Lobo (The King of Currumpaw)

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Lobo, Blanca and the Currumpaw pack

"Lobo - The King of Currumpaw"
Author	Ernest Thompson Seton
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Fact based short story
Publication date	1899

Ernest Thompson Seton, in Wild Animals I Have Known (1899), tells the true story of Lobo, a large wolf who lived near the Currumpaw cattle ranch in New Mexico. During the 1890s, Lobo and his pack having been deprived of their natural prey by settlers, turned to the settlers' livestock. The ranchers tried to kill Lobo and his pack by poisoning carcasses. But the wolves removed the poisoned pieces and threw them aside. They tried to kill the wolves with traps and by hunting parties but all failed. Ernest Thompson Seton was tempted by the challenge and the $1,000 bounty to try to get Lobo the pack leader. He tried poisoning five baits carefully covering traces of human scent. The following day all the baits was gone. Seton assumed Lobo would be dead. But subsequently he found his five baits all in a pile covered in other "evidence" that Lobo was responsible.

Seton got new special traps and carefully concealed them in Lobo's territory. But he found Lobo's tracks leading from trap to trap exposing each. Finally Seton managed to trap Lobo's mate Blanca with the hidden traps. When Seton found her she was howling for her mate. Lobo answered her call. Seton and his friends lassood her galloped their horses in opposite directions ripping Blanco's body apart. Seton heard the howls of Lobo for days afterward. Lobo's calls were described by Seton as having "an unmistakable note of sorrow in it... It was no longer the loud, defiant howl, but a long, plaintive wail."

Despite the danger Lobo followed Blanco's scent to Seton's ranch house where they had taken the body. Seton then set many more traps and used Blanco's body to scent them. Within a few days, Lobo was caught with all four legs in four traps. On Seton's approach, Lobo stood despite his injuries, and howled. Seton and his friends roped Lobo, muzzled him and secured him to a horse and took him back to the ranch. Later at the ranch Lobo wouldn't look at any of his captors and they secured him with a chain and he just gazed across the prairie. The next day they found him dead.

Lobo's pelt is kept at the Ernest Thompson Seton Memorial Library and Museum at the Philmont Scout Ranch near Cimarron, New Mexico.

Until his death in 1946, Seton championed the wolf - an animal that had always previously been demonised.

"Ever since Lobo," Seton was later to write, "my sincerest wish has been to impress upon people that each of our native wild creatures is in itself a precious heritage that we have no right to destroy or put beyond the reach of our children."

Seton's story of Lobo touched the hearts of many both in the US and the rest of the world and was partly responsible for changing views towards the environment and provided a spur for the starting of the conservationist movement. The story had a profound influence on one of the world's most acclaimed broadcasters and naturalists David Attenborough. Lobo's story was the subject of a BBC documentary directed by Steve Gooder in 2007.

[edit] References

Gooder, Steve (2007) Lobo: The Wolf that Changed America (Brian Leith Productions - TV Documentary),
Goodchild, William, composer (2007) Lobo: The Wolf that Changed America (http://www.williamgoodchild.com)
McIntyre, Rick (ed.). 1995. War Against the Wolf. Voyageur Press, Stillwater (http://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Wolf-Americas-Exterminate/dp/0896582647)
Nilsson, Gretta, 2005 Animal Welfare Institute (http://www.endangeredspecieshandbook.org/)
Seton, Ernest Thompson, 1899 Wild Animals I Have Known, Scribners (http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Animals-I-Have-Known/dp/0486410846)