By Ellen Lockyer, Alaska Public Media
The Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center in Portage is welcoming a two new wolves. Robin Randich is the Center’s marketing manager. She says the Center’s two resident wolves, Brie and Deshka, are both females, so to build a pack, males were needed.
“Kind of a family dynamic of a wolf pack is to bring males in,” Randich said. “It is very healthy for everybody, it evens out the power dynamics, it evens out kind of the Alpha and Beta dynamics, so we needed male wolves introduced to our pack.”
Randich said the two new wolves are donations from Oregon’s Zoological Wildlife Conservation Center.
“We had the word out we were hoping to form a pack, in hopes that they would actually be animal ambassadors, and help to educate the public,” Randich said. “Because not a lot is known about wolves, in their natural habitat, how they interact, their pack life. So that’s really what their purpose and what they are geared towards.”
The male wolves, Dirius and Lothario, and different as night and day. Dirius is a white wolf, classified as a Hudson Bay wolf from Ontario Canada. Lothario is a black phase gray wolf with Alaska ancestry.
Randich said the idea is not to breed the wolves.
The two male wolves were introduced to the public on Saturday.