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Documentary, BBC Natural World Lobo, The Wolf that Changed America:
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AnimalsTranscript
00:00Let's go.
00:30Coming out west to hunt wolves was an impulse thing.
00:37I never imagined it would change my life.
00:45In the autumn of 1893, a man called Ernest Thompson Seton came to New Mexico.
00:53These were the dying days of the old Wild West,
00:56and Seton's mission was to hunt down the last of the outlaws,
01:01the outlaw wolves.
01:04But what began as a two-week job turned into an epic duel.
01:11A duel that would touch Seton's heart.
01:18And one which, in the end,
01:20helped to change forever America's relationship with its wilderness.
01:26And it was all because of one remarkable animal.
01:30When I was a boy of ten, I was given this book,
01:41Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton.
02:01And it had a huge effect upon me.
02:04Seton was a trapper naturalist working on the prairies of North America.
02:09And his first story is about Lobo,
02:13a wolf that he was hired to trap.
02:17And it shows wolves to be brave, fearless,
02:21touchingly loyal to one another.
02:23I've never forgotten it.
02:24The stage for the drama could hardly be wider or more epic.
02:46New Mexico, in the American southwest,
02:49is a land where the rolling prairies meet the foothills of the Rockies.
02:57By 1893, the year Seton came to hunt wolves,
03:02this was a land being swept by profound change.
03:06The modern world was steaming in.
03:15Settlers were arriving by the trainload.
03:20What had recently been the land of the Apache and the buffalo
03:24was now the land of opportunity.
03:30Livestock were pouring in.
03:33Ranching was big business.
03:36But the Old West hadn't completely disappeared.
03:45Parts of northern New Mexico were still untamed.
03:50In the remote Corumpa Valley,
03:53wild wolves still roamed the canyons.
03:58A vicious war was underway
04:00to exterminate the last of these cattle killers.
04:04One of these wolves, however,
04:12seemed to possess an almost supernatural ability to cheat death.
04:18Help!
04:19Seton soon heard about this super wolf from the cowboys.
04:33He was known as Lobo.
04:36King of the Corumpa.
04:38Lobo and his band of outlaws were blamed for killing hundreds of cattle.
04:47And, not surprisingly,
04:49the cattle barons and their cowboys wanted him dead.
04:52In many ways,
04:57Seton was the perfect assassin.
05:00He'd hunted wolves for bounty money before,
05:03and written a manual for his fellow trappers on how to catch them.
05:07He even claimed that one of his Scottish ancestors had wiped out the last remaining wolves in the British Isles.
05:22But behind the gun lay a more complex character.
05:29Seton was a naturalist who had grown up in the backwoods of Canada,
05:33with a real love and fascination for nature.
05:38He was also an artist,
05:40trained in Paris and London,
05:41whose favourite subjects were the wild animals of North America.
05:45The story of the hunt for Lobo is the story of a divided man.
06:01On the one hand,
06:03a romantic whose heart was with the wilderness and its wild creatures.
06:07And on the other,
06:13a hired hunter who,
06:15like the cowboys,
06:16saw wolves as somehow different from the other animals,
06:20as wanton killers
06:21that had to be dealt with.
06:24I am to get bored and lodging,
06:27all expenses,
06:28and bounty monies,
06:30in exchange for which I shall rid the cowboys of their demon wolf.
06:34I think two weeks should be enough to catch the pest.
06:56Little did Seton know the remarkable wolf he was up against.
07:00The wild and romantic story that follows
07:06is based entirely on the journal that Seton kept at the time,
07:11and the book he subsequently wrote.
07:14It is, according to Seton,
07:16almost completely true.
07:18The animals,
07:22he later wrote,
07:23were real characters who lived the lives I have depicted.
07:28And yet,
07:28Seton made such surprising,
07:30almost heroic claims about Lobo and his pack,
07:33that we're bound to wonder how much of it we can really believe.
07:36A dread of this Lobo has spread among the ranchmen,
07:45and now the price set on his head is $1,000,
07:48a record bounty for a wolf.
07:53He is my number one target.
07:55Seton had come to New Mexico equipped to wage a poison campaign,
08:08a tried and tested method from his wolf-hunting days in Canada.
08:13A piece of meat laced with a few drops of strychnine
08:17makes a good wolf bait.
08:19The poison causes violent spasms,
08:21and the victim soon dies of asphyxiation.
08:25But it's crucial that the bait is free from the taint of metal
08:29or any trace of human scent,
08:31where the wolf will get suspicious and avoid it.
08:41It was late October.
08:43Seton set about laying his first baits.
08:51Over the following days,
08:53he made a series of wide circuits around the plains,
08:57dropping a piece of poisoned meat every so often,
09:01taking care not to touch them with his hands
09:03or to get off his horse.
09:09Seton, the man who had written a textbook on how to catch a wolf,
09:13was confident that his expertly prepared baits
09:17would soon bring him his $1,000 bounty.
09:20Alongside his hunt for Lobo,
09:39Seton also pursued his love of nature,
09:42taking every chance to learn more
09:45about the wild inhabitants of the Korumpur.
09:48At first, this place seemed uninviting
09:52compared to the lush prairies of Manitoba,
09:55but the more I explore,
09:57the more I realize it's a paradise.
10:01Every spiny bush is teeming with life,
10:05and every day I make new friends
10:07and learn new facts.
10:08I was amazed to see the prairie chickens still dancing in the fall.
10:19Provided they're fat and fit,
10:21they seem to like nothing better than a shimmy.
10:24They share the plains with hundreds of prairie dogs,
10:37and as far as I can see,
10:39these little yap rats never go more than 100 yards from home.
10:43Every burrow's a plunge hole,
10:46a sheer drop for rapid escape.
10:48Seton the naturalist may have been cramming his notebooks with observations,
11:02but his hunt for Lobo was about to suffer a humiliating setback.
11:06November 3rd.
11:10I set out in the afternoon to check my baits,
11:12and soon picked up Lobo's tracks.
11:18His monstrous paw print is unmistakable.
11:22It measures over five inches from claw to heel,
11:25which must put him at around 150 pounds.
11:28Further ahead, I found that Lobo had come to one of my baits,
11:38sniffed at it, and then picked it up.
11:41I galloped on with eager eyes,
11:44expecting to find him dead within a mile.
11:47A second bait had been taken,
11:50and then a third,
11:51but though I scanned the brush,
11:53I saw nothing that looked like a dead wolf.
11:55At the fourth bait,
11:58I discovered that Lobo hadn't really taken my baits at all,
12:01but had merely carried them in his mouth.
12:05Then, having piled the three baits on top of the fourth,
12:09he'd scattered filth over them
12:11to express his utter contempt for my devices.
12:18Descriptions like this seem far-fetched.
12:22Just how clever are wolves?
12:23Could Lobo really have played a joke on Seton?
12:29Since Seton's time,
12:31we've learnt a lot more about wolf behaviour.
12:35Today, Yellowstone National Park
12:37supports a thriving population of wild wolves,
12:40which are closely monitored by scientists.
12:43With over 20 years' experience of tracking and studying wolves,
12:50Doug Smith is one of the world's leading experts,
12:53and uniquely qualified to assess what Seton wrote.
12:58Seton was imputing these powers of ridicule to the wolves
13:04that really are beyond them.
13:06Wolves really don't care about us,
13:08but it's well-known among wolf biologists
13:11that when you trap and catch wolves a lot,
13:15they get educated.
13:17You teach them how to avoid you catching them.
13:21The wolves that were left were getting educated
13:23by the traps and the guns and the poison
13:25that people were using to kill them,
13:27and so what Seton encountered in some ways
13:31was the best of the best.
13:46Seton had come to New Mexico
13:48as a hard gun to do a dirty job,
13:51expecting to stay for a couple of weeks.
13:55But Lobo continued to elude him,
13:58and as the weeks stretched into months,
14:00the untamed beauty of the land began to cast its spell.
14:04He was falling in love with the West.
14:11He was also learning of the old days,
14:15when the wild game abounded
14:16and the wilderness was unspoiled.
14:20I can usually reckon on seeing
14:22a dozen or more pronghorn on the plains,
14:25but everyone says that these bands are nothing
14:28compared with the huge herds of days gone by.
14:32This land is vast,
14:35but beyond these horizons,
14:36America is busy growing like an ugly, overfed brat,
14:40too healthy to slow down,
14:42too young and ambitious to care about
14:45what it destroys along the way.
14:48In the Kurumpo,
14:50Seton had plenty of time
14:52to think about America's dwindling wildlife.
14:56Only a few years earlier,
14:58there had still been buffalo on the plains.
15:02One of the cowboys saw a small herd
15:05not far from here in 88,
15:07just five winters back.
15:09These would have been
15:12the very last survivors
15:13in the entire Southwest.
15:20For tens of thousands of years,
15:23wolves had survived
15:25by hunting one of North America's
15:27most formidable prey species.
15:32They had pitted their wits
15:34against the sheer size
15:35and ferocity of the buffalo.
15:37This required teamwork.
15:42It was little wonder
15:43that wolves had evolved
15:44into such highly intelligent animals
15:46with intimate family bonds.
15:51After the buffalo,
15:53a cow was a piece of cake.
15:55The wolf problem clearly
16:00is something that we have created.
16:03First, we annihilated
16:05the great herds of buffalo
16:07that the wolves depended on for food.
16:09Then we filled the prairies
16:11with our defenseless cattle.
16:14I am told that Lobo's band alone
16:16kills a cow every day.
16:18Lobo's pack could slice through livestock
16:29like a knife through butter.
16:33Wolves probably could have killed
16:35as much livestock as Seton described.
16:38Livestock was vulnerable
16:39and helpless.
16:41We bred their natural defenses
16:43out of them.
16:44And wolves are intelligent
16:46and they had figured that out.
16:49And so wolves have a mentality,
16:51really,
16:52of kill everything you can.
16:56Seton still had the job to do.
16:59And after the failure
17:00of his poisoned baits,
17:02he now brought out a new weapon.
17:04The double-spring steel wolf trap.
17:10Perhaps a more muscular approach
17:13would defeat the wily Lobo.
17:18Darren Brown lives today
17:20just a few miles north of the Korumpo
17:22on a ranch where Seton
17:24is known to have stayed.
17:26In fact,
17:27some of Seton's actual traps
17:29were left here
17:30with Darren's grandfather
17:32in this very barn.
17:34Number 4 1⁄2 wolf trap.
17:37This is one of the actual traps
17:38that Seton used
17:40to try to catch Lobo.
17:43These traps are designed
17:45to grab and hold their victims
17:47rather than kill them.
17:49I'm going to put some soft dirt in here
17:51so the trap will set just right.
17:55All the time,
17:56keep in mind
17:58this is a real trap.
18:00It'd catch me as well
18:00as any animal.
18:01The wolf will actually
18:03put his foot on this
18:04is what triggers it to go off.
18:07Now,
18:07I want to keep an open area
18:08under the trap pan
18:11so that when the animal
18:12steps on it,
18:13it'll actually spring the trap.
18:15If you had dirt underneath it,
18:17it wouldn't go off.
18:19It'd just sit there.
18:21A real key element
18:22is to make this
18:23about as natural
18:25with the ground around it
18:26as you can.
18:30Okay.
18:32Nothing exposed.
18:36Now we have the trap set.
18:37Though it's over 100 years old,
18:39it still functions perfectly.
18:40It's just designed to catch it
18:51and still get blood circulation
18:54to their foot.
18:58This is also hooked to a drag.
19:01As it goes along the ground,
19:02it'll get caught in a cactus
19:03or a tree
19:04or anything along the way.
19:06It slows them up enough.
19:07It leaves a mark on the ground
19:08and then you can follow the animal.
19:19December 13th.
19:21This afternoon,
19:22I went up the West Canyon
19:23with rancher Bill Allen
19:25and we put out a dozen traps
19:27along one of Lobo's trails,
19:29always taking care
19:30to cover our scent and tracks.
19:35Catching Lobo
19:36was becoming an obsession.
19:39Seton simply didn't see wolves
19:41the way he saw
19:42other wild creatures.
19:44Unlike wolves,
19:45which were killers,
19:46animals like elk
19:47didn't threaten anyone's livelihood.
19:51On the contrary,
19:53like the buffalo
19:54and the pronghorn,
19:55elk were now themselves
19:56in decline,
19:57the victims of overhunting
19:59by man.
20:03Seton's love affair
20:04with New Mexico
20:05was deepening by the day.
20:07In fact,
20:08his concern
20:09for all of North America's wildlife
20:11was very likely awakening.
20:15But when it came to wolves,
20:18Seton was still thinking
20:19in the old way.
20:22Throughout history,
20:23we've demonized wolves,
20:25seen them as wanton,
20:27bloodthirsty killers,
20:28almost the embodiment of evil.
20:30Thursday,
20:36December 14th.
20:37I rode out
20:38to check my traps
20:39and soon came upon
20:40Lobo's trail.
20:43In the dust,
20:44I could read
20:44the whole story
20:45of his doings
20:46the previous night.
20:49He'd run along
20:50through the scrub
20:51for a few hundred yards,
20:52then turned
20:53towards my traps.
20:54But upon reaching
20:56the first one,
20:57he'd scratched up
20:58stones and earth
20:59till he'd sprung the trap
21:00and made it safe.
21:03Continuing along the trail,
21:05Seton discovered
21:06that Lobo
21:07had disarmed
21:08over a dozen
21:09of his traps
21:10in the same way.
21:12How could he have seen
21:14through Seton's clever plan
21:15so easily?
21:17Wolves are very,
21:18very observant
21:19of their environment.
21:21They pay attention
21:22to a degree
21:22that people have
21:23a hard time fathoming.
21:25They're just
21:26extremely attentive
21:28to every little thing
21:29in their environment.
21:31They knew Seton
21:32was after him
21:33and his other cowboys.
21:35And so they became
21:36very attuned
21:37to his tricks.
21:38And once they learn
21:39about traps,
21:40about steel,
21:42they become
21:43hyper-observant.
21:44That's all they were doing.
21:46The wily wolf
21:48had outwitted Seton
21:49once again.
21:52It was going to be
21:54a long winter.
22:03Week after week,
22:04I vary my methods
22:05and redouble
22:06my precautions,
22:07yet there is only
22:08defeat after defeat.
22:12The cowboys complain
22:13bitterly of their losses,
22:15and each night
22:15old Lobo mocks me
22:17with his triumphant howl.
22:20December 24th,
22:21went in the afternoon
22:23to trail wolves.
22:24Saw only coyotes
22:25and jackrabbles.
22:27Wolves have killed
22:27three cattle
22:28and a colt.
22:29Damn it.
22:30Christmas day,
22:301893.
22:32Found many wolf tracks
22:33today,
22:34but caught nothing.
22:37January 5th,
22:39bitterly cold.
22:40Fates untied.
22:41January 13th,
22:42got nothing
22:43and saw nothing.
22:44Today I've ridden
22:45without rest
22:46or stop.
22:47Between 35
22:48and 40 miles.
22:51I am facing
22:53total humiliation.
23:10After months of failure,
23:13Seton must have been
23:14at his wit's end.
23:16He hadn't even clapped eyes
23:18on Lobo.
23:19What he desperately needed
23:21was a lucky break.
23:25And eventually,
23:26that's exactly
23:28what he got.
23:31I camped out
23:32above the creek,
23:33close to where
23:34the snow geese
23:34and cranes are wintering.
23:36They spend the nights
23:37huddled together
23:38in the marsh,
23:39beyond the reach
23:40of the coyotes
23:41and the wolves.
23:41It was the commotion
24:04of the geese
24:04that led me
24:05to the clue
24:06I so badly needed.
24:07I recognized
24:22Lobo's mark instantly
24:24and then noticed
24:26a second set of tracks.
24:28Always, it seemed,
24:29running out in front.
24:30Wherever these smaller tracks
24:33led,
24:34old Lobo
24:34was sure to follow,
24:36leaping
24:37and rolling
24:37in the mud.
24:45Suddenly,
24:46I realized
24:47what was going on.
24:51The old Marauder
24:53was in love.
24:54Seton knew immediately
25:05that the she-wolf
25:06was his big chance.
25:09A cynical new plan
25:10formed in his mind.
25:14During the breeding season,
25:15which apparently
25:16a lot of his story
25:18took place,
25:19that male is tending
25:21that female
25:21extremely closely.
25:23He rarely leaves
25:24her side
25:25during that time period.
25:28I chase wolves
25:29with a helicopter.
25:30It doesn't hurt them.
25:31We have to do it.
25:32But when we move in on them,
25:34it's during the mating season,
25:35and you can always tell
25:37who's the breeding pair
25:37because they will not separate.
25:40And so they're moving around
25:42in their own little orbit
25:43of two,
25:44and the rest of the pack
25:45breaks up
25:46and goes every which way.
25:49That male wolf,
25:50the alpha male,
25:51sticks right with that female.
25:54I soon learned more
26:01about Lobo's mate
26:02from the shepherds.
26:04They call her Blanka
26:05because of her white coat,
26:06and they say she leads
26:08Lobo a merry dance.
26:09This tallies with the tracks
26:11I saw at the creek
26:12and has suggested
26:13a way to catch her.
26:15Let's see if that's right,
26:16sir.
26:17That's good,
26:18that's good.
26:19Right there.
26:19Cunningly,
26:20Seton first placed traps
26:22rather obviously
26:23around a dead cow,
26:25guessing that Lobo
26:26would stop
26:26and try to disarm them.
26:28While he was thus diverted,
26:30Seton hoped that Lobo's mate Blanka
26:32would run on
26:33to investigate
26:34the head of the cow
26:35which Seton had cut off
26:36and put to one side.
26:39It could only be approached
26:41through a narrow passage
26:42between rocks
26:43and it was here
26:45that Seton planted
26:46several of his best traps,
26:48properly deodorized
26:50and concealed
26:51with the utmost care.
27:09Wednesday, January 24th.
27:11This evening,
27:12I am more excited
27:13and yet more anxious
27:14than I have been
27:15in three long months.
27:18Try as I might,
27:20I cannot get to sleep.
27:41I cannot get the body
27:42but I cannot get Easterly.
27:43I cannot get an Easterly.
27:45I cannot get her.
27:50Say,
27:55now watch a very前.
27:56Oh, my God.
28:26The following morning, Seton went up the canyon, hoping that at last he had struck a blow against Lobo.
28:36He was in luck. Blanca had walked right into his trap.
28:45According to Seton, Lobo remained close by, reluctant to leave his mate.
28:51But it would have been suicide to stay and face the men's guns.
29:01Seton would later recoil from what he called the inevitable tragedy that followed.
29:06But the plain fact is, he was here to do a job.
29:12He was here to kill wolves.
29:14Success at last.
29:33Success at last.
29:41Seton had claimed his first scalp.
29:45And yet now, with Blanca dead, Lobo was about to touch Seton's heart and change forever the way he saw wolves.
29:56The king of the Korumpo had lost his mate.
29:59Tonight I heard Lobo up in the canyon, and there was an unmistakable note of sorrow in his voice.
30:23It was no longer the loud, defiant howl I had heard so often, but a long, plaintive wail.
30:40Blanca! Blanca!
30:43He seemed to call.
30:44It was sadder than I could possibly have imagined.
30:50I think there is an emotional attachment between wolves in a pack, certainly among a mated pair.
30:58And the example I used is, here in Yellowstone, a wolf died.
31:02A female wolf.
31:03She was the alpha, very similar to Blanca.
31:06She was killed by another pack.
31:08And the alpha male, pardon my way of putting it, seemed to mourn.
31:14He howled for two days after more than anybody had seen him howl.
31:19And he wailed and he wailed and he wailed.
31:20A little bit of what Seton described in his story, we've seen here in the wilds of Yellowstone.
31:33Seton had brought Blanca's body back to his cabin, but the last thing he expected was for Lobo to throw caution to the wind and come looking for her.
31:50Not once has he shown himself in all the months I've pursued him.
32:19Yet now, he scorns his own safety to find his beloved Blanca.
32:28We can only guess what doubts were creeping into Seton's mind.
32:33But it was too late to stop now.
32:41Seton had to strike fast while Lobo's guard was down.
32:45He gathered in all his traps, a hundred and thirty in all, and set them on every approach to his cabin.
32:53Last of all, he used Blanca's scent as a lure to draw Lobo in.
32:59Seton set out the next morning with confidence.
33:12Every outlaw tale has its showdown.
33:15And for Seton and Lobo, the fateful day was January the 31st, 1894.
33:21His plan had worked.
33:35The first thing Seton did was take a photograph.
33:50It's an astonishing record that survives to this day.
33:57Old Lobo, the king of the Korumpo, is clearly visible, caught in four traps, one on each leg.
34:05That's what it had taken to stop this incredible wolf.
34:10Seton had won.
34:22After the long chase, he finally had Lobo at his mercy.
34:26But face to face with his adversary, Seton's resolve faltered.
34:37Perhaps killing Lobo no longer felt like a victory, but a crime.
34:49Perhaps, in his eyes, Lobo was no longer vermin, but a creature with dignity, courageous, loyal, and loving.
35:00Until now, Seton had seen wolves simply as indiscriminate killers.
35:13But they were obviously much more than that.
35:17They were the very embodiment of America's vanishing wilderness.
35:21It's as if the conflict within Seton, between the hunter and the naturalist, was finally resolved.
35:36He decided to take Lobo back alive.
35:44Sadly, it was too late.
35:56Lobo made no resistance to me.
35:59He never once looked at me, but acted as though he was alone on the plains.
36:11His eyes were fixed on the far rolling mesas, his passing kingdom, where his famous band was
36:19now scattered.
36:21When the sun went down, he was still gazing out across the prairie.
36:26But within a few hours, the old King Wolf was dead.
36:35We know that an eagle robbed of his freedom, a lion shorn of his strength, a dove bereft of
36:43his mate.
36:44All die, it is said, of a broken heart.
36:48And so it was with old Lobo, the King of the Kurumpa.
36:55It was Lobo's loyalty to Blanca that had been his downfall.
37:00And now Seton took Lobo to be with her again.
37:14Seton profoundly regretted what he had done.
37:17He never killed another wolf.
37:21When I read Seton's story, to a certain degree, I filtered through a lot of his flowery language.
37:28I looked at it through a biological lens.
37:32Is what these wolves were doing, given the context of the time, which was no to little
37:37natural prey, a laser focus on killing livestock, an incredible ability to avoid traps and guns
37:45and poisons?
37:47Is all that possible?
37:48Absolutely.
37:49Do wolves have an incredibly strong attachment between a mated pair?
37:55Absolutely.
38:00Lobo, the last outlaw wolf of New Mexico, was dead.
38:06The Kurumpa Valley had been silenced.
38:10It was job done.
38:14By 1894, it seemed that virtually all of America's wilderness was destined to be cleaned
38:20up, civilized, and made safe.
38:31Seton had come here in the twilight years of the Wild West, just as the sun was setting
38:37on a magnificent, untamed world.
38:41And he had played his part in its destruction.
38:45If we're inclined to judge Seton harshly, we should remember that in the 1890s, wolves
38:52were cattle killers and could ruin the livelihood of the pioneer ranchers and the cowboys.
38:59But that was not the end of Lobo's impact on the world of men.
39:03In fact, it was just the beginning.
39:05What happened next to Seton and the story he wrote about Lobo would have a profound effect
39:12on the relationship between Americans and their wilderness.
39:15Seton returned east deeply affected by his western adventure and determined to record what had happened.
39:30In the story he wrote, he boldly cast himself as the villain and the wolf as the hero.
39:41His book, Wild Animals I Have Known, was an immediate worldwide hit.
39:47Virtually overnight, it propelled Seton from a little-known naturalist into a major celebrity.
39:55But what really mattered to Seton now was saving America's wilderness before it was too late.
40:02Historian David Witt thinks the turning point can be traced back to a single word in Seton's journal.
40:10He has this last word in the entry, Y. And it's a very big Y. It was even written in large letters.
40:17I thought maybe he was putting down that Y, asking why did the animal die.
40:23Because he follows up with a couple of notes about the physical condition of the animal.
40:27But I think that the Y was much bigger than that.
40:30It really was a Y asking, why are we doing this?
40:33What is our relationship to nature? Why are we destroying it like this?
40:38At a time when few people questioned the destruction of nature, Seton spoke up for the wilderness.
40:45His views about the value of the wild found favor with politicians like Teddy Roosevelt.
40:51And helped to turn the tide of public opinion.
40:58Seton used his influence to push for the creation of more national parks.
41:04Thousands of ordinary Americans became aware of their spectacular natural heritage.
41:10So Seton took a leading role in what became the conservation movement and eventually the environmental movement.
41:20He was talking about our relationship not only to animals but to all of nature.
41:25He was doing it in a very ecological way. He was certainly one of the first ecologists.
41:29Seton also lobbied for hunting restrictions and anti-poaching measures and was instrumental in pushing through radical new laws to protect migrating birds.
41:40He did lobby for environmental legislation, including the first wildlife legislation that protected migratory animals.
41:51And because of Seton, they lobbied Congress and expanded federal government authority to the interstate control of wildlife.
42:01It was a major increase in federal government authority.
42:06And it laid the groundwork for every single piece of environmental legislation that has come after that time.
42:13And it wasn't just a question of saving the wilderness.
42:17Seton felt that people had to experience it in order to care about it.
42:22That it should be a part of everyone's upbringing.
42:24Inspired by the values of Native American culture, he founded the Woodcraft Indians, an organization that taught children many of the skills needed for outdoor life, along with a respect for nature.
42:39Many of these ideas were later adopted as the basis for the Boy Scouts in England.
42:45And Seton himself was a founding father of the Boy Scouts of America.
42:49By the early years of the 20th century, the United States led the world in the conservation of nature.
42:57And tens of thousands of children were heading off to camp in the woods and the mountains.
43:05Seton had been a prime mover in all of this.
43:09And it had all started back in the Korumpo in the autumn of 1893, when he had set out to kill an outlaw wolf called Lobo.
43:19But what about wolves?
43:25Was the new nature-loving America ready to embrace its old enemy?
43:30For decades, Seton was virtually alone in his desire to protect wolves alongside the other wild animals.
43:38It's taken a long time for the rest of America to catch up.
43:42As head of the wolf reintroduction program in Yellowstone, Doug Smith sees his job as trying to complete what Seton began.
43:52The change of heart to wolves has only been going for about 30 or 40 years.
43:55I mean, literally, in the United States, in the 1960s, most people still thought wolves were bad.
44:02And I think what we had is an awakening to a new environmental movement.
44:06And that killing all these predators, wolves and other carnivores, without question for so long,
44:13I think the lightbulb went on in people's heads as, why?
44:19But, I need to be very clear, there is still a large group of people who retain the old view of wolves.
44:26I know people who have come up to me and said,
44:30My grandfather killed off this animal to make life here easier, and you're bringing it back.
44:38So, attitudes have changed, but the old attitudes still exist.
44:42And so, now we're at this very polarized bashing of heads about how to live in this world.
44:49Because some people feel predators like wolves have no place still, as many people felt in Seton's time.
44:57But others are saying, hey, we made a mistake, and we need to bring wolves back.
45:07Seton has had a tremendous impact on where we are today in terms of respecting nature.
45:12And I think enough people, at least in North America, Canadians and Americans recognize that we have maybe overstretched our reach in terms of what we've taken.
45:31Like many a good tale from the Wild West, Lobo's story is a mixture of myth and truth.
45:37On the one hand, we know that Seton could exaggerate.
45:42The reward on Lobo's head was not a thousand dollars, but a mere twelve.
45:48And we know from Seton's diary that Lobo was not a monster of 150 pounds, but an average-sized wolf.
45:55On the other hand, there's a lot of truth in the story.
45:59Many of the traps that Seton used are still there in New Mexico.
46:03There's Seton's photograph of Lobo in one of those traps.
46:08And we have this.
46:12It's the skull of one of the wolves that Seton killed, with Seton's own label still attached.
46:21And the museum that owns it thinks it may well be the skull of Blanca.
46:26Whatever the truth, the important thing about this story is that it depicted wolves in a more realistic and more sympathetic way than anything that had been written before.
46:41The duel between Seton and Lobo may have ended in sad deaths, but it also breathed new life into the Americans' appreciation of the wilderness.
46:54In later life, Seton returned to live in his beloved New Mexico.
47:07I have been much criticized, firstly for killing Blanca and Lobo, but chiefly for telling of it to the distress of many tender hearts.
47:19To this I reply, in what frame of mind are my readers left with regard to the wolf?
47:25Are their sympathies quickened toward the man who killed him, or toward the noble creature who died as he lived, dignified, fearless, and steadfast?
47:40Right up to his death in 1946, Seton continued to reflect on the wolf that changed his life.
47:48Ever since Lobo, 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.
48:06Next tonight on the BBC HD channel, more stunning scenery and, of course, edge-of-the-seat play at Augusta's national course, the final day of the US Masters, coming up in just a moment.
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