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white wolf alpha female in Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone Dynasty

We are pleased to introduce this captivating profile of Yellowstone’s Wapiti pack alpha female. This photograph was taken in early January of 2021 as the alpha and her pack headed north, leaving behind them an agitated buffalo herd in Gibbon Meadows. Robert and Kelli, with longtime friend and Yellowstone guide Carl Mock, had watched the pack most of the day as the wolves probed the buffalo herd for weaknesses. Fortune smiled on us when the white alpha female momentarily hung back from the pack in the snowy timber, providing a chance for this once in a lifetime image.

The Wapiti Alpha Female is the third white wolf in her linage of dominant alpha females inside Yellowstone National Park. She is the daughter of the famous White Lady, the female alpha of the Canyon Pack, and granddaughter of the white wolf Hayden female alpha. In bloody drama, this alpha’s grandmother and grandfather (Hayden alpha) were killed by invading Mollies, a rare pack of buffalo-killing wolves. Her mother the White Lady escaped the slaughter, and together with a black wolf male alpha helped to firmly establish the new Canyon Pack, eventually taking back the Hayden Valley territory of her mother, and then reigned in the American imagination as ‘The White Lady’ for over a decade until she was illegally shot. The Canyon Pack eventually gave up their dens and territory in the Hayden Valley to the White Lady’s daughter and her mate, who established her pups and the Wapiti Pack in the dens of her mother and grandmother.

 

To purchase limited edition and artist proof prints of Yellowstone Dynasty head to our Fine Art Sales Wild Life Collection.