Never Cry Wolf: The Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves

Farley admits in his preface that, originally, any book he wrote about his excursion to the Barrens would focus on the arbitrary power of government bureaucrats and the folly of those who consider themselves scientists. Though his fascination with and admiration for wolves overwhelmed the primacy of his original topic, the author still records many examples of the absurd decisions and abysmal inefficiency of his colleagues and superiors. Readers might note that, before attending college and ending up in the Canadian government’s Dominion Wildlife Service, Farley spent several years in the European theater of World War II. Having experienced mortal conflict in which the decisions of ranking officers can have life-or-death consequences, readers might guess that the assumption of military ranks by the Wildlife Service’s officers might insult Farley, particularly when he—who had earned the rank of captain on the battlefield—heard his superiors call him “Lieutenant Mowat.”

The narrative commences with Farley’s recitation of how superiors chose him to head The Lupine Project, the news of which comes to him with a blatant warning from his direct supervisor that his report should support the prevailing belief that wolves wantonly butcher caribou. This implication—that civil servants and elected officials kowtow to special interests and public sentiment rather than going where the science leads them—occurs repeatedly. When describing budding scientists and wildlife colleagues, Farley points out that the chief concern of many is protecting their specific, often minute, fields of study, writing, “…my fellow students were already establishing themselves in various esoteric specialties, most of which they invented for themselves on the theory that if you are the only specialist in a given field you need fear no competition…” (9-10). From Farley’s perspective, not much real, useful science occurred through the auspices of governmental offices.

However, the immediate implications of his government’s inefficiency reveal themselves after Farley’s embarkation. The desiderata that accompany him—$4000 worth of supplies and scientific equipment—end up sitting in Churchill, Manitoba, for weeks because Farley’s superiors did not provide transportation or assistants to move the trove to the mission site. Even worse, they had not determined a specific mission site, further preventing Farley from securing a pilot to transport him and his gear to the wilderness. The pilot who does transport him deposits Farley in the middle of a frozen lake. Attempting to contact his superiors, who are approximately 1,500 miles away, Farley learns his radio has a range of 20 miles and a battery life of six hours. Farley occasionally prints direct quotations from the official orders provided to him. The officious, highly detailed language of his instructions reveals that his superiors had no clear idea of what he would face. For instance, Farley receives a canoe (actually, he procures a substitute canoe in Churchill since half of the government’s canoe ends up with another researcher in Saskatchewan) and directions to use the waterways immediately to locate wolf populations; his superiors are unaware that all water in the region will remain frozen for several more months.

Readers may discover that those who criticize Farley’s book, among them fellow scientists, primarily focus on the factual accuracy of his observations about wolves. There seem to be few contradictions or apologies for his observations about governmental inefficiency.