My day at the UK Wolf Conservation Trust seminar.

Today, 10/05/2009, was the first time for twelve months that I have been to the UK Wolf Centre. I was quite uncertain about going, but in the end curiosity got the better of me, so I went.

Little in the overall layout had changed. There were different things on sale in the shop. Some fences had been extended to take into account things that had been highlighted as safety hazards even before I left. A water feature graces the bottom enclosure, something that had been pressed for over the years. There is a viewing platform over the kennels of that enclosure also. I am told there is a wildlife pond though I never went far enough to find it. There were many new faces and some of the old ones still around. It all looked very tidy, as you would expect for an open day and a fair bit of money has been spent on the additions, far more than in Roger's day when it was "make do and mend".

Torak, Mai and Mosi were on the photo mound. When I spoke to Torak there was a moments hesitation and then memory kicked in and he came to the fence whining and wanting a greeting, joined shortly afterwards by the two girls. A nice episode.

I went to see the Europeans in their enclosure, but me being outside the safety barrier meant that they couldn't get to me or me to them so we just greeted at distance. Alba seemed to be walking quite badly and not nearly as well as when he was getting hydrotherapy.

It was good to see Chris Senior, Eva Love and Ola again. I was pleased to see Ola looking much happier than the last time I saw her, when she was separated from 'her' wolves.

Food was not included so you had to purchase your own. I cannot complain as I had a complimentary ticket for the seminar and Eva bought me soup and a roll, but the food on sale was certainly a big step down from that which was provided at other seminars. There was also no walk with the wolves and so no meet and greets, this also was a departure from the format at other seminars.

The location for the talks was easily found following the directions. Luckily the audience was not large because I think parking would have become an issue if it had been larger. The speakers were known to me, in fact I gave a talk at the same seminar as Claudio Sillero some years ago and I know Marco Musiani quite well.I had heard of Alistair Bath from people who had attended a talk by him some time before.

As always I found both Marco and Claudio interesting once you were able to get into the accents, Argentinian Italian and Canadian Italian can be a bit hard to get into, especially when one followed the other without a break. I must admit that I found Alistair Bath interesting, but as he didn't make clear how long he had been working with this philosophy I didn't realise that he was a pioneer in propounding it and putting it into action which was a shame. I looked him up on the web and found out all about him.

Several years ago at a seminar this same philosophy was being put forward by Carter Neimeyer, one time hunter and at the time the Wolf Recovery Coordinator for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Now retired, his job was to listen to complaints from farmers about wolves killing their stock. In some cases it was necessary to kill wolves if they were a problem, though not in every case. He felt that by listening and letting the farmers know that they had a voice and were being listened to by the government it lessened the illegal killing of wolves. If the government took care of problem wolves then they didn't feel that they had to take things into their own hands, killing wolves indiscriminately. He was of course hated by certain members of the 'no wolf should ever be killed' and the 'all wolves should be killed' factions. His view was that if they were condemning him in equal measure he was probably getting it about right. In the mean time the other wolves prospered and multiplied.

Free drinks and biscuits were on offer at the venue and were much appreciated. All in all it was a nice seminar but I would have to say, not a great seminar.