Written By: Timothy Waller

When you visit a national park, one of the things you might be expecting is to see wildlife in its natural habitat. For the visitors of Alaska’s Denali National Park however, they may not get that chance again.

One of the park’s main and most well-known attractions was its East Fork pack of wolves. The wolves have become synonymous with the park, with many photographers and wildlife enthusiasts making the trip just to see them. Unfortunately, that may be a thing of the past.

The very last radio-collared male was found slain by a hunter’s camp near the park in May, and that’s not the worst part. The entire wolf population in the park has been decreasing at an alarming rate every year, with an almost 45% decrease in wolf spotting since 2015. Many scientists fear the immediate extinction of these beautiful wolves in the park as the last female and her two pups haven’t been seen in quite some time and even if they are alive, it would be very difficult to survive without a pack…

By now, I’m sure you’re wondering why this pack is all but extinct. The answer is simple- unregulated hunting.

I would like to state this: I am a hunter. I have killed deer, dove, rabbits, etc. I fully support hunting, but I personally think Alaska’s laws on hunting predators in Wildlife Parks is horrible. The largest state in our country has a law that allows “hunters” to kill wolves and any other predators in the state’s national wildlife refuges basically unregulated. Hunters are allowed to use anything from laser sights to helicopters to hunt as many wolves as they want, with no restrictions.

As a hunter, this is horrible. When hunting deer, there are numerous restrictions on how, how many, when, and where you can hunt them- ensuring the deer has a fair chance and you won’t exterminate them all. These same safeties aren’t on wolves simply because they are a predator, and its lead to an almost extermination of wolves from an entire region. How can that be justified?

I personally think there should be as many restrictions on hunting wolves and predators in the Alaskan Denali National Park as there are on moose and elk until the population returns to normal. If it’s not too late…

I can speak for every true hunter when I say, eradicating a region of an entire species is wrong. Hunters, like myself, care very much about preserving wildlife, so I very much support more restrictions on hunting these wolves, but even if they did, it very well might be too late for the wolves of the Denali National Park…