National Wolf Conversation
Bridging Divides and Building a Foundation for Progress
Bill Lynn, PhD is the founder and President of PAN Works, and a participant in the National Wolf Conversation.
Media Contact: Bill Lynn, wlynn@panworks.io
As one of the 25 participants in the National Conversation About Thriving Communities, Tribes, Conservationists, Working Landscapes & Wolves, I am pleased to share video footage of interviews and discussions from our groundbreaking meeting, which was held in Tucson, Arizona, on January 12–15, 2025.
The partial recovery of wolves — gray, red and Mexican gray — across the United States is often heralded as a conservation success story. While this brings hope to many, it is a challenge for some, and one of the most acrimonious controversies in public policy. The debate over wolves is fundamentally a moral dispute, and their recovery a matter of ethical responsibility and multispecies justice. It is also a conflict that is a mirror and lightning rod for the larger social and political conflicts we experience in this country.
The National Wolf Conversation (NWC) brought together 25 people who represent the rich variety of views, values, cultures and experiences involved in these conflicts over wolf conservation and management. Rather than seeking short-term compromise, the participants built a foundation together. They strove to establish genuine trust with one another, building the kinds of relationships that, over time, can lead to novel, lasting, and shared solutions that can provide much needed and enduring stability and consistency through time.
PAN Works played a special role in the NWC, pioneering the concept of wolf trustee. Such a trustee represents the interests and wellbeing of wolves themselves, not a particular human identity or interest group. Bill Lynn (Founder and President of PAN Works) was invited serve in this role, not as a representative of PAN Works, but of wolves themselves. This marked the first instance of a formal animal trustee in stakeholder discussions initiated by the US government.
Videos featuring one-on-one interviews with each participant before and after the January event, along with a 30-minute proof-of-concept documentary, are now available for viewing and download.
The conversation was the culmination of more than a year of work by Constructive Conflict engaged by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to serve as third-party neutral convener, with support from the Center for Conservation Peacebuilding. Francine Madden leads Constructive Conflict and The Centre for Conservation Peacebuilding (CPeace) and was the lead convener of the National Wolf Conversation. Kim Wolfenden fromCPeace was the support convener of the process.
To select the conversation participants, the conveners asked more than 7,400 Americans to help them develop a set of criteria that would lead to a meaningful and representative national dialogue. Using these criteria, 25 individuals were brought together to explore one of the nation’s most complex, symbolic and polarizing conflicts.
Over three days of intensive, often emotional, work in Tucson, the participants broke down barriers, discovered common ground, built trust and developed a shared understanding of their diverse perspectives.By the end of the event, all 25 individuals had made personal commitments and agreed to a set of group commitments meant to expand the common ground in future meetings that they established during the initial three days. All 25 participants shared their desire and drive for the conversation to continue. The entire event was documented by People People Media, an independent film company that will produce a film capturing this group’s coming together during a time of deep division.
Special thanks to the journalist Michelle Nijhuis who wrote the press release from which this announcement was adapted.
