The Cranberry Bay Pack of Wolves at Voyageurs National Park strolled past a trail camera about two weeks ago during a snowstorm.

The Voyageurs Wolf Project, focused on understanding the summer ecology of wolves in the park, maintains the cameras and, having had several observations of the pack this past winter, is confident the pack of six shown in this video is the full pack. One pup, however, is believed to have died a few months back. The video description provides more detail on that:

Interestingly, from what we can tell, the first 3 wolves in the video are all adults and the last 3 are pups. If we are correct, then this likely means that a Cranberry Bay pup died between November 2021 and January 2022 as all 4 pups were still alive as of November 2021 when the pack was 7 wolves.

At some point between November 2021 and January 2022, the pack decreased to 6 wolves indicating a pack member died or dispersed. Since it appears it was a pup that “disappeared” from the pack, we think death is more likely than dispersal. Still, 3 out of 4 pups surviving until 1 year old is pretty good and far better than most packs in our area!