STEPHANIE FELDSTEIN

STEPHANIE FELDSTEIN

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Population & Sustainability Director of the Center for Biological Diversity
Author of The Animal Lover’s Guide to Changing the World
Take Action: Save Life on Earth

Pretty much everything we do in our lives from the moment we wake up and take a shower, we're using water – that's shared resources. We're using energy that, for most of us, unfortunately, still comes from fossil fuels. We are making decisions about what we eat. We're making purchases that have an impact on the planet and on other animals based on where they came from and what they're made of. There are so many entry points for people to take action and start making changes in their own lives. And that's really important for people to start with what feels right to them. That's a great way to start getting involved in this.

ERICA BERRY

ERICA BERRY

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Author of Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear

And I think the ways that wolves converse with one another, there's also so much there that really conjures the way that we humans do. And I was trying to piece together: why did we feel so threatened by wolves? In part, I think because there's a sort of uncanny mirror that humans have seen in a wolf. And I'll give an example. Wolf packs will form a diversity of family structures very often. So they will have a nuclear family where you'll have two breeders, but they can also have an extended family where there's sort of aunts and uncles in the pack. Or (these are the biologist's names) they'll call it a step-family if a wolf pack welcomes an outside breeder. A foster family, if they welcome another outsider. And I think the way that a pack is its own ecosystem: if one wolf dies, there's one wolf in this pack that might be the one that teaches how to move through the territory. And if that one wolf dies, the whole pack has a much higher likelihood of disbanding. And so this idea that the interconnectivity between the packs and the individuality of the wolves is so critical. It is so beautiful, and you see that studying these different wolves, they have personalities.