Much-Studied Wolf Killed in Alaska

The alpha wolf that led a famous Denali National Park pack in Alaska was killed by a hunter last weekend.

The wolf was the alpha male of Denali’s Toklat family, a group of wolves that has been studied for more than six decades and which has often seen by visitors to the national park. The wolf was shot legally by a guided hunter after it ventured out of the park boundary, officials said.

The 7-year-old wolf, which was identified by a radio collar that had been attached by researchers, was one of several recent losses for the much-studied and frequently photographed Toklat group.

The alpha wolf had been behaving erratically and wandering near an area outside the park where two females, including the alpha’s mate, were killed in traps in the last two months after they had left the park in search of food.

A 55-square-mile buffer outside the park protects wolves from hunters and trappers, but conservation groups and animal welfare activists say that it is too small.

Cathie Harms, a spokeswoman for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said the alpha’s death would not affect Alaska’s wolf population.

“One wolf out of a statewide population of 7,000 to 11,000 has no biological impact,” Harms said. “It is significant to people who have developed an attachment for a particular pack of wolves or an individual wolf.”

But Gordon Haber, an independent biologist who has long studied the Denali wolves, said the “decades-old Toklat lineage has suffered a virtually complete social breakdown” as a result of the deaths.