Description

Travel with Bennett-Watt and discover the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minnesota, a museum that focuses exclusively on wolves.

Transcript

The International Wolf Center in Minnesota Jim Watt: On the outskirts of Ely the International Wolf Center. Jim Williams: There are 3000 wild wolves surrounding us throughout the northern portion of the state and right here in the middle of it we have really the ultimate wolf educational experience in the world. We’ve got one of the foremost museum exhibits of 20th century here of wolves and humans. We’ve got an outstanding live wolf exhibit where people can actually see this, the loss of prey of birds, exhibits for children, programs here and now in the surrounding countryside, so it’s just a really new experience for adults and families. Well, wolves depend on human beings for survival and if we accommodate their needs they’ll survive. If we don’t they will not and people for whatever reason the wolves are both very powerful emotions for people and people tend to demonize them or to view them as angels and those two extremes neither one founded on facts and it tends to lead people to decision that are bad for wolves and so what we’re trying to do is to just bring everybody together on a shared ground of fact where they can make reasonable decisions, reasonable decisions that we rule for wolves in a while. I think part of it is that we see so much of ourselves and then they live an extended family groups. They have rich social lives with computing for opportunities to make risking their lives forth to bring food to their pups. They’re nurturing and they’re ferocious. There’s a kind of drama that goes on up there in a while that’s just very compelling task. I think also they’re so similar to our closest friends the domestic dogs that we feel like we can relate to them a little bit more than say we might be able to repair which has a little more alien. More people have to take away an appreciation for what wolves bring to the world in terms of the sense of wildness that they add to their world, their beauty, their intelligence but also an appreciation for the challenges that they cause for people. Sometimes they do kill live stocks and sometimes they do kill cats and appreciation is really what we want to come over with.