In the Field

Purpose. Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia. September 27, 2026.

Coastal Gray Wolves thrive in the Great Bear Rainforest of BC. They are very abundant in the Great Bear, and it's likely there are between 500 and 1,000 wolves in the Great Bear (there are only a couple of science-based estimates which vary a little in their assumptions). But, compared to Brown Bears and Black Bears, they can be very challenging to find. Many decades of persecution have made them very wary of humans and it's possible to do many trips into the Great Bear and never see a wolf.

This Coastal Gray Wolf is a "youngish" female, quite possibly in her second year of life. We found her and her pack mates (which there were at least 4) in a small estuary on one of the outer (i.e., western) islands of the Great Bear Rainforest. When we first saw her (and she saw us) she was several hundred meters away - far too far away to get any decent photographs of her. But, for whatever reason, she was very curious about us and decided to come out of the estuary and approach us (to very close!) to check us out. I captured this image of her as she made her way across an intertidal sand bar as she was closing in on us. Once she got close enough to satisfy her curiosity about us, she sat down like a domestic dog and just looked around and "hung out" with us for several minutes. Shortly afterwards she slowly trotted off and re-joined her pack mates and engage in a very wolfian activity - taking a group nap!

Based on the capture times of my images our entire interaction with this particular wolf lasted just under 10 minutes. But it was a highly memorable and impactful 10 minutes that I won't soon forget...

Here's a larger version (4800 pixel) of this very focused Coastal Gray Wolf:

• Purpose: Download 4800 pixel image (JPEG: 3.9 MB)

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

1. These images - in all resolutions - are protected by copyright. I'm fine with personal uses of them (including use as desktop backgrounds or screensavers on your own computer), but unauthorized commercial use of the image is prohibited by law. Thanks in advance for respecting my copyright!

2. Like all photographs on this website, these images were captured following the strict ethical guidelines described in The Wildlife FIRST! Principles of Photographer Conduct. As such, no baiting or any form of attractant was used and, as always, we attempted to minimize our impact on the ongoing behaviour of the subjects. I strongly encourage all wildlife photographers to always put the welfare of their subjects above the value of their photographs.

3. This image was captured during my Autumn in the Great Bear Exploratory Photo Adventure in early Autumn of 2026. Each year I offer photo tours into various locations on the amazing BC coast, including the Great Bear Rainforest and, every other year, into the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Sanctuary (to photograph grizzlies, of course!). Details about these trips can be found on the Photo Tours page of this website.

Behind the Camera

Purpose. Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia. September 27, 2026.

Lossless Compressed RAW (ARW) format; ISO 4000.

Sony A1 IIpaired with Sony EF 600mm f4 GM OSS lens with Sony 1.4x TC (840mm). Hand-held from floating Zodiac inflatable boat. OSS on and set to Mode 1. Expand Spot (tracking) AF area mode with subject recognition mode set to Animal.

1/1000s @ f5.6; -1.3 stop compensation from multi-metered exposure setting.

At the Computer

Purpose. Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia. September 27, 2026.

Initial noise reduction and capture sharpening on the .arw (raw) file using the DeepPRIME XD3 algorithm of DXO PhotoLab 10.1 Elite (using the appropriate camera/lens module).

Subsequent adjustments to the adjusted linear DNG file (exported from PhotoLab) and conversion to 16-bit TIFF file (and JPEG files for web use) - including all global and selective adjustments - made using Capture One Pro (build 16.8). In the case of this image I made just one global adjustment - an overall contrast adjustment using the Levels tool. Selective local adjustments performed using Capture One Pro's layers and masking tools. In this case numerous small adjustments and minor tweaks were made on 5 separate layers, with the tweaks being associated with "exposure balancing" and contrast adjustments (such as adjustments to brightness, clarity, highlights, shadows, blacks, etc.).

Photoshop modifications included insertion of the watermark and/or text.

Conservation

Purpose. Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia. September 27, 2026.

General Conservation Status in Canada*: Secure.

Probably no species alive today has suffered as much direct persecution from humans as has the Gray Wolf (Canis lupus). Once extremely widespread in North America, the Gray Wolf was virtually extirpated from the contiguous 48 states of America and now is regularly found within only a fraction of its historical range in Canada. While the Gray Wolf is currently listed as endangered in most of the 48 lower states of the United States and enjoys the privileges associated with such status (if lack of persecution and abuse can be thought of as a privilege), it is still official policy in much of Canada to rid the countryside of this magnificent keystone predator. As an example, in British Columbia, there is NO closed season on the wolf in most hunting jurisdictions and opportunistic slaughter is encouraged by policy (it is the ONLY fur-bearing species for which NO species hunting tag is required in British Columbia!). Conservation of wolves presents a puzzling paradox. Reduced to the most basic principles, wolf conservation is simplistic: we need only to stop persecuting this species in order for it to survive. Yet accomplishing this invariably proves incredibly difficult - it's as though wolf persecution has been institutionalized directly into government (and societal) bureaucracy.

*as listed by Wild Species Canada (wildspecies.ca)