A Wild Wolf Wearing a Collar Camera Gives First Ever Personal Tour of the Woods Outside Human Presence

Researchers at Voyageurs Wolf Project in northwest Minnesota put a Vectronic Aerospace collar camera onto a wild, yet cooperative lone wolf, who offered a “first-person” tour of the neighboring woods. While the wolf’s long hair obstructed a bit of the view, it was clear that a great deal of feeding happened outside of the presence of humans. This was the first time any such footage was captured in such a unique way.

We are very excited to share the first-ever camera collar footage from a wild wolf to our knowledge. We hope you enjoy seeing the world from a wolf’s point of view! …Up to this point, we had only documented wolves from a single pack (the Bowman Bay Pack) hunting and killing fish at the same small creek. However, this footage clearly demonstrates that other wolves in our area know how to hunt fish and they do so in different areas.

Voyageurs Wolf Project, which is now part of the University of Minnesota, started out a cooperative project between Voyageurs National Park and Northern Michigan University that was formed to study the summer feeding habits and conservation of wild wolves.

Our goal is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the summer ecology of wolves in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem in northern Minnesota. Specifically, we want to understand the predation behavior and reproductive ecology (e.g., number of pups born, where wolves have dens, etc) of wolves during the summer.