Caroline Van Hemert shares her family's encounter with a coastal wolf pack in Glacier Bay National Park. Witnessing both the harsh realities of nature and the surprising resilience of wildlife, Van Hemert reveals how these wolves have altered their diet dramatically in response to environmental changes - leaving us with lessons we can learn from nature's flexibility.
Though what wolves eat for lunch might not seem revolutionary, this demonstration of their flexibility is, particularly when it comes to shaping our scientific understanding of their lives. Wolves are known to be opportunistic, but this pack’s quick and dramatic prey shift sent shock waves through the wildlife world: in just three years, they’d upended classic predator-prey dynamics and bent the supposed “rules” of their lives.
Wherever wolves roam, they leave complex ecological footprints. At our cabin near Haines, we’ve watched members of a resident pack chomp spawning pink salmon, favoring the fat-rich heads and discarding the rest. In doing so, they not only feed their young, but the forests, too. When wolves — along with bears, eagles and other animals — drag carcasses to shore or eat salmon and poop out their remains in the woods, they deliver resources to the terrestrial environment, enriching everything from trees to bugs to songbirds. On land, wolf-hunted ungulate carcasses can serve as nutrient hotspots while simultaneously raising hackles among livestock owners and big-game hunters.