MATTHEW LANE
KINGSPORT — The new wolf pups at Bays Mountain Park are growing up fast. In fact, to the average visitor, the 10-month-old wolves probably look just like any other wolf in the habitat.
Last year, the park added four gray wolf pups to its habitat — two males and two females, bringing the total number of wolves at Bays Mountain Park to seven. This week, all of the wolf pups will be 10 months old with the largest weighing in at about 100 pounds.
Park naturalist Rhonda Goins said to the average person, the pups look fully grown.
“Unalii is the biggest one and he’s humongous. The tunnels they run through are three foot tall and he has to duck. His back just about touches it and he’s probably six foot long,” Goins said. “(The pups) will add muscle mass, and they might not get any taller, but they’ll get bigger.”
Age-wise, the pups would be considered “tweens” by human standards, Goins said.
Bays Mountain Park’s wolf program first began in 1992 with the arrival of three 6-month-old pups and additional wolves were added in 1995, 2004 and 2007. Ideally, the park likes to keep somewhere around 10 wolves in its habitat at any given time, a good mix of older and younger pups in order to maintain a good, pack dynamic.
Two years ago the park’s wolf habitat lost all three of its elder wolves. In addition, the place where Bays Mountain goes for new wolves had two years of failed breeding seasons.
To bolster its wolf habitat, the park went with another wolf breeder last year — the Minnesota Wildlife Connection — and secured the four new pups. As in previous years, volunteers served as the mothers of the pups for the first three months of their lives to better socialize them to humans.
Goins said the integration of the new pups to the pack has been perfect.
“You could not ask for a better way. We’re so good at what we do because we’ve done it and done it, and we get better every year, plus we’ve got a lot of really good volunteers,” Goins said.
Rob Cole, operations manager at Bays Mountain, describes the socializing process as a family affair with the experienced volunteers who keep coming back, staying with wolf pups every day for three months.
“That’s been invaluable,” Cole said.
Goins said when the park first got the wolf pups last year, they were not fed the first day, but the older wolves were fed 80 pounds of meat.
“When we put them together, we knew what the puppies would do,” Goins explained. “They licked their mouths and the grown ones were going to regurgitate for the pups. That bonds the pack.”
As with the other wolves at the park, the pups received Native American names. One of the tan males has been named Unalii (Cherokee for “friend”), the other tan male is Ahuli (Cherokee for “drum”), the tan female is named Ela (Cherokee for “Earth”) and the black female is called Takoda (Sioux for “friend of many”).
The older wolves in the habitat are Tanasi (the alpha male) and sisters Netar and Aiyana — all of whom arrived in 2007.
Goins only went home fives times during the three-month socializing process and said when her husband wanted to see her, he came up to the mountain.
So far, there’s been no issues with the pups.
“None at all. They’ve been the healthiest ones we’ve ever had,” she said.