Three different groups of wolves are found on most of their traditional range. Timber wolves live below the tree line or in the mountains, depend mostly on non-migratory prey like moose and bison and maintain regular territories. Arctic wolves live on the arctic islands, and prey mostly on caribou, muskox and arctic hare.

Wolf conflicts with humans are rare. Wolves are generally extremely wary of humans and not aggressive toward them by nature.

Though curious, wolves generally fear people and rarely pose a threat to human safety. However, there have been some cases of human injuries and a few deaths due to wolves in North America during the last 100 years. The main contributing factors were habituation to people, conditioning to human foods, rabies infections and the presence of domestic dogs.

What you can do

To Prevent Conflicts with Wolves:

• Respect wolves for the large wild animal they are and for their ability to kill prey ten times their size.
• Resist the temptation to approach wolves or entice them to come towards you; do not let them get close to you.
• Do not feed wolves or leave food outdoors, including pet food.
• Do not approach fresh wolf kills, dens or rendezvous sites.
• Do everything you can to avoid teaching wolves to be comfortable around or lose their fear of people.
• Report wolves that seem comfortable around people, seek human food or frequent human areas to your local ECC office.

If You Encounter a Wolf:

• Bring your dog to heel at your side and put them on a lead as soon as possible. Try to keep yourself between the wolf and the dog as this usually ends an encounter.
• Do not try and break up a physical fight between the wolf and your dog to avoid any risk of injury to yourself.
• Raise your arms to make yourself appear as large as possible.
• Act aggressively towards it – make noise and throw objects.
• Do not turn your back on the wolf and do not run.
• If the wolf does not run away immediately, continue making yourself large, maintaining eye contact, and backing away.
• Calmly, but slowly back away and maintain eye contact

Report a sighting

A sighting is not an emergency, if the animal is where it’s supposed to be and not behaving in a predatory or aggressive way.

REPORT A WOLF SIGHTING IF: The wolf is near a populated area where people frequent, like a campground, community or dump, or if the animal is behaving aggressively. Report sightings to your local Environment and Climate Change office and report a wildlife emergency using the 24-hour emergency wildlife numbers.
 

Resources

•    Please don't feed the wildlife
•    What happens when you call an ECC Officer