Conservationists eager to see plan to save rare eastern wolf found in Quebec, Ontario

Gisèle Benoit still gets goosebumps when she remembers the first time she saw a family of eastern wolves emerge from the forests of the Mauricie National Park.

Gisèle Benoit still gets goosebumps when she remembers the first time she saw a family of eastern wolves emerge from the forests of the Mauricie National Park, under the backdrop of a rising moon.

It was 1984 and Benoit, then in her early 20s, had been using a horn to try to call a bull moose when she instead heard a long howl, followed by an adult wolf stepping out to a rocky shore accompanied by a half-grown youth and four pups.

“I will never forget that,” she said of the magical moment. “It’s anchored in my heart forever.”

It was only later that Benoit, an artist and documentary filmmaker, learned that the wolves she saw weren’t grey wolves but rather rare eastern wolves.

The species, whose population is estimated at fewer than 1,000 mature adults, could soon be further protected by new measures that are raising hopes among conservationists that attitudes toward a once-feared and maligned animal are shifting.

In July, the federal government upgraded the eastern wolf’s threat level from “status of special concern” to “threatened,” based on a 2015 report by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. That report found the population count may be as low as 236 mature individuals in its central Ontario and southern Quebec habitat.

The eastern wolf is described as medium-sized canid with reddish-tawny fur that lives in family groups of a breeding pair and their offspring. Also known as the Algonquin wolf, it is largely restricted to existing protected areas, including Algonquin Park in Ontario.

The federal Environment Department said in an email that development of a recovery strategy is underway, adding it would be “written in collaboration with provincial governments, federal departments responsible for the federal lands where the eastern wolf is found as well as First Nations groups and Indigenous organizations.”