Lobo

Lobo was an American wolf who lived in the 19th century and is best known for his rivalry with naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton. In Wild Animals I Have Known (1899), Seton tells the story of Lobo, a large wolf who lived near the Currumpaw cattle ranch in New Mexico. During the 1890s, Lobo and his pack having been deprived of their natural prey by settlers, turned to the settlers' livestock. The ranchers tried to kill Lobo and his pack by poisoning carcasses. But the wolves removed the poisoned pieces and threw them aside. They tried to kill the wolves with traps and by hunting parties but all failed. Ernest Thompson Seton was tempted by the challenge and the $1,000 bounty to try to get Lobo the pack leader. He tried poisoning five baits carefully covering traces of human scent. The following day all the baits were gone. Seton assumed Lobo would be dead. But subsequently he found his five baits all in a pile covered in other "evidence" that Lobo was responsible.

Seton got new special traps and carefully concealed them in Lobo's territory. But he found Lobo's tracks leading from trap to trap exposing each. Finally Seton managed to trap Lobo's mate Blanca with the hidden traps. When Seton found her she was howling for her mate. Lobo answered her call. Seton and his friends lassood her and galloped their horses in opposite directions ripping Blanca's body apart. Seton heard the howls of Lobo for days afterward. Lobo's calls were described by Seton as having "an unmistakable note of sorrow in it... It was no longer the loud, defiant howl, but a long, plaintive wail."

Despite the danger Lobo followed Blanca's scent to Seton's ranch house where they had taken the body. Seton then set many more traps and used Blanca's body to scent them. Within a few days, Lobo was caught with all four legs in four traps. On Seton's approach, Lobo stood despite his injuries, and howled. Seton and his friends roped Lobo, muzzled him and secured him to a horse and took him back to the ranch. Later at the ranch Lobo wouldn't look at any of his captors and they secured him with a chain and he just gazed across the prairie. The next day they found him dead.

Lobo's pelt is kept at the Ernest Thompson Seton Memorial Library and Museum at the Philmont Scout Ranch near Cimarron, New Mexico.

Until his death in 1946, Seton championed the wolf - an animal that had always previously been demonised.

"Ever since Lobo," Seton was later to write, "my sincerest wish has been to impress upon people that each of our native wild creatures is in itself a precious heritage that we have no right to destroy or put beyond the reach of our children."

Seton's story of Lobo touched the hearts of many both in the US and the rest of the world and was partly responsible for changing views towards the environment and provided a spur for the starting of the conservationist movement. The story had a profound influence on one of the world's most acclaimed broadcasters and naturalists Sir David Attenborough and inspired the 1962 Disney film, The Legend of Lobo. Lobo's story was the subject of a BBC documentary directed by Steve Gooder in 2007.