Voyageurs Wolf Project

For the 2nd year in a row, there was not a single depredation on the large cattle ranch in the middle of our study area—we were not aware of even a single wolf that even stepped foot on the ranch last year! And last year was the 3rd year in a row where no wolves were killed on the ranch for killing calves. The 7.5 mile fence in combination with Livestock Guardian Dogs has effectively ended what was a perpetual cycle of death for over two decades: wolves would kill calves almost every year, and then wolves would get killed for killing calves. Each year was rinse, wash, and repeat. In some years, up to 5 calves were confirmed to have been killed by wolves (and likely more were killed by wolves that could not be confirmed), and up to 16 wolves were killed in a summer as a result (the equivalent of about 4 wolf packs in our area). So the change over the past few years has been  staggering, and illustrates how non-lethal approaches in the Great Lakes area can end long-standing conflicts, and in turn, benefit ranchers, their livestock, and wolves. Fortunately, our project is in a perfect position to document the efficacy of the non-lethal solutions on this ranch because we are intensively studying wolves all around the ranch and have GPS-data from wolves to examine the efficacy of these non-lethal approaches. If you value this kind of work, please donate at the link below. Your donations allow us to continue to study and document the efficacy of these non-lethal tools this year and into the future AND enables us to share our findings broadly here with everyone. Donate here: crowdfund.umn.edu/campaigns/VWP2… Notably, this non-lethal project was the result of a collaborative effort between our project, USDA Wildlife Services, and the rancher. And it was truly a team effort—without all of us helping in big ways, this project would never have happened. Further, the non-lethal project received considerable support from a variety of groups— including the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, International Wildlife Coexistence Network, Summerlee Foundation, Humane World for Animals, Wildlife Services, and others—who made this effort possible.

A gallon of gas these days is almost $5. All we need is small percent of our followers (>600,000 people) to buy us a gallon or two of gas to reach our annual fundraising goal. And by buy us a “gallon of gas” we mean make a tiny, gallon-of-gas sized donation to our project. Of course, we aren’t going to complain if you want to fill up our tank for us either! All of the support is a huge help to keeping our research going and enabling us to share it with everyone here. So, "buy us a gallon" at the link below and support the research and outreach of VWP! Donate here: crowdfund.umn.edu/campaigns/VWP2…

"How are you able to remove wolf pups from the den without getting attacked by their parents”? We get this question quite often as well as general questions about how we stay safe while studying wolves. E.g., we have been asked if we carry guns for our safety from wolves more times than we can count. So we figured we would share a bit about how we view staying safe from wolves in the field. The short answer: we are not exaggerating when we say have no concern whatsoever about wolves attacking us because wolves simply are not a threat to our safety because they really don’t want anything to do with us. And if anyone should get attacked by wolves or concerned about being attacked, it should be us given our work. Let us elaborate. We have visited active wolf dens and tagged pups every spring for over a decade. We often see or hear adult wolves at dens while doing this work. Yet, we have not had a single evenly remotely concerning or aggressive encounter with an adult wolf while doing this. If there was any time an adult wolf would have a motive for attacking and killing people, it would be when visiting a den and handling their pups. Think about what would happen if you grabbed a bear cub in front of its mom? On a similar vein, we spend much of our year studying wolf predation, hiking into recent kills by ourselves to document the kills. Sometimes, especially during winter, this means we get to kills while the carcass is very fresh, sometimes steaming and warm because it occurred an hour or two ago. In such instances, wolves are undoubtedly somewhere very close by and well aware of our presence. If disturbing a wolf’s kill is what triggers an attack—the kind of things we read about online and see portrayed on TV— then we definitely should have been attacked by now. Yet, we have never had a wolf so much as approach us when checking out their kills (and we have documented a few thousand kills in the past 12 years). Furthermore, we have had 6-8 people in the field most days of the year visiting areas GPS-collared wolves spend time. We know from our GPS-collar data that we are frequently close (25-200 m) to collared wolves when in the field. And we are typically spending most of our time in the very areas wolves like to spend time! If being in close proximity to wolves on a frequent basis is what increases the odds of getting attacked, then someone on our project should have been attacked by now. This is especially true because we do almost all of our fieldwork solo because it is most efficient. And yet, despite all of this and many years of intensive fieldwork, we have not had a single even remotely concerning encounter. This does not mean we have not had close encounters with wolves. We have had over a hundred at least. But a close encounter where the wolf does not immediately flee does not mean the wolf is being aggressive or showing a lack of fear. Sometimes wolves, like most other animals, are just curious or inquisitive. Instead of being afraid in such moments, we just savor such rare moments and take it in. Now, these are just our experiences but the data across North America only substantiates our assessment here. There are literally millions of people across North America who hike, camp, and live in wolf country and yet wolf attacks are almost unheard of. Sure, there have been a few EXTREMELY rare instances where wolves have threatened or attacked people but this is also true of white-tailed deer—in fact there are far more white-tailed deer attacks on people than wolves. Interestingly, though, no one we know regards deer as a threat to human safety (outside of vehicle collisions). NOTE: if you value this kind of educational content, please help us continue to create it by donating to our annual fundraiser at the link below. Your donations make this kind of content possible—without donor support, our project quite literally would not be able to continue. By donating you support our research and our outreach efforts! Donate here and support our work: crowdfund.umn.edu/campaigns/VWP2…

@shacsun Awesome! Thanks much! We really appreciate the support!

@VoyaWolfProject ✅ done ✅

Northern Minnesota feels like it is getting a bit wilder. Footage from just a few weeks ago. This does not appear to be the mother of the kittens. Folks tell us all the time how much they enjoy our trail camera videos, and our typical trail camera video is viewed >100,000-200,000 times and liked by 4,000-5,000 people. We simply need folks who enjoy our content to make a small donation ($10, $25, $50) to our project at the link below to help us cover the costs associated with keeping 350-400 trail cameras going year round. Quite literally, if a small percent (2-3%) of folks who enjoy our videos make a small donation to our project at the link in the comments, we reach our fundraising goal and it allows us to keep sharing wild moments like this with everyone for free! Think about it: most people regularly pay $10-20 per month for Netflix, Hulu, etc. so those companies can create endless content and make money. All we are asking for is $10-20 a year to help us cover our costs, and keep this work going so we can share it with everyone. Of course, the main point of the cameras is wolf research (and now, a little cougar research on the side) but cool footage of wildlife is a byproduct of having so many cameras out. So help us out and donate here: crowdfund.umn.edu/campaigns/VWP2…

The pups of the Cranberry Bay Pack in a remote area of Voyageurs National Park. The den included a large area at the base of a large balsam fir that was surrounded on one side by really thick deadfall…which makes for a pretty impenetrable den. We tagged, weighed, and sexed all 6 of the pack's pups, and will use trail cameras for the remainder of the summer, fall, and winter to understand how many of these pups survive. To do that work, we need your help. Our trail camera research—and all the cool footage you see from our project— is almost entirely funded by annual donations. So please support our research and outreach efforts by donating here: crowdfund.umn.edu/campaigns/VWP2…

More footage of the first documented cougar family in Minnesota in the past century. Volume up for the full experience. More to come soon! Our goal is to learn as much as we can about these cougars in the coming months. But we could really use some help covering costs associated with this research. For instance, we collected 9 scats at this kill and they are on their way to a lab for genetic analysis to try to get individual genetics and determine what western population the mom and dad originated from. Genetic samples cost ~$55-70 per sample, depending on the type and quality of the sample. Your support helps us cover costs like this, and gives us the ability and resources to study these individuals, and any others out there we might learn of. By donating at the link below, you directly support this research. Plus, the support helps us have the capacity to send in any samples we collect in the coming months.Once we have results, we will share with everyone! Notably, we also analyze the genetic samples from every adult wolf we collar, pup we tag, or dead wolf we come across. That work has been supported ENTIRELY by folks donating to our project, and the results have provided a wealth of information on wolf pack and population dynamics. And this work will only continue if generous folks continue to support our work. E.g., a $70 donation ensures we can get the genetics of a wolf. So please donate to our annual fundraiser to support our research, help us cover these costs, and keep this research going! Donate here: crowdfund.umn.edu/campaigns/VWP2…

Awesome footage of a wolf pack erupting in a howl on top of a frozen beaver lodge this past winter! You can hear the howls of the adults and the yipping of the pups, which sound kind of like coyotes. Literally, the only way we keep our 350-400 cameras going year round, capturing footage like this, is via donations. So, if you enjoy our trail camera footage, please donate to our annual fundraiser at the link below—we use these funds to purchase more trail cameras, buy batteries, SD cards, locks, mounts, etc. The trail cameras not only capture cool footage we can share but also provide us with invaluable data to study and understand pup survival, pack dynamics, and many other aspects of wolf ecology. You can support our work here: crowdfund.umn.edu/campaigns/VWP2…

Many wolves in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem spend considerable time hunting fish—namely, white suckers—every spring. We were the first to capture wolves hunting white suckers on video and to demonstrate the widespread nature of this behavior in ecosystems like ours. Thus, we are happy to share our 2026 summer sticker that captures the “fishy” tendencies of wolves in Voyageurs! Anyone who donates any amount to our annual fundraiser at the link below will get this sticker as a thank you from us! The sticker has a few specific details in it that are pertinent to the fishing behavior of wolves in our area. So support the project AND get a super cool sticker in the process. First, wolves almost always hunt fish at night, because that is when spawning white suckers generally move into shallow areas to spawn. Second, wolves primarily catch fish by waiting-in-ambush at specific spots on the edges of creeks where the suckers move into shallow areas and are readily caught. Third, the outline of the fish is a white sucker! We want to thank Kim Boustead who designed the sticker for us. Kim always does a fantastic job with our sticker designs and all of the cool stickers and graphics you see from our project come from Kim. Although we might have a vague idea for an idea for a sticker or graphic, Kim is the one who takes our rough idea and turns it into something really cool. We certainly do not have the talent or skills to do that! Donate here and get your sticker: crowdfund.umn.edu/campaigns/VWP2…

After her death, her mate, Wolf Y1T, found another female and has been with her since. The pack was two wolves this past winter…we will see if the pack is bigger this upcoming winter!

The Blood Moon Pack did not produce any pups last year because the breeding female was killed by a neighboring pack only a few months before pups are born.

Last week, we visited the Blood Moon Pack den and tagged all 5 pups the pack had. The den was under the long, drooping branches of a large dead balsam fir, which formed a tent-like structure for the den.

If you value and enjoy the research and outreach we do (like the first ever footage of cougar kittens in Minnesota…some more footage here!), please support the project this year by donating to our annual fundraiser at the link below! This annual fundraiser is critical to all of the work you see and read about. Our goal is to raise $135,000 this year to help keep our research going strong. We know from past fundraisers that we only need about 3,500 people—out of the >600,000 people following our project—to make a generous donation to our project and we reach our goal. Our dream and goal is to keep the Voyageurs Wolf Project going long-term but our biggest challenge by far is funding. We don’t receive any financial support from federal or state agencies (i.e., Voyageurs National Park or Minnesota DNR). Further, the University of Minnesota does not provide us any annual funding, cover salaries of researchers, or cover other research expenses, though they do help with some logistical/administrative aspects of the project. In other words, no organization is bankrolling our project and giving us annual funding that we can rely and plan on. If we stop raising funds, our project would quite literally be over—there would be no salaries for researchers, no funding to purchase equipment or to cover research expenses. As a result, generous donors have been and will continue to be absolutely critical to keeping the project going! Conducting rigorous and high-quality wolf research is not cheap and requires remote cameras, collars, GPS units, gas for boats and vehicles, salaries, data fees & storage, genetic analysis, aerial surveys, housing, field supplies...the list goes on. Even though our project has received key funding via grants from the Minnesota Environmental and Natural Resources Trust Fund, we still need considerable annual support to keep the project going strong. Further, that funding is not a guaranteed annual source of funding for our project. We deeply appreciate any contribution to our project regardless of the size and are thankful for everyone who has supported the project in the past! You can support the project here: crowdfund.umn.edu/campaigns/VWP2… To donate via check, make checks out to the "Voyageurs Wolf Project (Fund 22745)" and send to: University of Minnesota Foundation P.O.Box 860266 Minneapolis, MN 55486-0266