The Extinction Files

 Badgers, Bees and Owls
The Extinction Files of Ruth Evans

What animals do you value?

Which ones matter to you?

Beyond ecological relevance, environmental impact, rarity. Beyond the fact that you can meet them in your garden or in the park daily or watch them on a screen….just stop and think…just stop and feel. All those considerations may be part of the process but is there an animal that feels just right for you: one that sits close to your heart?

 

That is what The Last Wolf Project has been asking people to look at: the step back from discussions and arguments and consider: is there an animal whose loss would leave you feeling diminished? Who would you miss?

 

We might talk about spirit animals or totems but again this is simpler than that: without spiritual labelling, what animals matter to you on a deeply personal level? 

 

Artist Ruth Evans explores similar ideas in her Extinction Files series, creating pictures where human and animal are woven together capturing a sense of the bonds between us.

“The natural world we inhabit is always under attack. My paintings are a part of this struggle -hopefully portraying connections between us and the earth and all its creatures – rooted and unrooted. Whatever grows will die, or is blown in the wind to become a flightpath for the imagination where something emerges that ultimately carries spiritual and mental peace”

 

Visit Ruth’s website or find her on Instagram to step into these rich images

Cabinet doors creak open

 

More doors open
Or they open more widely or.... 

there is something in the cupboard…..

Back in the spring of 2026, I was working on a project called the Cabinet of Treasures, exploring the lost, forgotten and completely spurious histories of Glossop and other towns in the High Peak of Derbyshire

Part of the Derbyshire Makes initiative, we were encouraging people to look at the landscapes around them and remember old family stories or create new ones. Out of this has grown a wonerful set of cupboard to open and explore….it has taken a long time to get this (sort of) finished…there isomer to come and the stores that go with the individual elements of the Cabinets to finish curating…but we’re nearly there now

So below are images from the Cabinets being opened….hopefully they will be available for cupboard-rummages and shelf-seekers to Glossop to investigate for themselves shortly

With many thanks to all our artists and to Glossop Library, Hayfield Library, Gamesley Library, Glossop Arts Project, High Peak Community Arts and more….

opening the door

looking insie

pointing the way

a very tall gentleman

The Tree Cabinet

The Mill Cabinet

The Mouselow Castle Cabinet

assembling the insides

Life as a wolf

 Life as a Wolf
Dundreggan Project Wolf

In 2016 and 2017 at Trees for Life, Dundreggan, a remarkable project invited small groups of people to spend a month at a time as wolfpack, watching, prowling, patrolling the woods to keep the deer away from new saplings

 

As part of encouraging wider participation in The Last Wolf project, we’re featuring exciting artwork and projects from other people that draw upon ideas about the connections between people and the world around us. This is the first of those posts. Here, in the woods of Dundreggan, from whence we have lost our wolves, there was a fascinating experiment inviting humans to explore a wolf's way of being…..

A visiting Sami singer blessed the Wolf Den where the humandwolves rested during their prowlings with a joik: https://youtu.be/0gSomkEpnLM?si=rYJIaODHpIpB55T2

and Alan Watson Featherstone, the founder of Trees for Life, wrote about meeting the wolves: https://alanwatsonfeatherstone.com/a-night-with-the-wolves/

 

Conceived by Doug Gilbert, the manager of Dundreggan at the time, the humandwolves project was challenging and inspiring and regrettably shortlived! It created fascinating insights into how humans connect to natural spaces and other species….

 

For The Last Wolf, it offers us some wonderful reflections from the humandwolves about just being so immersed in a landscape and a role within a habitat. 

 

If these people were humandwolves – what would you choose to be?

 

Poet Alec Finlay gathered responses to a questionnaire from the participants and out of that grew the poem below

 

See more about Alec’s work here: https://petrichormag.com/current-issue/

 

And the full text of the poem is here: https://petrichormag.com/22-alec-finlay/

 

 

I was a humandwolf

I felt very natural
        very human
          on my nights as a wolf

          walking the routes
          as tracker and hunter

           connected to the land

              with favorite places for sleeping

                and spots to watch from

                  waiting by the tree-line at dusk

                   content to be silent

                                becoming part of the wood

                                    familiar with nooks
                                      and crannies

                                    patterns of growth
                                      and decay

I felt safe in the woods
   with an underlying awareness
      I had a purpose

                                  when I’m out there
                                  I want for nothing
                                                                   (except maybe dry socks)

                                                                   when I’m back home
                                                                   I want more than anything
                                                                   to go back.

 

 

(II)

looking for signs
                                                                        hoof-
                                                                        prints

                                 scat

                                                    hair
in the dark
                                                                                             trails
                                           head-
                                        torches

                                                                  sniffing the air for
                                                                  the musty order

                                              bright reflections
                                         of cornea

your senses pick out

                                                                       faint smell
                                                                       of something
                                                                       that just passed

(III)

 

while being a wolf
I dreamt of deer
and the moon

                                       because of the dreamlike nature
                                       of the nights by night
                                       the veil becomes thinner
                                       lucid dreaming easier

 

 

This poem is composed from answers to a questionnaire completed by ‘humandwolves – individuals who volunteered to join one of the four wolf packs, in 2016 and 2017, at Trees for Life, Dundreggan. Each pack spent one month as a ‘humandwolf’, warding deer from saplings.

Project Wolf was conceived by Douglas Gilbert of Trees for Life

The Humandwolves:
Martina Baltkalne
Millie Barrett
Nick Belt
Lotte Brockbank
Liv Glatt
Claire Large
Matt McMullen
Lorna Meek
Chanel Valento-Bovell
Alex Volkers

All photos by Mhairi Law for Alec Finlay's Humandwolf Project, 2017