In early 1958, in the far northern town of Cornucopia, Wisconsin's "last" timber wolf was accidentally run over by an automobile. The "humane" intention to end the animal's suffering produced a grisly aftermath: the wolf survived the impact of the car, was bludgeoned with a tire iron twice but survived, and finally had its throat slit with a restaurant knife. This horrifying scene is certainly an apt (if appalling) symbol of the timber wolf's early fate in Wisconsin. Feared, detested, hunted down for state-authorized bounties, the animal was systematically exterminated as an enemy of man and progress. Yet this bleak chapter in the history of conservation has a happier ending. Seventeen years later, in 1975, the timber wolf had officially reestablished itself and, as a protected species, is now flourishing under the care of Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources. Few can be more caring than the author, a DNR educator in wildlife management. As an inquisitive teenager, Richard Thiel began his pursuit of the Wisconsin timber wolf's story in the mid-1960s and has been at it ever since. The result is this arresting, intensely readable book, a story of fear, mistrust, and misunderstanding that ends, thankfully, as one of hope and appreciation.

Best Tent Camping: Wisconsin, now completely updated for a third edition, continues to lead tent campers to the best of Wisconsin's varied recreational sites. Each profile includes a detailed campground layout map, GPS coordinates, descriptive text, and ratings for security, quiet, and beauty. Wisconsin is rich in both human and natural history. Originally settled by aboriginal Americans who used the ample rivers and lakes for travel, French voyageurs and United States pioneers followed, exploring a land shaped by glaciers and time. Green Bay and Prairie du Chien were settled first as furs, lead, and lumber attracted more settlers. The vast and varied landscape was evident to all who came to the Badger State. They saw sand dune-laden shores of Lake Michigan, lake-studded highlands of the North Woods, the ridges and valleys of the southwest, where the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers cut deep swaths through the land, and the deep gorges cut by dark, fast-flowing rivers forming waterfalls striving for Lake Superior. Today tent campers can enjoy these parcels, each distinct regions of Wisconsin. You can explore the surprisingly hilly terrain of Sidie Hollow, near the Illinois border. The bluffs of Perrot State Park overlook Minnesota. The central state has the remote and wild Black River State Forest, where timber wolves have reclaimed their old domain, with the quiet of East Fork campground returning you to nature. Here also are the big waters of Castle Rock Flowage, where Buckhorn's numerous walk-in tent camping sites await. A tent camper has to take two ferries to reach Rock Island State Park, Wisconsin's "furthest northeast" point. So many lakes dot Wisconsin's North Woods that you can literally camp on two lakes at once, such as Birch Grove campground in the Chequamegon National Forest, or Luna Lake/White Deer Lake campground in the Nicolet National Forest. And then there are the waterfalls of the North Woods. Marinette County calls itself the waterfall capital of Wisconsin. Two campgrounds in this book are situated along falls in Marinette County, with many other cascades nearby. Yet other falls are featured at other parks in this book. All this spells paradise for the tent camper. No matter what destination you have in mind, Best Tent Camping: Wisconsin is your indispensable guide.

Wolves are some of the world's most charismatic and controversial animals, capturing the imaginations of their friends and foes alike. Highly intelligent and adaptable, they hunt and play together in close-knit packs, sometimes roaming over hundreds of square miles in search of food. Once teetering on the brink of extinction across much of the United States and Europe, wolves have made a tremendous comeback in recent years, thanks to legal protection, changing human attitudes, and efforts to reintroduce them to suitable habitats in North America. As wolf populations have rebounded, scientific studies of them have also flourished. But there hasn't been a systematic, comprehensive overview of wolf biology since 1970. In Wolves, many of the world's leading wolf experts provide state-of-the-art coverage of just about everything you could want to know about these fascinating creatures. Individual chapters cover wolf social ecology, behavior, communication, feeding habits and hunting techniques, population dynamics, physiology and pathology, molecular genetics, evolution and taxonomy, interactions with nonhuman animals such as bears and coyotes, reintroduction, interactions with humans, and conservation and recovery efforts. The book discusses both gray and red wolves in detail and includes information about wolves around the world, from the United States and Canada to Italy, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Israel, India, and Mongolia. Wolves is also extensively illustrated with black and white photos, line drawings, maps, and fifty color plates. Unrivalled in scope and comprehensiveness, Wolves will become the definitive resource on these extraordinary animals for scientists and amateurs alike. “An excellent compilation of current knowledge, with contributions from all the main players in wolf research. . . . It is designed for a wide readership, and certainly the language and style will appeal to both scientists and lucophiles alike. . . . This is an excellent summary of current knowledge and will remain the standard reference work for a long time to come.”—Stephen Harris, New Scientist “This is the place to find almost any fact you want about wolves.”—Stephen Mills, BBC Wildlife Magazine

In this book, we document and evaluate the recovery of gray wolves (Canis lupus) in the Great Lakes region of the United States. The Great Lakes region is unique in that it was the only portion of the lower 48 states where wolves were never c- pletely extirpated. This region also contains the area where many of the first m- ern concepts of wolf conservation and research where developed. Early proponents of wolf conservation such as Aldo Leopold, Sigurd Olson, and Durward Allen lived and worked in the region. The longest ongoing research on wolf–prey relations (see Vucetich and Peterson, Chap. 3) and the first use of radio telemetry for studying wolves (see Mech, Chap. 2) occurred in the Great Lakes region. The Great Lakes region is the first place in the United States where “Endangered” wolf populations recovered. All three states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan) developed ecologically and socially sound wolf conservation plans, and the federal government delisted the population of wolves in these states from the United States list of endangered and threatened species on March 12, 2007 (see Refsnider, Chap. 21). Wolf management reverted to the individual states at that time. Although this delisting has since been challenged, we believe that biological recovery of wolves has occurred and anticipate the delisting will be restored. This will be the first case of wolf conservation reverting from the federal government to the state conser- tion agencies in the United States.