Wildlife on the Wind
Wildlife on the Wind
A Field Biologist's Journey and an Indian Reservation's Renewal
In the heart of Wyoming sprawls the ancient homeland of the Eastern Shoshone Indians, who were forced by the U.S. government to share a reservation in the Wind River basin and flanking mountain ranges with their historical enemy, the Northern Arapahos. Both tribes lost their sovereign, wide-ranging ways of life and economic dependence on decimated buffalo. Tribal members subsisted on increasingly depleted numbers of other big game—deer, elk, moose, pronghorn, and bighorn sheep. In 1978, the tribal councils petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to help them recover their wildlife heritage. Bruce Smith became the first wildlife biologist to work on the reservation. Wildlife on the Wind recounts how he helped Native Americans change the course of conservation for some of America's most charismatic wildlife.
Combining history, biology, and memoir, Smith evokes the challenges of one of conservation's least sung professions—the wildlife biologist. In the process, he also recounts an exciting story of how Wyoming's Wind River Indian Reservation restored its wildlife.
—Ted Kerasote, author of Heart of Home: People, Wildlife, and Place
The urgent task of restoring nature must of necessity be carried out by dedicated people who give themselves over to knowing and loving particular places. Bruce Smith is one of those people, and his account vividly illustrates both the hard work of healing and the success that can come when that work pays off.
—Peter Friederici, author of Nature's Restoration
