The Last Wolf

The title of the poem, “The Last Wolf” (published in the early 1990s), evokes the ongoing risk to wolves as a species in North America—especially in the western United States. Since the inclusion of gray and Mexican wolves on the list of endangered species in the 1960s, cattle ranchers—especially Californian cattle rangers—have consistently lobbied to legalize their hunting, if not extermination. The wolf’s “long gray muzzle” (Line 23) specifically marks him as a gray wolf, which was successfully removed from the protected species list in the late 90s, a removal that was legislatively resisted into the early 2000s. The gray wolf is still considered “at risk” in northern California.

At the same time, indigenous communities in Alaska and Canada still relied on hunting for both cultural and subsistence purposes—including species like the gray wolf and sea otter. In the United States, hunting regulations are developed by individual states, but animal protection laws come from the federal government. This distribution of powers resulted in the activism of northern Californians, including the Northern Californian Native Americans, opposing the activism of Alaskan indigenous peoples. Over time, and as part of the efforts towards greater tribal recognition in the late 20th century, tribal carveouts to species protection laws were established, allowing wolves and otters to remain generally protected while allowing ceremonial hunting under specific circumstances.

The 1990s were also legislatively and politically important for the return of artifacts to their rightful cultural owners. Federal recognition of minor tribes increased, and, as more tribes campaigned for repatriation of artifacts, the U.S. federal government passed several amendments to the laws regarding the foundation and funding of museums—especially the Smithsonian. These laws, while long overdue and still in the process of effectively returning materials as of the early 2020s, began what would be an extremely long road. The poem’s description of an unpopulated cityscape doesn’t directly address repatriation, but it evokes ideas of cultural destruction and memory—two of the most key concepts to the continuing efforts of the repatriation movement both in the United States and on other parts of the globe.

The AIDS epidemic was a grim specter over the San Francisco creative community in the 1980s and 90s. Only one year before the publication of “The Last Wolf,” the Sixth International AIDS conference met in San Francisco to protest travel exclusions for AIDS patients to the United States. San Francisco, with its large gay community, saw demographic decline, as those who may once have sought the City by the Bay as a place of residence now fled, often spreading the poorly-understood virus elsewhere. The early 90s also saw few effective treatments for HIV and AIDS-related illnesses, magnifying the death toll as a result of poor government response to the epidemic, and leaving places such as the Castro District empty of people, much like the Tenderloin District is emptied in “The Last Wolf.”