Background

Renée Askins was born in 1959, in Mackinaw State Park, Michigan, United States. She is a daughter of Raymond and Chris Askins.

Education

Renée Askins studied at Boyne City High School. Then she attended Kalamazoo College in 1981. Finally, she earned her Master's degree at Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in 1988.

Career

In 1981, Renée Askins got a job in Jackson, Wyoming, assisting John Weaver, a biologist working on reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone. She made little money and lived for a time in a teepee, but she revealed a knack for organizing a series of lectures and workshops featuring renowned writers like Barry Lopez and Peter Matthiessen. Shortly before leaving Wyoming, Askins held a fundraising dinner to establish the Wolf Fund, which she created in 1986 under the aegis of The Center for Humanities and the Environment, to reintroduce wolves to Yellowstone. In 1995, she began to work as a freelance writer.

She has been profiled in Time, Harper’s Bazaar, Audubon, the New York Times, People, and Parade and her writing has been featured in Harper's Magazine and in the anthology Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals. She has traveled and lectured extensively on the topic of wildness in our culture.

Achievements

• Through the Wolf Fund and her undying dedication to her mission, Askins eventually witnessed the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone in 1995. At The Wolf Fund, Askins worked to swing public opinion in Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and beyond. On March 21, 1995, fund biologists had opened the first wolf pen, freeing wolves into the wide wilds of Yellowstone.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Shadow Mountain: A Memoir of Wolves, a Woman, and the Wild

    (In this intimate account, Askins recounts her courageous ...)

    2002

Views

Renée Askins became fascinated with wolves while an undergraduate student when she was given a wolf pup to care for by the director of a study she was working on. Askins formed a bond with the young pup that would ultimately lead her to develop the Wolf Fund with the sole purpose of reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone National Park. Askins’s fourteen-year-plus quest did not go unopposed, especially by ranchers in Wyoming and other western U.S. states. Nevertheless, in 1995 wolves were released to once again roam Yellowstone. Askins has since authored Shadow Mountain: A Memoir of Wolves, a Woman, and the Wild, the story of her struggle to reintroduce an endangered animal to its native habitat. She studied a captive wolf as it raised three litters of wolves at a research facility in Battle Ground, Indiana. When the director gave her a pup to look after for three months, Askins kept a journal about the experience. “She had such dignity, and there was a level of sophistication and communication between her and the other wolves that I had never been aware of,” Askins told Susan Reed in People.

Time Online writer Andrea Sachs asked Askins why she was attracted to wolves. Askins replied, “Whether we hate them or love them, they evoke the passion that is beyond words.” Askins also pointed out that people identify with wolves because they are social in nature and predators, just like humans. She noted that these similarities both threaten and attract people. “Whether you live in New York City, or Moose, Wyoming, I am a firm believer in the importance of animals in our lives,” continued Askins. “I think those relationships are as deep and profound as many human relationships are.”

In Shadow Mountain Askins chronicles that battle, including the struggle with red-tape, bureaucrats, and western ranchers who view the wolf as an unnecessary evil. In the process, she recounts her passion for wildlife and ponders ethical and philosophical issues associated with wildlife management, including her own personal motives behind her efforts.

As for her ultimate success in reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone, Askins has noted that her most important skill was her ability to listen. “One of my goals was to be able to argue the position of my opponents better than they could so that I truly and completely absorbed their concerns,” she commented on the Public Broadcast Service Web site. “In doing that, I think a lot of trust was created.”

Quotations: "Experiencing the wild does not require conquest or challenge. Pitting one's wits against mountain, river or creature is an approach that can separate rather than integrate. I believe experiencing the wild is a process of allowing our senses to infiltrate, not overwhelm, the self."

"For centuries, our search for wholeness has led us back to the animals, to our origins, to history. Something mysterious happens when we look into the eyes of an animal, whether it be a panther or a poodle - we see something familiar-looking back... We see something that is within us and yet without us, something we recognize and yet is unfamiliar, something we fear but for which we long. We see the wild... At a time when our relationship to land and soil and place has been diminished, we still turn to our animals, domestic and wild, as a conduit to healing. And through our animals - those of our childhood, those in our homes, and those in the wild - we can begin to find our way back to being whole..."

Membership

• Renée Askins was an Executive Director of the Wolf Fund. When she created The Wolf Fund, dedicated to reintroducing wolves into the West, she did what most other conservation groups would never consider: She gave it a sunset clause.

  Wolf Fund , United States

  1983 - 1995

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Deborah Emerson: "Askins’s mix of personal philosophy and natural history doesn’t quite work."
  
  Maude McDaniel: "The author is most engaging when she candidly recounts the emotional bruises from her sometimes naive misperceptions about both the brutal natural world and the rough-and-tumble world of Western ecological politics. In honestly detailing these revelatory episodes, Askins reexamines her scientific suppositions and her personal premises.

Interests

• horse-riding, animals, theology

Connections

Renée currently lives in California with her daughter and her husband, Tom Rush.

Father:

Raymond Askins

Mother:

Christine Askins

husband:

Tom Rush

colleague:

John Weaver

Askins assisted John Weaver, a biologist working on reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone.

References

• Renée Askins | LinkedIn
• Renee Askins
• Gray area: How an idealistic conservationist helped bring wolves back to the West
  2015