Impact
Never Cry Wolf was a commercial success in Canada. Shortly after its publication, the Canadian Wildlife Service received a deluge of letters from concerned citizens opposing the killing of wolves. Though generally well received by the public, Mowat's allusions of the Canadian Wildlife Service as an organisation set out to exterminate wolves was met with anger from Canadian biologists. CWS staff members argued that the agency had never demanded the extermination of the wolf, which was recognized as an integral part of the northern ecosystem. They further countered that Mowat's remit had not been to find justifications for wolf extermination, but to investigate the relationship between wolves and caribou. The locals were actually hunting the caribou, for a sport and a food source.
As with Mowat's other books, Never Cry Wolf was translated into Russian and published in the Soviet Union. The book's message that wolves were harmless mouse-eaters became influential, leading to popular reaction against Soviet wolf-culling efforts. According to Soviet biologist Mikhail P. Pavlov, writing after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party exploited this message to justify restrictions on firearm ownership in wolf inhabited areas.
Read more about this topic: Never Cry Wolf
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