Introductory Comments

It is perhaps inevitable that we become concerned about things in proportion to their rate of disappearance: interest in wildlife has never been greater than today, when wildlife is scarcest. This holds particularly true for large carnivores, the beasts of our evolutionary past that now need saving from us, their former prey. But far from our dominant position easing our anxieties vis-à-vis the monsters of the wild, we continue to be both fascinated and terrified, wanting to bring wild things back without really knowing how to live with them.