For decades, the wolves of the storied East Fork pack were beloved by researchers and tourists alike at Alaska’s Denali National Park. They frequented the park’s entrance and roads and became the stars of family vacation photos.
For decades, the wolves of the storied East Fork pack were beloved by researchers and tourists alike at Alaska’s Denali National Park. They frequented the park’s entrance and roads and became the stars of hundreds of thousands of family vacation photos.
Since the 1930s, scientists have documented every detail of the pack’s lives: their hunting ranges, mating rituals, even the content of their droppings. They traced family lineage through dozens of generations, giving individual wolves names like “The Dandy,” “Grandpa” and “Robber Mask.”
Now the researchers must record one final detail in the wolves’ long history: They may all be dead.
The last radio-collared male was found shot dead near a hunting camp in May. Now, park officials can’t find the last three pack members: a mother wolf without a collar and her two pups. It’s impossible to know for sure what happened to them, officials said, but it’s unlikely that the mother and her pups will survive without the support and protection of a pack. The family’s den is empty and overgrown with weeds. Porcupines have taken it over since June 28, when the group was last seen.
The wolf pack is the most recent fatality of a controversial Alaska policy that allows hunters to kill wolves and other large predators in the state’s national wildlife refuges, wildlife advocates say. Park officials estimated 49 wolves lived in Denali National Park this spring, only three more than the park’s all-time low of 46 in 1986 and a significant decline from the early 2000s when it was common to count more than 100. In 2015, only 5 percent of Denali visitors reported seeing a wolf — down from 45 percent in 2010.
The East Fork pack’s decline was fast and drastic. In 2013, the nine-member East Fork pack was one of the largest of the nine monitored groups. By the fall of 2014 the pack’s numbers had grown to 17, according to Park Service data. Then, the numbers steadily dropped.
The causes of their deaths vary. Many are shot and killed (legally and illegally) by hunters. One died of blood loss after becoming trapped in a snare. Some become untraceable and others die of natural causes. But one pattern emerges: About 75 percent of deaths in the East Fork pack in the past year were caused by human trapping and hunting, park biologist Bridget
Source: Storied Alaska wolf pack beloved for decades has vanished, thanks to hunting – The Washington Post