Vancouver Island Wolf



Last week I was watching Nat Geo Wild's documentary, The Great Bear Rainforest. As you might guess, it's about bears and the rainforest ecosystem, but I got really interested in a short bit about the wolves on the island. Having lived on Vancouver Island for so long they are smaller than the typical gray wolf—a kind of sub species or variation. They are the only wolf that lives off seafood—salmon and beached sea animals.

Later in the week I read that people are placing leg-hold traps throughout the island—a result of a number of human/pet attacks by the wolves. I guess their isolation has caused their numbers to grow and seafood just isn't cutting it, but leg-hold traps seem to be an unexacting and cruel form of population control.

I had every intention of drawing the Vancouver Island wolves in a kind of romantic nature-drawing way, but with the addition of current events this drawing is a bit more macabre.

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