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STEPHEN SMITH: Wildlife photographer Jim Brandenburg sits in a canvas tent pitched in the forest above a frozen wilderness lake in Northern Minnesota.

JIM BRANDENBURG: This is the boreal forest. A lot of Jack pine, spruce, and birch here. Geologically and by many other definitions, this is really more like Canada here than the United States. And we have a great and vast Canadian wilderness just to the north of us and that's probably why we're blessed with this wonderful procession of wild creatures that come down across the border without their passports. The wolves, of course, in this area probably cross the border fairly frequently.

STEPHEN SMITH: This winter evening, Brandenburg opts to leave his cameras back at his cabin. He shoots for National Geographic and other publications and is one of the most prominent wolf photographers in the world. His land near Ely Minnesota is in the thick of us wolf range, but wolves are elusive and difficult to see. Once in a while, Brandenburg howls into the forest and sometimes the wolves respond.

JIM BRANDENBURG: Step out of the tent here and get out where we can hear things a little better.

STEPHEN SMITH: The dusk sky dims to a chilly indigo. There's a strong wind from the north. Chances are we won't hear much.

[HOWLING]

We climb back into the tent hoping to obscure our human scent. Through the triangular door, there's a clear view of the frozen moonlit lake.

(WHISPERING) Right down below us. Yeah, it's probably the alpha male coming to check us out. He's not more than a hundred yards away.

JIM BRANDENBURG: There he is there. He's moving.

STEPHEN SMITH: There's one right behind it.

JIM BRANDENBURG: There's two, three.

STEPHEN SMITH: Three. There's four. There's a fifth animal coming now out of the woods.

JIM BRANDENBURG: Yeah.

STEPHEN SMITH: So it's a pack of five wolves.

JIM BRANDENBURG: They're running north now. They've come to investigate. They assume it's another wolf pack coming, invading their territory, and they came out to fight them.

STEPHEN SMITH: Dark wolf shapes cross the lake. Before long, they discover that the howl was not from another wolf and slipped from view. Most Minnesota wolf packs average about six animals. The alpha male is the dominant character. The mother and offspring generally make up the rest.

JIM BRANDENBURG: This is the first time I've had the quality of the wolf howl be so intimate, and so close, and so varied. The deep throaty voice of probably the alpha male and the high, squealy, more high-pitched whiny howls of probably the yearlings, the pups from this past spring, very discernible. Clearly, the whole family was there. Didn't it sound like there were more like 10 of them?

STEPHEN SMITH: It sounded like that there was an army of them. That's

JIM BRANDENBURG: The wonderful facet of the wolf howl. Again, another aspect of the wolf howl is it wants to give the impression that there are more of them than there really are and that's why they never howl on the same note.

[HOWLING]

STEPHEN SMITH: Wolves are something of a glamour species nowadays. The Hollywood movie Dances with Wolves, recent cover stories in Newsweek and other publications, books, posters, and calendars all are boosting the national image of the wolf. In Minnesota, before European settlement began in the 1800s, wolves were as common a sight as a video store is today. World-renowned wolf expert Dave Mech of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

DAVID MECH: You could have gone originally to any part of Minnesota prairie, or forest, or swamp, or whatever and there would have been a chance of seeing wolves. As the country was settled, as forests were cleared and pastures were instituted, and people began farming and raising livestock, they wiped out the wolves as they went.

STEPHEN SMITH: Wolves were wiped out from every part of the lower 48 states except northern Minnesota forests. Several things saved the wolf here. Substantial tracts of wilderness remain to this day along the northern border, adjacent to an enormous Canadian wilderness with tens of thousands of wolves.

DAVID MECH: I don't know if many people in Minnesota realize this, but from about Hinckley North all the way to the North Pole is wolf range.

STEPHEN SMITH: Another factor in saving wolves was the Federal Endangered Species Act. Since 1974, it's been illegal to kill wolves in the lower 48 states. That protection is part of an overall effort to recover wolf populations in Minnesota, which one study says may have dropped to 300 wolves by the 1960s. Wildlife officials now believe, 1,750 animals may roam the Minnesota woods, a record number. Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist Bill Berg says Minnesota wolves are now migrating west and south within the state as they search for additional territory.

BILL BURG: We can no longer think of the wolf as just an animal of the pristine wilderness. It's gone out into the farm country. It's gone out-- it's really left the forest. It's gone out into the brush land, gone out onto the prairie edge. It's gone down South within 60 miles of the Twin Cities so it's really expanded its range a lot.

STEPHEN SMITH: Wolves are pressing deeper into human range, and wildlife experts say increasing conflicts with humans are the result What riles David [? Reddiatch ?] are the wolves prowling near and on his northern Minnesota farm.

[? DAVID REDDIATCH: ?] We've run a beef cow operation. We have approximately 170 beef cows. And then every spring, these cows have their calves. And they're around here for a month or two. And then about that time, we're getting more grass, and we run short here, and we have to move them to the back part of the farm.

STEPHEN SMITH: The back pastures close to the woods are where wolves attack the cows. Minnesota wolves mainly prey on deer, moose, and beaver, but they'll also go after livestock.

[? DAVID REDDIATCH: ?] We have more trouble seems like shortly after the snow is gone and then the cows start dropping their calves. And then once the deer start fawning, then they move away from our calves and follow the deer around and go after those fawns.

STEPHEN SMITH: Clarence and Hazel Preme also run a livestock farm. Their place is near Bigfork, also in the northern woods.

CLARENCE PREME: We average about 10 calves a year that we aren't accounted for, that are turned out in the spring, and they don't come back in the fall. And we can't definitely say that wolves have got them, but what's taking them?

STEPHEN SMITH: The state of Minnesota maintains a $41,000 annual compensation fund to pay farmers who lose cows, sheep, poultry or other livestock to wolves. The Premes and [? Reddiatchs ?] say it's not only difficult to prove that a wolf is responsible for the kill, but that the payments are often below market prices. So farmers only get reimbursed for a fraction of their losses. Hazel Preme.

HAZEL PREME: $6,000 off the top of anyone's pocketbook is hurting. Yes, cattle haven't got that much profit to them to begin with. So when you take $5,000-- to $6,000 before you get any profit at all, yeah, it hurts.

CLARENCE PREME: Why are we in the United States trying to save the wolves and we're only 80 miles from the Canadian border where they can shoot them, trap them, do what they want more or less? What are we trying to gain in this country when Canada has got millions of wolves? If we want something, we can go up there and they'll give them to us.

STEPHEN SMITH: The Premes and [? Reddiatchs ?] concede that wolves have a place in nature and certainly even a place in Minnesota, but not on their places. David [? Reddiatch ?] says the wolves are just too frustrating to tolerate sometimes.

[? DAVID REDDIATCH ?] Gosh, yeah. You get hardened and you get ticked off.

STEPHEN SMITH: Have you taken action? I am trying to be as legal as I can within the system.

STEPHEN SMITH: So have you shot a wolf, shot wolves on your property?

[? DAVID REDDIATCH ?] I legally cannot shoot wolves. And I don't think I should answer that question because it has come back to haunt people.

[BARKING]

STEPHEN SMITH: Curious thing about humans and wolves is that we once invited them into our homes thousands of years back. Look at a living room variety dog from Shepherd to dachshund and you're also looking at wolf. Wildlife expert Dave Mech.

DAVID MECH: When a dog barks, it's like a wolf giving an alarm bark. When a dog growls to threaten somebody, it's just like a wolf threatening another wolf.

[GROWLS]

The social feelings of the dog, the attachment to the master, or to the family, or whatever is derived from the social bonds that pervade a wolf pack.

STEPHEN SMITH: Wolf photographer Jim Brandenburg.

JIM BRANDENBURG: You take a male dog out to relieve itself, it never-- if it has all its parts-- it never just does it. It runs around the whole yard and marks in little spots. Well, it's marking its territory. That's wolf.

DAVID MECH: They are the original dog and I think that's one of the reasons people are so fascinated with wolves. They're sort of the uncontrollable dog.

STEPHEN SMITH: Fear and hatred of the uncontrollable dog runs deep in many cultures. Minnesota wolf advocate and educator Karlyn Atkinson Berg traces animosity towards the wolf back to the first agricultural settlements on Earth.

KARLYN ATKINSON BERG: The early history of the wolf is often linked with the idea of death, that he is responsible for death or that he either associates with gods and goddesses that are associated with death. Some of those were pagan religions. And then in the Bible, it turns out where he is a symbol of opposition of God's lambs.

And so I think that part of it is true. Things like his yellow eyes, they look right at you. Wolves are highly independent, very intelligent animals and most people really resent that. They want animals to be subservient or frightened of them. And either you do something good for me, like you provide me with food or clothing, or you're really expendable.

STEPHEN SMITH: Karlyn Berg says that evil myths about wolves are far less common in Native American cultures. Jim Brandenburg thinks wolf hatred in the US is distinctly European.

JIM BRANDENBURG: Then it could come from something as simple as a bedtime story when they were four years old about Little Red Riding Hood and eating grandmothers. And it could just simply be that, little stories that are passed down from our European heritage to make kids behave. You better be good or the wolf will get you.

STEPHEN SMITH: Scientists and wolf advocates insist there are virtually no verified modern-day reports of wolves deliberately attacking humans. That's true even in Northern Minnesota where tens of thousands of people canoe, camp, fish, and hunt in the wilderness each year.

BOB CARY: There is one thing, though, which creates considerable animosity and that is the penchant the wolf has for picking off domestic animals and pets.

STEPHEN SMITH: Bob Cary is editor of the Ely Echo Newspaper.

BOB CARY: A wolf is a opportunist. And if he sees a dog that's tethered, it's on a leash, on a wire, he's apt to get it. So what has occurred, we've had quite a few dogs over the last few years and some other pets too, goats and things like that that were killed right in the yard and right in front of the people.

BONNIE MARLA: Want nummy?

[BARKS]

You want cookie?

[BARKS]

Cookie?

[BARKS]

STEPHEN SMITH: In a trailer home on the edge of Ely, Bonnie Marla tries to soothe her agitated sheltie, Sam. A few years ago, Marla had another dog as well, a 14-year-old German shepherd named Duke. Duke spent his days outside on a chain.

BONNIE MARLA: I came home from work one day and he didn't come out and greet me or anything. But it was raining and he didn't like the rain. He never liked the rain. He hated the thunder.

So I was in the house for a little while and I saw his doghouse was moved. And I wondered, why is that doghouse moved that way? So I went out to look. And behind his doghouse, he was laying still attached to his chain. And he was all eaten out.

STEPHEN SMITH: Federal animal control officials trapped four wolves near Marla's trailer and relocated the animals. Marla was told that the wolves considered her dog an invader, a fact of nature in the north country. She didn't find that philosophy very comforting.

BONNIE MARLA: Your animal, if you care enough, are like part of your family. And you lose one, it hurts a long time.

STEPHEN SMITH: Deer hunters have also been traditional enemies of the wolf in Northern Minnesota. Newspaper editor Bob Cary says that hunters are slowly accepting modern research, proving that wolves don't destroy the deer population. The 1991 deer hunting season set a record while the number of wolves was also at an all time high. Even so, Cary says many people living in the area will always hate wolves for the way wolves make a living.

BOB CARY: There's people who have seen wolf kills, where they've killed deer. Now, when they do this, this isn't pretty. They have tremendous power and tremendous fangs. And when they tear a deer up, they tear a deer up.

They shred it and the deer is fighting trying to get loose. To see something like this is pretty traumatic. It's like watching a gang fight in downtown New York with guns.

STEPHEN SMITH: There are people who prefer to view wolves through something other than a rifle scope. This tourist group from the Rocky Mountains hiked up a snowy ridge near Ely, searching enthusiastically for signs of wolf destruction. Group members located the remains of a fawn sprawled in a bloody heap on the snow.

SPEAKER: The freshest tracks came over the highest point on the rock back there to drop in here. So they went up over the top and looked down in first.

STEPHEN SMITH: Wolves have become such a popular animal in other parts of the country, that wolf tourism is a small but growing industry in Northern Minnesota. Weekend wolf excursions are arranged by the Ely-based International Wolf Center and other organizations. The program includes flying over a wolf pack in a small plane, lectures on wolf behavior, and field trips.

[GROWLING]

School teachers and wildlife officials from North Carolina made a stop at Lori Schmidt's place. Lori curates the Wolf Center and is raising a pair of captive wolves for the program. Her male wolf snarled at the visitors in defense of his territory.

LORI SCHMIDT: --directly in the eye. That's another intimidation factor.

HELEN COOK: Yeah, is it true, staring him down-- can you stare him down?

LORI SCHMIDT: Well, I can.

HELEN COOK: My name is Helen Cook and I just wanted to learn more about the wolves. I a lot of people think that the only good wolf is a dead wolf and I wanted to learn more about them.

ANNE LAKE: Anne Lake, I teach seventh grade science. And these wolves just fascinate me. And I just wanted to learn more about them and get some things that I could take back and use with my students to get the word out that the myth about the big bad wolf is incorrect. It's totally false.

HELEN COOK: Dances with Wolves, I was just so impressed with that. My husband was impressed with that, with the wolf. So I wrote Kevin Costner before I came, but he didn't write me back.

[LAUGHS]

[GROWLS]

LORI SCHMIDT: Hookworm, roundworm.

STEPHEN SMITH: Now is your chance to volunteer to be the first one to howl.

SPEAKER: I have a Southern accent.

STEPHEN SMITH: That's great.

SPEAKER: How do you howl?

STEPHEN SMITH: 10:00 PM and 20 below zero, a tour leader took the North Carolina group to a forest roadside for a wolf howl.

[HOWLING]

Good job.

SPEAKER: It's great. It's great!

[CHATTER]

SPEAKER: It was all in the knees, hon.

STEPHEN SMITH: Wolf advocates believe that the money this so-called ecotourism adds to the local economy is helping ease traditional hatred of wolves in Northern Minnesota. Brian O'Neill is an environmental attorney who specializes in wolf issues.

BRIAN O'NEILL: I think the attitudes in Northern Minnesota have changed drastically in the last 15 years to where the wolf is, at least to those who are based in tourist kinds of industries. Everybody from canoe outfitters to resorts to grocery stores is recognized to be an important part of what they have to sell.

STEPHEN SMITH: But wolf tourism may not be so good for the wolves. There are some researchers and wolf advocates who worry that the howling excursions may affect wolf behavior. State wildlife specialist Bill Burg.

BILL BURG: Wolves use howling amongst each other and between packs as a means of social communication. And if people go out and routinely howl at wolves, there's no question that the social order of that pack, somehow the communications are going to get messed up. And that's a real concern now like I know on the Chippewa National Forest.

STEPHEN SMITH: Wolf educator Karlyn Berg.

KARLYN ATKINSON BERG: I think you can do it to a very limited degree. A couple times a year maybe to a pack or something, I don't think that's going to violate them. But I think when it becomes a routine event, I think that could be a problem. And I think that's where it is. There is a fine line between education and exploitation, between a learning experience and just outright harassment.

STEPHEN SMITH: The Fish and Wildlife Service's wolf expert Dave Mech helped establish the International Wolf Center and the wolf excursions. Mech says ecotourism does not concern him.

DAVID MECH: It's hard for me to envision how it could hurt the wolves. Furthermore, we've done the same kind of thing for research purposes for many, many years that is both howling to the wolves and also flying over them for the last 20 years or more. And we have no evidence that that disrupts the wolves in any kind of a significant way. And so no, I don't think that's going to be a problem.

[RADIO STATIC]

SPEAKER: There.

STEPHEN SMITH: On a snowy roadside in Northern Minnesota's Superior National Forest, a Fish and Wildlife Service field technician tunes a strange little radio. Somewhere in the woods a timber wolf is transmitting signals. Dave Mech and his team are on the trail of wolf number 171, a female pup. The wolf has a radio tracking collar bolted around her neck. By transmitting a signal, the researchers can fire a tranquilizer dart built into the radio collar.

DAVID MECH: Are we ready?

SPEAKER: Yep.

SPEAKER: Sending.

DAVID MECH: Point of no return now.

[BEEPS, RADIO STATIC]

Yeah, that-- That means the dart stuck in. You just picture them hopping around a little bit wondering what stung you in the neck.

STEPHEN SMITH: The team locates wolf 171 lying in the snow. They spread a plastic insulating blanket across the animal to keep it warm. Blood samples and other measurements are taken. The wolf's limp tongue hangs from its mouth, but her yellow eyes are wide and unmoving. Lean close and you can hear the wolf breathe.

[SNORTS]

Mech and other wildlife officials believe that Minnesota wolves are now in such strong condition, that in a few years they won't need protection under the Endangered Species Act. Everywhere in the lower 48, wolves are considered endangered except in Minnesota. Here, the wolf is listed as threatened. That's a lower level of concern, but the wolves are still protected from sport hunting and trapping.

SPEAKER: Then to make sure you're--

SPEAKER: Always--

SPEAKER: Yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER: --wash the syringe out with the blood.

STEPHEN SMITH: The federal recovery plan for timber wolves sets a goal of establishing at least 100 wolves in Northern Wisconsin and Michigan as a kind of biological savings account before federal protection could be lifted from Minnesota wolves. Roger Holmes, chief of the wildlife section of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources says there are too many wolves in Minnesota. For years, Holmes and the DNR have argued that the wolf should be cut from the threatened species list so the state could allow a limited hunting and trapping season again.

ROGER HOLMES: Any biologist you talk to in private will acknowledge that the wolf is not threatened or endangered in Minnesota.

STEPHEN SMITH: In the mid 1980s, Minneapolis attorney Brian O'Neill led a successful court fight to prevent a hunting season on Minnesota wolves. O'Neill is one of the leading environmental attorneys in the country. He's prepared to fight for continuation of federal wolf protection. O'Neill points out that much of the land in Minnesota's wolf range is national forest or wilderness.

BRIAN O'NEILL: Those federal lands and those wolves belong to the American people. They don't belong to the few farmers that live up there. And to the extent that those farmers lose an occasional cow or lose an occasional chicken, it's a cost of doing business.

STEPHEN SMITH: Northern Minnesota farmer Hazel Preme is not persuaded by the argument that wolves simply come with the territory.

HAZEL PREME: If you have a store, do you tell the store owner, let pickpockets or thieves come in and steal from you just because you're in a city and you got to expect people to come and steal from your store? No, you hire somebody to police your store. This is a business, the same as the store is a business.

BRIAN O'NEILL: What wolf predation that occurs is marginal.

STEPHEN SMITH: Again, Brian O'Neill.

BRIAN O'NEILL: It happens to so few animals and to so few farms in wolf range that it's a demonstration that wolves and humans can, in fact, coexist. It's also a demonstration of the fact that there are, to the extent wolves and humans don't coexist, two things you can do. You can pay the people who lose the animals and you can go in and remove the offending wolves.

STEPHEN SMITH: Each year in Minnesota, some 60 to 90 offending wolves are trapped and generally killed through a federal predator control program. Government figures suggest that wolves are killing livestock much more frequently than in the past. Some scientists think the protection from hunting and trapping over the last two decades may have made wolves less wary of humans and populated areas.

SPEAKER: It has been proven that sometimes a group howl will elicit a response where a single one will not.

SPEAKER: Because they feel threatened?

SPEAKER: So we're going to do a group howl now?

SPEAKER: Who knows? Who knows why they respond to a group, but this is your chance, yes--

SPEAKER: OK, let's all do it.

SPEAKER: To do a little practice here, right.

[HOWLING]

STEPHEN SMITH: Minnesota wolves are drawing national attention now from more than just ecotourism groups. Wolves here carry a political burden for wolves elsewhere in the lower 48. The bitter debate between ranchers and environmentalists over reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park may hinge in part on how well wolves and humans manage to live together in Minnesota. Minnesota DNR wildlife expert Bill Burg gets frequent calls from ranchers wondering what to expect.

BILL BURG: Out west, once the ranchers get a taste of wolf depredations, they're going to have a really bad taste in their mouth. Wolves might make a little inroads into their livelihood. And it certainly happened in Northern Minnesota.

STEPHEN SMITH: Minneapolis attorney Brian O'Neill is leading the Yellowstone reintroduction effort. He says, wolves simply belong in the park. O'Neill is convinced that most Americans would agree.

BRIAN O'NEILL: I think the American public, the world's public has come to the conclusion that we're paving the world and destroying its wildlife and that we run the risk of living in a world in which the only animals are going to be rats, mosquitoes, blackbirds, and carp. And with the eradication of wild lands and wild things, creatures like the wolf take on an added importance.

STEPHEN SMITH: Wildlife photographer Jim Brandenburg believes that wolves are so controversial and so attractive because they test America's tolerance for wild creatures. When we protect the wolf, we protect its wilderness habitat and the other things that live there.

JIM BRANDENBURG: And now I'm using the wolf to tell the story of the environment. Not just wolf story, but as a symbol of nature and how man perceives nature. So we take the most hated element of nature perhaps and popularly hated and turning that around to something that's almost worshipped now. And I use it as a device to get into people's hearts, and souls, and talk about nature in general. That if we can turn people around from hating and being afraid of wolves to at least respecting them, maybe even loving them, maybe we can do that for a lot of other things.

[HOWLING]

A Place for the Wolf was produced and narrated by Stephen Smith, technical director Craig Thorson, executive producer Loren Omoto. This program is a production of Minnesota Public Radio.