“She spent last year associating with other wolves in her regular territory,” Klauder wrote by email. Recently, Klauder filled me in on what she knew of Riley’s life after I saw the wolf along the highway one year ago, when Riley seemed in rough shape.Ī photo of Riley the wolf alongside the Parks Highway in February 2019, when the wolf was 9 years old. A pilot reported seeing Riley that August, but he did not see any young wolves with her. Riley gave birth to pups in spring of that year, as a trail camera showed the 9-year-old wolf with pups that were playing together. She weighed Riley in at 98 pounds, and noted her belly was round with meat. In March 2018, Borg recaptured Riley and fitted her with a new collar. By February 2018, the Riley Creek pack was down to seven or fewer. After that wolf’s disappearance, the pack started to dwindle. The last location from the male black wolf’s collar was along a known trapline. The next winter, Riley’s mate died on state land bordering the Stampede Trail. (Wolf packs vary in number from two to 20, with an average of eight.) Riley’s peak continued in the summer of 2017, when the wolf was 8 and silver-haired, and gave birth to five surviving pups. Both dead wolves were missing a front leg, leading Klauder to say that the life of a wolf is “very Game of Thrones.” When the decisive battle ended, biologists found the dominant Grant Creek female dead, along with another female. The Riley Creek pack scrapped with wolves from the Grant Creek pack, which hunted neighboring lands to the west and south. The Riley Creek pack was up to 14 animals. Riley the wolf and several of her many pups in spring 2015. The next summer, she used a different den, from which eight more of her pups survived. When she was 6, Riley gave birth to five pups in the same burrow in which she was born. Rather than living life as a passive member of her mother’s East Fork pack, Riley took the most extreme risk a wolf can - she split from the pack.ĭefying the odds for lone wolves, which are at great risk of being killed by other wolves, Riley found a mate and then chose a den site close to the park road.Īs Riley’s mother’s pack had shifted a bit north, Denali Park biologists declared hers its own group: the Riley Creek pack. ![]() The biologist who fired the dart wrote this note: “Aggressive to helicopter.” They knew Riley’s history, and personality, a lot better starting in March 2012, when park biologists darted her and fitted her with a satellite collar. They knew her mother, a dominant creature that led the East Fork pack for 10 years and had given birth to dozens of pups. The biologists knew a lot about the wolf, such as the location of the spruce tree Riley was born beneath in May 2009. The next day, I drove to the headquarters of Denali National Park and met wildlife technician Kaija Klauder and wolf biologist Bridget Borg. Then, she disappeared into roadside brush. The female wolf with the leather satellite-tracking collar surprised me by not running away or otherwise seeming to notice my car, idling 30 feet away. I wrote about Riley in February 2019, when I noticed her bobbing through the snow on the side of the Parks Highway not far from Healy and Denali National Park. ![]() ![]() Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife health veterinarian Kimberlee Beckmen performed a necropsy. The female wolf, former leader of the once-mighty Riley Creek pack in Denali National Park and Preserve, drowned in an open lead of the Nenana River on March 9.Īrea residents pulled her body from the river and informed biologists at Denali National Park. She lived in the wild until almost the age of 11, which biologists call a remarkable feat. Riley the wolf on the Denali Park Road with one of her packmates in 2017.
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