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Arts & Culture

NATURE: The Wolf That Changed America

This remarkable photograph was taken by Ernest Thompson Seton himself at the very moment when he first discovered Lobo caught in his traps in the Currampaw Valley of New Mexico in the winter of 1894. It took four traps - one on each leg - to stop the clever and deadly wolf in his tracks.
Courtesy of ©Ernest Thompson Seton
This remarkable photograph was taken by Ernest Thompson Seton himself at the very moment when he first discovered Lobo caught in his traps in the Currampaw Valley of New Mexico in the winter of 1894. It took four traps - one on each leg - to stop the clever and deadly wolf in his tracks.

Airs Sunday, October 10, 2010 at 8 p.m. on KPBS TV

Lobo: King of the Currumpaw

View and download the new NATURE Comic Book: “Lobo: King of the Currumpaw.”

"The Wolf That Changed America" is the true story of Ernest Thompson Seton, the wolf named Lobo and the start of America's environmental movement.

In 1893, a bounty hunter named Ernest Thompson Seton journeyed to the untamed canyons of New Mexico on a mission to kill a dangerous outlaw. Feared by ranchers throughout the region, the outlaw wasn’t a pistol-packing cowboy or train-robbing bandit. The outlaw was a wolf.

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Lobo, as locals simply called him, was the legendary leader of a band of cattle-killing wolves that had been terrorizing cattle ranchers and their livestock. Known as the “King of the Currumpaw,” Lobo seemingly had a mythical ability to cheat death, eluding the traps that ranchers had set for him throughout the countryside.

It was up to Seton, a naturalist as well as a professional animal trapper, to exterminate this “super-wolf.” The ensuing battle of wits between wolf and man would spark a real-life wilderness drama, the outcome of which would leave a lasting effect on a new and growing movement in America: wilderness preservation.

View photographs and artwork of Ernest Thompson Seton.

Video Excerpt: Nature: The Wolf That Changed America
Wolf Expert Doug Smith discusses the Yellowstone Wolf Project