An elegant and imaginative account that readdresses the place of the wolf in modern Scotland from “the best nature writer working in Britain today” (Los Angeles Times Book Review).
In The Last Wolf, Jim Crumley explores the place of the wolf in Scotland—past, present and future—and challenges many of the myths that have been regarded for centuries as biological fact. Bringing to bear a lifetime’s immersion in his native landscape and more than twenty years as a professional nature writer, Crumley questions much of the written evidence on the plight of the wolf in light of contemporary knowledge and considers the wolf in today’s world, an examination that ranges from Highland Scotland to Devon and from Yellowstone in North America to Norway and Italy, as he pursues a more considered portrait of the animal than the history books have previously offered. Within the narrative, Crumley also examines the extraordinary phenomenon of wolf reintroductions physically transforming the landscapes in which they live; that even the very colors of the land change under the influence of teeming grasses, flowers, trees, butterflies, birds, and mammals that flourish in their company. Crumley makes the case for their reintroduction into Scotland with all the passion and poetic fervor that has become the hallmark of his writing over the years.
“Jim Crumley’s task is to persuade the human beings of the Highlands that all of our lives would be richer in the presence of wolves. It is, as he acknowledges, a difficult task. If everybody in Scotland was to read The Last Wolf it would become immeasurably easier.” —Roger Hutchinson, author of The Butcher, the Baker, the Candle-Stick Maker

Wolves