Among Wolves: Gordon Haber's Insights into Alaska's Most Misunderstood Animal

by Haber, Gordon

  On February 28, just prior to the most intensive sexual activities, the mother tolerates some face licking from one of the younger wolves. But three days later, her response is very different. By March 2, the alpha female stands close to the alpha male, showing she is receptive, but he isn't quite ready. They remain touching, but look away, almost as if trying to convey nonchalance amidst what amounts to a high-key tense interaction that requires considerable synchrony.

  Meanwhile, seven of the other Toklat wolves about a hundred yards away seem restless. One of the young wolves approaches in a submissive, seemingly innocent way. Bad decision. The female, who is perhaps a little on edge, immediately jumps the approaching wolf and reprimands it for several minutes. The young wolf's intrusion doesn't seem to matter much to the male, although the mild interest that he does express suggests it might be a female that the older female is treating as potential competition. The young wolf undoubtedly suffers hurt feelings but not any obvious injuries.

  Toklat Family Tragedies, 1997–2007

  Some of the behavior I observed when a wolf lost a mate, using examples from Toklat's recent history, further illustrate how closely and almost irreversibly wolves can bond.

  In February 1997, the second-ranking Toklat male died in a snare just outside the northeast park boundary in the Wolf Townships. A month later, his mate, the second-ranking female, with whom he had produced at least one previous litter (simultaneous to the alpha pair's litter), instead of simply mating with another member of the group, left Toklat and joined another group. She then disappeared after dispersing again two months after that. Had these two survived in the Toklat family they likely would have assumed a more important role, given the aging Toklat alpha female's reproductive failure in May 1997 and death in April 1998.

  The next Toklat alpha pair began producing litters in 1998 and maintained one of the closest, most efficient bonds I have seen in forty-three years of research. In March 2001, the male died in his prime during a National Park Service radio-collaring accident, a week after mating with the female, who likewise was in her prime.7 Two adult sibling males from two hundred miles away showed up at the natal den in early June shortly after the female had produced her dead mate's new pups.8 One of them soon became the new Toklat alpha male, and both helped raise the unrelated dead male's pups without any obvious difference in effort or affection between the mother and her seven older offspring. During the next breeding season, in March 2002, a three-year-old daughter bonded with the newcomer alpha male and they became the primary mating pair. The male also copulated with her mother—at the same location, two hours later, with the daughter's apparent enthusiasm and cooperation.

  A month later the mother separated from the others and for the most part remained alone, probably of her own volition, while continuing to range within the established Toklat territory. An adult male from thirty miles away was with her for a few days but then left. She did not enjoy much hunting success on her own. In May, she occupied the same natal complex that she and her dead mate had used for their first litter in 1998. She produced one or two pups, but they died inside the den soon after birth; she was in advancing stages of starvation by that time and probably wasn't lactating much if at all (these details were determined from a later necropsy). I watched her dying alone in early July, so weak and emaciated that she could no longer stand for more than a few seconds at a time.9

  Meanwhile, her daughter, other offspring, and the new alpha male attended five pups at the natal den the family had used since 1999 (and in certain earlier years). However, following a midsummer move to a rendezvous site, they lost the entire litter, apparently to a marauding bear. They produced surviving litters in each of the next two years, in 2004 with help from a young newcomer female who became the pups' primary attendant during the homesite period.

  In late January 2005, this alpha female was caught in a trap and a snare just outside the northeast park boundary. Her GPS radio-collar locations, necropsy results, and other information indicated that she probably struggled for two weeks while caught, until the trapper shot her and took her away on February 11.10

  The male left the trapping area with the nine others on February 11, apparently having remained with or near her during most if not all of her two-week, midwinter ordeal. They went fourteen miles straight to the natal den where he and the female had produced most of the others in 2003 and 2004. There they cleaned out the burrows despite the several feet of snow cover and even though the normal courtship-mating and denning periods were at least two weeks and two and a half months away, respectively. I observed this same behavior in the neighboring Margaret family: after that alpha male died in a snare in the same general area in February 2004, his mate did virtually the same thing, traveling to their established natal den ten miles away.

  The Toklat male retraced the fourteen miles almost straight back to the trapping area the next day, with such a rapid pace that at times the others lagged a mile or two behind. His demeanor was unmistakable and seemed almost obsessive. He was clearly intent on finding his mate. When we left, he was sitting alone atop a high plateau, howling over and over again in obvious distress toward the trapping site a few miles away. He continued returning to the trapping area through mid-March, and two more wolves of the group were caught there: a 2004 pup and the newcomer female attendant.

  After essentially separating from six remaining young wolves back inside the established territory, he mated with another female (probably also one of his young) between March 8 and 12. But his focus seemed to remain on the dead female. Overnight on March 12 he went twenty miles back to the trapping site, again with the same unmistakable, almost obsessive behavior, moving so rapidly that the female with whom he had just copulated could barely keep up.

  He and the above female became separated a few miles east of the trapping area by March 17. She ended up dispersing seventy miles southwestward and eventually joined the Eagle pair, though with no indication that she produced any pups.

  The Toklat male began a monthlong series of travels primarily back and forth along the east park boundary, at least fifteen miles from his surviving young and established territory. He joined an unrelated female in the east boundary area in late March or early April. Hunters shot this female while the two wolves were together just outside the southeast corner of the park on April 8 or 9; he was lucky to escape.

  On April 12, he returned to the Toklat territory for the first time in a month but remained for only a couple of nights and apparently did not reunite with his six surviving young. By April 14 he was back along the east park boundary, fifteen miles outside the Toklat territory. Three days later a hunter shot him outside the southeast corner of the park, near the area where hunters shot the female he was with nine days earlier. Now all that remained of Toklat were the inexperienced six yearlings and two-year-olds.

  * * *

  Snapshot: First Snow

  Johnny Johnson

  Johnny Johnson, one of Alaska's most renowned wildlife photographers, first met Gordon in 1968, when they both worked in Denali National Park. Johnny was a park ranger and budding wildlife photographer and quizzed Gordon often about the wolves. After Johnny settled in Anchorage, their friendship endured; Gordon frequently spent Thanksgiving dinner with Johnny and his wife, Peggy.

  In the fall of 1971, when Gordon was at the Sanctuary cabin doing his research, my fiancée and I and another couple flew out to the far west end of the park, to a place called Porcupine landing strip. Because I had been a ranger, we had access to a cabin out there. Our plan was to hike one hundred and forty miles back to park headquarters.

  But it was one of the wettest falls on record, so it took us a lot longer to cross the rivers. By the time we got to Wonder Lake, it had started snowing. We ended up splitting up because the other couple wanted to move faster. It was a big trip, about thirty-six days total.

  By the time we got to Teklanika Flats, we were traveling in about a foot of snow. We were hiking along the road and
saw a snowmachine coming along in the distance. It was Gordon. It was really good to see him. He gave us a ride to the Sanctuary cabin, and we had a big spaghetti feed.

  We were sitting at the table, warm and full, with a light snow falling outside. Then all of a sudden this big black wolf walks right by the window, less than thirty feet away. Gordon jumps up and says, “That's the leader of the Savage pack! Let's go outside.” We were all pretty excited. We went outside, but of course by then he'd disappeared.

  We stood there in silence with the light snow falling, and then heard the pack up on the ridge, howling. Everything else was so still and quiet, and there was just that chorus of wolves howling. It was just beautiful. And a great experience to have with Gordon.

  * * *

  * * *

  Snapshot: A True Field Scientist

  Troy Dunn

  Gordon knew every historically used den in the park and in the Fortymile area. I'll bet he was one of the few people left that knew all those sites, because most biologists don't take the time to get out there and find them. We'd always check them; there were some I'd never seen used, but Gordon always wanted to check them just in case.

  The Toklat alpha female, the one involved in a ten-day moose standoff in Upper Riley Creek, split off from the group a few weeks later. There wasn't any animosity that we could see; she just left the family group. She ended up starving to death, died right past Eielson Visitor Center on the east side of the Muldrow Glacier. A few days before she died, she ran into a group of hikers. We saw her before the hikers did. When they did, they stopped, and she circled around them in a wide arc and just went on her way. Here she was starving to death, and she didn't go after those people. At the time we saw her later near the den, we still did not know she was starving; Gordon and I just saw her curled up. On the next flight she was in the same spot, dead, and we reported the location to the park service. They retrieved her body and performed a necropsy, and that is how we learned of her starvation.

  She used one of the old dens off the upper East Fork the spring before she died. That's why Gordon always checked every one of those dens. The dens were so elaborate, with multiple entries. We'd watch a pup pop in one hole and then pop out another hole. And what a history. Gordon knew all about that.

  That's typical of the type of science he did: He was a true field researcher. He wasn't just counting numbers of wolves; he was watching the interactions of individuals within the family group. He was paying attention to their entire territories, to the whole ecosystem. He knew it wasn't just a matter of, oh, we've got ten wolves, so we're OK.

  Individuals matter. Killing off an alpha wolf is like going into someone's house, taking their mother or father out, and dragging them away. If people treated their families as well as wolves do their families, it'd be a much better world.

  The Swift Northeast wolves lived out on the flats of the Kantishna Hills. Gordon said it was a terrible place to raise pups because it's dry and there's not much prey. We watched their den site and saw they had four pups, but only one survived into the fall. But it wasn't a whole lot bigger in fall than it had been in May. Gordon said, “That pup isn't going to survive winter.”

  We tracked them all winter long, and it was still there, still small but there. The family, about six wolves, would travel through snow up to their chests, and they'd always go real slow and have that little pup sandwiched in between them. That pup did survive into the spring, and finally got big enough we couldn't differentiate between them. It was such a testament to how well they take care of each other.

  Before I flew with Gordon, all I could do was read something to learn about wolves. Now I could go to ADF&G meetings and say, “This is what I've seen with my own eyes. I've seen it over and over. What you're trying to feed the public isn't correct.”

  That's what we're missing, now that Gordon is gone. Someone who can stand up and say, this is the truth about wolves, and I know this because I have seen it.

  * * *

  7 See chapter 10 for more on these radio-collaring deaths and chapter 14 for more on the fate of the alpha female.

  8 These two siblings were originally from the Fortymile area, and, as part of a predator control effort, had been relocated by ADF&G. These two then traveled at least one hundred miles to reach the Toklat territory. Read more about predator control in chapter 12.

  9 See more about this wolf in chapter 10.

  10 See a photo of this trapper taking her away and more on trapping along national park boundaries in chapter 12.

  CHAPTER 3

  A NEW BIOLOGICAL YEAR: ATTENDING YOUNG PUPS

  AS SOON AS HABER ARRIVED IN THE PARK FOR HIS FIRST SUMMER AS A RANGER, he recruited everyone he could to find him wolves—including some of the most illustrious figures in the park's history. He spent time with and learned about the park from people like Ginny Wood, Celia Hunter, and Joe Hankins, who, remembered Gary Baker, “dressed like a bum and lived at Igloo Creek every summer, but on his death made the largest individual donation to the park in its history.” Johnny Johnson recalled listening to news of the first moon landing in 1969 at the East Fork cabin with Haber, Adolph and Louise Murie, Charlie Ott, and Bill Ruth—for whom Ruth Glacier is named. “They all worked with Gordon,” said Baker. “He was such a young enthusiastic guy.”

  Haber treasured his time as a park ranger; his uniform, clean and pressed with the name tag on the shirt, was found in his storage shed after his death. But he quickly left his ranger days behind to begin his research on Denali's wolves, research that provided the material for his master's thesis from Northern Michigan University in 1969 and for his PhD from the University of British Columbia in 1977. He devoted himself to learning everything about the wolves, including each and every den site, some of which, he concluded, are thousands of years old and were also used at intervals by early humans. Early in his research, he climbed through some of these dens to map the “honeycombs” of passages and burrows and the aboveground acreage used by the wolf families for resting, eating, and play. He also concluded that pup-rearing involved such high levels of cooperation that essentially all the wolves “act like parents.” This prolonged dependency of the young, which for Alaska's wolves is as much as 25 percent of their natural life span, is, Haber pointed out, “a hallmark of advanced societies.” Such cooperative rearing extends even after the pups become able to follow their family members when their nomadic ways resume in the fall.

  ONCE THE SNOW IS GONE IN SPRING, LIFE BEGINS TO REGENERATE in Denali. As a new biological year is under way, adults of many kinds are attending to young born in May, including wolf pups. The wolf courtship and mating activities of late February and early March bear fruit and lead to another cooperative effort from the adults and older offspring in raising the new pups.

  Raising new pups at the den is a social glue for wolves—without which individuals seem more likely to split apart and disperse—at a time of the year when some of the young adults are already predisposed to disperse. Well-established extended family groups of wolves display impressive cooperation during hunting and other activities, but it is as cooperative breeders that their sociality is most highly developed.

  In Interior Alaska, wolf pups are born in early to mid-May and usually do not emerge from the natal den for the first time until late May or early June. They develop rapidly and learn much after their first emergence. It becomes clear when observing them closely in the wild that they are far more intelligent than dog pups of the same age.

  Nevertheless, typically they are unable to travel regularly with the older family members until at least late September or October, sometimes even early November. The older wolves may move them between dens and rendezvous sites or to nearby kills as of July or August, but for the most part they provision them at fixed sites until they are about five months old. So the older wolves must make a basic lifestyle change: each family group forgoes its nomadic hunting ways until late September and focuses its activities at fixed homesites.


  Later in the fall and over the winter, the pups still depend on the older wolves but travel continuously with them throughout the established territory and on any extraterritorial forays or migrations. This routine continues until late April to early May, when dens are occupied again for the birth of new pups. In areas where wolves subsist primarily on moose and mountain sheep, and likely on similarly difficult prey, the young require two to three winters of learning from the experienced adults in order to become proficient hunters.

  Prolonged dependency of the young, a hallmark of advanced societies, facilitates the transfer of large amounts of learned information across generations. With a period of dependency equaling 25 percent or more of their normal life span, wolves that hunt the most challenging prey rival or exceed the dependency that is typical in human societies. In other words, each new biological year brings much more than just a regeneration of numbers. The pups represent another opportunity for families to extend and refine sophisticated behavior that not only contributes in important ways to their success but also sets the species apart from many others and makes it so interesting.

  Ancient Birthplaces

  Given the importance of new pups, it's hardly a surprise that a “den” is not just a hole in the ground. Well-established dens consist of a network of burrows and chambers excavated at least ten to twenty feet into the ground. Paul Elbert, a Fairbanks wolf hunter who spent much of his time searching for and digging up active wolf dens in Interior Alaska, told me in the late sixties about a number of very old dens to the north and northeast of Denali. At several sites, entire hillsides or bluffs had been honeycombed with interconnected burrows up to thirty feet long. Deep inside were at least one and often several large chambers that were as large as six to eight feet in diameter and three to four feet high—“big enough for a man to kneel up,” he said.