Saturday, June 23, 2012

‘True Wolf’ documentary follows life of Koani’s pack

 
Bruce Weide and Pat Tucker lived with a wolf for 16 years, and needless to say, they have followed Montana’s long wolf controversy with more than a passing interest.

The story of how Koani came to be part of their family – and their profession – is the focus of a new documentary titled “True Wolf,” produced by Montana filmmaker Rob Whitehair.

Weide and Tucker got Koani when Tucker, a wildlife biologist, was asked to be a consultant on another documentary about wolves.

“This filmmaker had a batch of wolves born in captivity,” Weide said. “Then he asked us if we would raise one of those wolves so he could shoot a scene of Pat and this wolf in a classroom.”

The Bitterroot Valley residents were just out of graduate school, and agreed to take the wolf pup, with the belief the filmmaker would reclaim the wolf when the filming was done. He didn’t, and suddenly they had a huge decision to make.

“We thought it was not right to have a wolf as a pet, you know have it chained up in a pen outside,” said Weide. “If we were going to keep this wolf, we were going to have to come up with leading a wolf-centered life.”

And so they did. The alternative was to have Koani euthanized since having been raised in captivity, she did not have the skills to survive in the wild.

Weide and Tucker formed an organization called “Wild Sentry” and decided to have Koani be an “ambassador” for education about wolves. Their lives for the next 16 years, were centered on Koani – a full-time job since wolves are social animals. Every day, twice a day, using a 50-foot leash attached to a climber’s harness, they took Koani on two-hour walk/runs. They gleaned leftover game from the local butcher shop for the hundreds of pounds of raw meat needed to feed her. They got her a dog, named Indy, for companionship. They even built a special tunnel from the wolf’s enclosure into part of their house.

But for all they did, they never forgot this was not the life a wolf was supposed to lead.
“Every day being faced with the fact that we could not fulfill this animal’s needs,” said Weide. “I think Koani led a good life in terms of being a captive wolf. But those animals are meant to be wild and running free … they’re meant to be chasing elk and deer and being out there in the wild.”

Weide, Tucker and Indy the dog became Koani’s “pack,” but they were never under any illusion she could be domesticated. Weide says they lived by her rules, because she wasn’t going to live by theirs.
They took Koani to hundreds of schools and community organizations, so kids and adults could see a real wolf, likely for the first time. They even made an appearance at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

“But the real power of Koani was that these people had the opportunity to look a real wolf in the eye,” said Weide, “and seldom did Koani ever live up to what a wolf should be in their imagination. … For them just to see this animal had a real impact on them gaining a new understanding of what wolves really are.”

Weide and Tucker took many videos documenting their life with Koani – scenes of Tucker and Koani howling together, Koani pulling them on skis, and Koani snarling menacingly when they did something she didn’t like. These videos form the fascinating nucleus of Rob Whitehair’s new documentary.

The film also has real and re-enacted scenes of wolf opponents at public meetings on the controversial reintroduction of wolves into Montana and Idaho – a controversy that has not diminished. Whitehair says he wanted to make the film in part to show the power of stories in our lives – and to question stories that show wolves as either demon or deity.

Weide says Koani proved they are neither. Yet he remains conflicted about their life together.
“Koani very literally stands as this symbol of the wild, and yet here she is in this captive life,” said Weide. “And I hope that makes viewers uncomfortable, because it made Pat and I uncomfortable for 16 years. But I like to think good came from that.”

Like other good documentaries, “True Wolf” raises as many questions as it answers, especially about the boundaries of our contemporary relationships with wild animals.

And you won’t soon forget the ending.

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