Voyageurs National Park | Tracking the Gray Wolf: Today, on Rock the Park, we’re braving the frigid north. We’re in our home state of Minnesota specifically in Voyageurs National Park. Voyageurs is a remote wilderness of just over 318,000 acres - much of which is water. We’re following a route the namesake Voyageurs traveled centuries ago Voyageurs National Park sits in the far reaches of northern Minnesota on the border with Canada.
Our main mission for this trip is to be trekking out deep into the wilderness and locate the endangered gray wolf. There’s only about 30 to 50 wolves in Voyageurs National Park. Wolves travel and hunt in family packs of six to nine. In northern Minnesota, there are nearly 3,000 gray wolves - more than all the other states in the lower 48 combined.
Tracking the Gray Wolf in Voyageurs National Park: We’re in Voyageurs National Park hoping to catch a glimpse of the park’s iconic gray wolves. As we learned earlier, gray wolves patrol along frozen shorelines in between islands targeting prey like rabbits, deer, and even moose. We try to find a spot to see as much of the shoreline as possible and then we’re gonna sit back and cross our fingers.
The island provides elevation and the grass cover should help conceal us as day turns to night. Believe it or not, they’re not the big bad wolves that sometimes they’re made out to be. Gray Wolves are very skittish and if they pick up our scent or hear any motion, there’s a great chance that they’ll dart away even if they are half a mile away.
Wolves are most active at dusk so we’ve got night vision goggles to help us scan the shorelines where they head out to hunt. We listen to the wolves howling back and forth for about a half hour. Wolves howl to communicate with others and to warn other packs in the area to stay out of their territory.
Rock the Park is an Emmy award-winning adventure series seen every Saturday on ABC featuring our national parks and other public lands across America and the world. Now in its 6th season, Jack Steward and Colton Smith go off the beaten path to explore magnificent landscapes, incredible wildlife and all the exciting ways to immerse yourself in and around nature. Whether it’s swimming with sea turtles, climbing to the top of a volcano or repelling into a glacier, Jack and Colton are living life to the fullest and inspiring others to do the same.
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