The Wolves Of Denali

This is the cover of The Wolves of Denali book, 1998. Published by the University of Minnesota Press. The cover photo was taken by Leo Keeler, 1998. The books authors are L. David Mech, Layne G. Adams, Thomas J. Meier, John W. Burch, and Bruce W. Dale. Tom Meier has been extremely generous with current wolf information pertaining to Willie's trip. He best answers the questions that the Alaska Studies Class asked about the wolves. I will include his email infomation to this entry...

Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2008 14:58:24 -0900> > Hi Christine, I processed the data from a GPS collar that we have on one of the East Fork wolves (the alpha male, probably the wolf with the huge feet that Willie noticed). Over the last month, they've moved back and forth between Riley Creek and Stony Creek (see the attached map). On the days when Willie heard and saw wolves and wolf sign, sure enough, the East Fork wolves (or at least the alpha male) were out around Toklat. But since then they have moved east to the Sanctuary. The last location I have is February 4, and I should get another update from the satellite link on February 10. If Willie decides to move up to the camping site, it might be a good idea to store food in Action Packer boxes, which should be sufficient to keep wolves out unless they have time to gnaw on them for quite a while. The East Fork Pack is currently the biggest pack in the park, with 17 wolves, so they must make an impressive amount of sign when they pass through an area. With that many wolves, it also seems likely that they'll keep moving around, in order to find food for all of them. There are some nice photos of the East Fork wolves on Gordon Haber's website (February 3 blog entry). He refers to them as the Toklat pack. Here's the link: http://alaskawolves.org/. Attached is the map of satellite locations for the pack, from January 7 to February 4. ***(SEE ABOVE MAP FOR SATELLITE LOCATIONS OF THE WOLVES. If you click on the map it will enlarge the map.)

Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 16:48:41 -0900 Hi Christine, I got two more GPS locations uploaded, from the 5th and 6th, and the wolves are still in the same area in the Sanctuary, which is where we saw a lot of hares last winter so they might be chasing hares, or have a big kill there, but they haven't moved much.

Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:06:07 -0900 Hi Christine, I checked another batch of GPS collar data and the East Fork wolves are still in the Sanctuary area, so they've been there for 10 days or so now. The map I sent shows that they've travelled pretty widely, but they do seem to have settled into the Sanctuary area for quite a while. The did the same last year, and it seemed to be because there were really a lot of hares in the Sanctuary vallely, and the wolves were hunting them. There are probably quite a few moose in the area too. Most packs in the winter travel widely, looking for vulnerable moose, caribou or sheep. Some packs move out of their territories entirely, if there isn't enough to eat. Several packs in Denali have shown a pattern of moving northeast into the Stampede Road area in winter, because that's where the caribou often are. That's probably not happening this winter because most of the caribou are wintering in the Kantishna Hills. There are several wolf dens in or near the Toklat valley, so there have been many summers when there was a lot of wolf activity there. Wolves generally don't visit dens in the winter, and move around their territories without any real home except for kill sites that they might spend a few days around. So while we worry about people disturbing wolves around their dens in early summer, or rendezvous sites in late summer, we don't usually worry about wolf disturbance in winter because the wolves can simply move on if they're bothered by human activity.

Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:00:23 -0900 Christine, The 3 wolves sound like the Grant Creek Pack (the wolves who denned a mile> or two SW of the Pearson Cabin in 2005 and 2006). For a while this winter they were actually east of the East Fork pack, though their territories are basically the other way around. There are only 3 wolves left in the Grant Creek Pack, as far as we know.

*(The top photo is from The Wolves Of Denali book, page 34/figure 2.4, photo by L. David Mech)