A man who got to within several yards of a group of juvenile wolves in Yellowstone National Park was being stupid and disrespectful but wasn’t in much real danger, a wolf biologist said.
A video of the Oct. 6 incident went viral this week after it was posted recently on the “Yellowstone National Park: Invasion of the Idiots!” social media site.
A common assumption was that the footage showed a “pack” of wolves closing in, perhaps planning to kill and devour the unidentified man.
But that isn’t what was really going on, biologist Doug Smith, who led the wolf program in Yellowstone National Park for nearly three decades, told Cowboy State Daily.
It was a few juvenile wolves who approached the man more out of curiosity than anything else, said Smith, who had viewed the video.
Wolf watcher Wendy Bush of Bozeman, Montana, told Cowboy State Daily that she was at Yellowstone that day, and, after witnessing the incident, she briefly spoke with the man.
She described him as a younger man with Virginia license plates on his vehicle.
She said he appeared to be shaken up, “but relieved to be back at his car.”
She said the idea that the wolves were closing in to attack is “an extreme exaggeration” of the encounter, and she faults the man for getting too close.
“He walked toward them and drew their attention when you could have walked downhill and not drawn their attention,” she said.
Like ‘Teenage Kids’
Smith said that the risk to the man from the wolves might not have been “zero,” but it was extremely low.
At one point the man can be seen shooting bear spray at the wolves. It didn’t deter them, likely because it was shot from too far away to hit any of the wolves directly, witnesses said.
One of the wolves apparently started rolling on the ground in a spot where some of the bear spray had hit, Smith said.
He likened such antics to the behavior of “teenage kids.”
“One of the wolves rolled in it. They were messing around, having a good time,” he said.
‘This Could End Really Badly For That Guy’
The video was taken by park visitor Keith Kerbs of Vancouver, Washington.
He told Cowboy State Daily that at the time, what the man was doing seemed extremely dangerous.
“I was honestly thinking in my head, ‘this could get really bloody and gory, so maybe I shouldn’t be videoing it,” he said.
“To this day, I don’t know what his motive or purpose was,” Kerbs added.
About 100 people were watching the wolves from different locations when the incident occurred, he said.
Most of the spectators were at respectful distances from the wolves, hundreds of yards away, Kerbs said.
So, “a lot of us were just standing there in shock, thinking, ‘what is happening?’” when the man started walking toward the wolves.
When the wolves started moving toward him as well, the situation turned tense, Kerbs said. Spectators started shouting at him to get back away from the wolves.
In his video, bystanders can be heard making comments about the man being in “mortal danger.” And someone is heard stating that “this could end very badly for that guy.”
At one point, the man and the wolves go into a depression in the landscape and out of the line of sight of Kerbs’ camera.
Invasion of the Idiots site manager Jen Mignard said that part of the video made her hold her breath.
Part Of The Junction Butte Pack
Wolf watcher Marisa de la Fuente of Bozeman said she also witnessed the incident and is upset that it’s being touted as a “big, bad wolf” story.
She said the wolves in the video are part of the Junction Butte pack, which she’s followed for years.
That pack currently has about 15 members, she said.
The handful of wolves in the video are “pups,” born in April, that were left behind that day when the pack’s adults went out hunting, she said.
The pups had been feeling somewhat lost since their main “babysitter,” the famous female Wolf 1479F, ventured out of the park in September and was shot legally by a hunter in Montana.
On Oct. 6, the young wolves were sitting on a hillside and howling, the man had to have known where they were before walking toward them, she said.
She said that she witnessed the encounter from an angle different from where Kerbs’ video was taken and saw everything.
The wolves’ body language conveyed curiosity, and not serious predatory behavior, she said.
At one point, the man was behind a boulder, and wolves apparently could not see him, de la Fuente said, although they could sense him.
They might have approached because they thought it was the adult wolves returning from the hunt, she said.
Acclimation Is Bad For Wolves
When wolves get too acclimated to people, it ends badly for the wolves, de la Fuente said.
As she sees it, losing the fear of humans is what gets wolves such as 1479F killed when they leave the park.
So it upsets her when people push in close to wolves — bad human behavior she said she’s seen on several occasions.
Wolves should have a healthy fear of people, she said.
“I was screaming, ‘run away!’” at the wolves during the encounter, she said.
Smith agreed that people shouldn’t put pressure on wolves and other wildlife in Yellowstone.
National parks should be “wildlife sanctuaries” where animals are left in peace, he said.
“They (wild animals) need to catch a break in the national parks. It’s the most protected ground in America,” he said.
At Least The Guy Didn’t Run
The man in the video was completely at fault for getting too close to the wolves, Smith said.
However, during the encounter, the man did the right thing by not turning his back and running, he added.
As with any predator, running will trigger the chase instinct in wolves, Smith said.
“If he had started running, they would have chased him. And even then, probably nothing would have happened,” he said.
Wolves are the least dangerous large predators to humans in North America, Smith said.
He said that even when protecting their young, wolves are extremely hesitant to attack people.
He said during his research, there were times he pulled wolf pups from dens while the mother wolf was there “barking” at him.
“Oh my goodness, if I tried pulling a grizzly cub out of a den, I would be cut from head to tail,” he said.
Consequences?
Bush said she reported the incident with the man and the wolves to the National Park Service, and a ranger gathered some information from her, including the man’s license plate number.
An inquiry was sent to the Park Service, regarding whether any citations or fines had been issued in connection with the incident caught in Kerbs’ video.
Park Service spokeswoman Linda Veress responded with an email that didn’t address those questions but included a statement of the park’s policy that visitors keep safe distances away from wildlife.
“Wolves may look beautiful, even fluffy from a distance, and that is part of their appeal. But they are still powerful, wild predators, and treating them like pets puts both visitors and the animals at risk,” according to the statement.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
