Research-Land Of The Lost Wolves

The land of the lost wolves is a nature documentary published in 2012. This documentary series sees the cameras following a very special wolf pack to the snowy peaks of Washington's cascade mountains.  They are the first to return to the American Northwest in 70 years. Wolves were wiped out across much of America, with more than a million wolves estimated to have been shot, poisoned or trapped when European settlers arrived. Wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan and a team of wolf experts discover that most of the pack have been killed by locals.


The thing that stuck out to me the most was the negative quotes and footage of the locals in the documentary, that contrasted with the positives shown in the documentary made it stand out to me more. This is something that I would like to explore within my work.

Here are some quotes from the locals from the documentary:

• "Shoot, shovel and shut up"
• "I will shoot it to protect my property, livestock and my family"
• "We're out to get rid of the Canadian wolves"
• "I am for a hunting season were a wolf can be taken by dynamite, AR15's, everything goes when you're hunting wolves"

During my research on wolves I touched upon wolf hunting. Although a horrible subject I want to include this in my documentary as i don't want to shy away from the truth of the servarity of the hunting that still goes on today. In doing this i think it will give my documentary the shock factor and will draw people in. Similarly to that done in 'Land of the lost wolves', as it shows the locals comments as well as pictures of people wolf hunting illegally. 

I found this clip explain Aerial wolf hunting, as well of clips of it taking place. I feel that this has potential to feature in my documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr183lk-wQk

Dialogue from clip- “Aerial hunting in Alaska is one of the states secrets. You need a low flying, slow flying aircraft like a super cub. There’s a pilot and sitting behind him is a gunner. And they’re using a shotgun, typically a 12 gate shot gun. It’s in the winter when they can track them and then see them. They’re shooting down onto them and usually one would hope they would get killed straight away, but they often don’t. They’re getting riddled with bug shot and not dying and biting at there backs, in absolute agony and there’s blood everywhere on the snow, it’s not a clean kill. In many cases they can’t even hit the wolf from the air, so what they do is chase them until they’re totally exhausted, and then they land and shoot them. It’s a brutal way to go.”