it to reach farther than normal so that he could test its range; however, this ended up being problematic since the signal reached as far as Peru and confused people there who didn’t speak English.
While the book is comedic, it mainly covers the author’s time working for a wildlife service from 1948 to 1949. The company first hires Mowat to figure out why the population of caribou in that region has sharply declined. He notices before he even starts that his bosses expect him to find evidence that wolves killed off the caribou. Mowat sets up camp next to Nueltin Lake, an Eskimo territory in Northeastern Canada. There, he observes that wolves prefer rabbits and small rodents over caribou meat.
The author continues to study the wolves’ behavior while he works on his caribou assignment. He develops a fond relationship with three wolves, George and Angeline, as well as Uncle Albert. The author decides to adopt some of the wolf’s behaviors and subsists on small rodents like them. He befriends an Eskimo man who helps him interpret their cries. Together they track down George, Angeline, and Uncle Albert in their dens where they shelter during summertime. The author discovers that most common beliefs about wolves are not true; for example, many people believe that wolves are hostile toward humans without provocation but Mowat finds this is rarely true. Most significant of all is his finding that caribou have evolved adaptations so effectively occupy an independent ecological niche from the wolf (if a wolf does kill a caribou it’s almost always one injured or dying).
In the end of Never Cry Wolf, Farley Mowat prepares to leave his cabin for two years. He hears a wolf howling and realizes that it’s George calling for his family. This causes him to realize that there is an entire world of meaning in animal cries, which people have lost touch with as they’ve become more technological. It makes him wonder whether modern humans are missing out on something valuable by not listening to nature anymore.
