What happened when a wolf approached Yellowknife aurora viewers

A Yellowknife tour operator says a recent wolf attack near Boundary Creek is like nothing he has ever experienced.

The NWT’s Department of Environment and Climate Change warned residents on Monday that a lone grey wolf approached a group of tourists and bit one of them while they were viewing the northern lights early on Saturday morning.

“Nothing like that has ever happened in the 11 years that I’ve been offering tours,” Julian Botnick, the owner and operator of Northern Lights Tours, told Cabin Radio.

“In the outdoors we see wolves now and again, but they’re sort-of running away or on the side of the road as we’re driving … they’re not usually hanging around.”

Botnick said he was with around 30 to 40 tourists watching and taking photos of the aurora when one member of the group, a young Korean woman, screamed. When he turned around, he said he saw a wolf closely circling the group.

‘This is not normal behaviour’

“The first 10 seconds I was like, ‘cool, a wolf,'” Botnick said. “And then after that wore off I was like, ‘oh shit, this thing has something wrong with it. This is not normal behaviour.'”

Botnick said he told everyone to get back on the bus as he shone a headlamp at the wolf and tried to shoo it away, but he said the animal did not appear afraid.

Checking with the group after they were back on the bus, Botnick said the young woman who had screamed told him the wolf had bitten her on the butt.

He said he took her to the emergency room at Stanton Territorial Hospital, where she was given tetanus and rabies vaccines and advised to get further doses of the rabies vaccine as she continues her travels in Alberta.

Botnick said he advised the territory’s Department of Environment and Climate Change of the wolf encounter later on Saturday morning. He said wildlife officers searched the area using a drone but found no evidence of the wolf.

Botnick said the department also asked to swab the woman’s pants for DNA, but did not do so before she left the territory.

Second wolf encounter reported in a month

Wildlife officers killed a wolf in the Ranney Hill area last month after a resident reported being bitten by one of the animals while walking their dog. The department has said it isn’t certain if the wolf killed was the same one that bit the resident.

Botnick said a departmental staff member questioned, after the latest incident, if the wolf that bit the resident in September and the wolf that bit one of his clients might be the same animal.

A spokesperson for the Department of Environment and Climate Change told Cabin Radio in an email that lab results from the wolf officers killed in the Ranney Hill area was an adult female in “poor overall body condition” that tested negative for the rabies virus. The spokesperson said while they were unable to confirm whether that wolf was the same animal that bit a resident in September, “there is strong evidence to suggest” it was the same wolf.

The spokesperson said wolf “conflicts” with humans are rare.

“Wolves are generally extremely wary of humans and not aggressive toward them by nature. The main contributing factors can be habituation to people, conditioning to human foods, rabies infections and the presence of domestic dogs,” they stated.

If you encounter a wolf, the department advises to raise your arms to make yourself appear bigger and act aggressively toward it by making noise and throwing objects. If the wolf does not immediately run away the department said you should continue to make yourself large, maintain eye contact and slowly back away.