Denali Wolves
Gallery 1
A selection of Denali's wolf images from East Fork (also known as Toklat), Headquarters, Mt. Margaret and Grant Creek wolf family groups. This is essentially a time capsule of what once was, what we have lost in the way of viewing wolves and hopefully, what we will regain in the future.
I have tried to place the images in chronological order starting with my earliest image taken in 1990 to the image of the Grant Creek breeding female which was taken prior to 2009. All images are captioned with the year that they were taken or estimated year taken.
The final image is of the climatic moment between the East Fork wolves battling a grizzly over a yearling, bull moose carcass. More images from this event can be found in its own gallery here: Denali Wolves - The Struggle for Survival .
All of my images of Denali's wolves were during my film era which ran from 1990 to December of 2009. This would include iconic wolf family groups such as East Fork, Headquarters and Grant Creek.
The Headquarters family utilized the first 14.5 miles of the park road, allowing anyone to drive into the park without having to take a bus to view them. The last wolf of Headquarters, the breeding female was trapped and killed just east the park in the Carlo Creek area in 1995. Since that time, there has been a number of wolf family groups that have taken up residence in the eastern end of Denali and almost each one has suffered trapping/hunting losses that contributed or caused the demise of each family group.
East Fork (also known as Toklat) was Denali's longest lived from a generational point of view. This is the family group that Dr. Adolph Murie studied in his landmark wolf study from 1939-41. Later, beginning in 1966, Dr. Gordon Haber would take over from Adolph Murie and studied East Fork (who he called Toklat) as well as other Denali wolves for an unprecedented 43 years. No one knew the park's wolves better than Gordon.
East Fork was the most visible wolf family group in Denali from at least 1987 to 2004.
In February of 2005, the breeding female of East Fork was trapped and killed in The Wolf Townships (rectangular state lands adjacent to and in the northeast quadrant in relation to the park). This caused massive and cascading disruptions (territory, use of park road, moving of rendezvous & den sites, hunting technique changes, etc) within the family group causing the black male wolf to disperse to the south where he was shot and killed by a hunter in April in 2005.
Wolf viewing of East Fork plummeted afterwards from 2005 to 2016 to the point to where it was almost non existent.
In 2016, the breeding male of East Fork was killed in The Wolf Townships at a bear bait station. This left the last wolf, the breeding female who didn't have a radio collar to disperse into the Alaska wilderness. So ended, the most studied, most viewed and longest lived (from a generational standpoint) wolf family group in Denali.
Grant Creek came into being in 2003, when the sibling black male brother of the breeding male of East Fork, dispersed and paired up with a female. Grant Creek, which only numbered two wolves at this time, took over the far western portion of East Fork's territory which included the Toklat River to Grassy Pass.
Did the sibling relationship between these two breeding males allow for this to happen? Would territorial behavior eventually develop between these two family groups? And if so, to what extent? And what about the influence of the breeding females? Especially the one in Grant Creek who had no known relationship with any of the wolves of East Fork. These and many other questions regarding territoriality would have been fascinating to have answered.
During this time, Grant Creek did something incredibly rare and exciting for park visitors: they denned within a 1/4 mile of the park road, west of the Toklat River from 2004 to 2012 with a couple of off years. This provided visitors with the more predictable opportunity to view the comings of going of wolves not only in distant sightings but also in high quality close sightings. It was not unusual for wolves to be traveling or resting on the tundra at close range or walk right by a bus.
Grant Creek breeding male (sibling to East Fork's breeding male prior to 2005) walks on the park road in front of a Tundra Wilderness Tour (TWT) bus/West of the Toklat River/Denali National Park/Interior Alaska/Summer/Fillm
Wolf pups would make their appearance in early July as they periodically would come up to the park road. Seldom do we ever see wolf pups and both the adults and especially the pups would generate infinite levels of excitement for park visitors.
Wolf viewing reached its all time peak in Denali in 2010 when 45% of visitors saw wolves. While this is far less than Yellowstone, these were typically high quality sightings.
Unfortunately, this came to a crashing end in the spring of 2012, when a local trapper took his horse to the northern boundary, shot it and used it as bait. He successfully killed the breeding and primary attendant females of Grant Creek causing massive disruption and behavioral changes to the family group. Within one year, they reduced in numbers from 15 to 5 to 3 wolves. Much like East Fork in 2005, a variety of massive behavioral changes took place including the moving of the den site bringing an end to the best wolf viewing in my 36 years in Denali.
2022 Denali Annual Wolf Report
NPS Study - Human Caused Mortality Triggers Pack Instability in Gray Wolves
Wolf viewing in Denali isn't about the numbers of wolves but the behaviors of individuals and family groups that they adopt that allow for visitor viewing. All of these behaviors must be near the park road to give visitors a realistic chance of viewing them. These behaviors include: use of territory, travel and hunting, the making of kills near the park road (rare), the establishment of rendezvous sites (rarer still) and most rare, the establishment of den sites with the wolves utilizing the park road corridor.
After the death of Grant Creek's breeding female in 2012, wolf viewing plummeted to 4-6%, rose briefly in 2018 to 17% due to Riley Creek West's establishment of rendezvous sites west of the Toklat River. Riley Creek West didn't survive the winter due to natural causes and wolf viewing declined to its all time low of 1% in both 2019 and 2022.
Wolf viewing in Denali hasn't recovered since the last year of viewing Grant Creek in 2011.
My intent is tie in the wolves of Denali to Yellowstone's and other wolves to demonstrate the fragility of wolf family groups and their behaviors that lead to wolf viewing.
It only took one knowledgeable trapper/hunter to destroy the best wolf viewing in Denali..........for years. This should be the ongoing lesson that Denali can teach all others who wish to see, enjoy and experience wolves.
If you wish to see wolves, then you must protect them on their critical habitats that are unprotected and adjacent to our National Parks. What happens within The Wolf Townships directly impacts Denali wolves, wolf viewing and the Denali National Park visitor experience.
To paraphrase and revise a famous Edward Abbey quote:
"The idea of living wolves needs no defense, they only need more defenders."
February 8, 2024
A few years ago, Nancy Bale from the Denali Citizens Council asked me if I thought that the heyday of Denali wolf viewing was over? My response then and now is: I hope not.
She further told me that she thought my wolf images as well as the images of others were time capsules of the past; something that I had never considered before. My sincere hope is that we can return semi-consistent wolf viewing to Denali
At some point in the future, a family of wolves will establish either a rendezvous or den site close to the park road and visitor viewing and enjoyment will skyrocket. The question is: will we give these wolves a chance to continue those behaviors for future years and future visitors by protecting them on the adjacent state lands? Or, will we continue to allow a handful of trappers to target, torture and kill them. Thereby disrupting and destroying individual Denali's wolves and family groups and wolf viewing.
The choice is ours.
Lastly, more film images for the Denali's wolves time capsule will be scanned and added to this gallery up to April 19th, 2024. After that point, all scanning and processing of film images will have to wait at least until October of 2024.
More information can be found on the Denali wolf situation in my blog at: Bill Watkins Conservation/Photography Blog, Denali Wolves - Conservation Videos Gallery and Denali Wolves on Facebook.
And if anyone wishes to support my conservation efforts, you can Buy Me a Coffee here: Buy Me a Coffee or at the bottom of the page.
All proceeds go towards my conservation efforts and are greatly appreciated.
Thank-you for your interest and for visiting!!!
Sincerely,
Bill Watkins