It’s not just Fat Bear Week in Alaska. Trail cameras are also capturing wolves, elk and more

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Millions of people around the world watched the “Fat Bear Week” celebration in a remote Alaskan national park this month, as captivating live camera footage captured the chubby predators eating salmon and getting fat. for winter.

But in the vast state known for its abundant wildlife, the magical and sometimes violent world of wild animals can be found closer to home.

Less than a half-mile from a well-populated neighborhood in Anchorage, the state’s largest city, several trail cameras regularly capture animals ranging in size from wolverines to elk. And a Facebook group that features animals captured on webcams has seen its number of followers grow nearly sixfold since September, when it posted footage of a pack of wolves taking down a yearling elk calf.

But not everything is pessimistic videos on the page, and the actual death of the elk calf was not shown. The group, called Muldoon Area Trail Photos and Videos, also features light-hearted moments, such as two grizzly bear cubs standing on their hind legs and enthusiastically rubbing their backs against each side of a tree to mark it.

Ten cameras capture bobcats, wolves, foxes, coyotes, eagles and black and brown bears — “just everything that’s here,” said Donna Gail Shaw, co-administrator of the Facebook group.

In addition to Anchorage’s roughly 290,000 human residents, nearly 350 black bears, 65 brown bears and 1,600 moose also live here.

Joe Cantil, a retired tribal health professional, said the idea for the page began when we observed Alaska’s vast open lands from an airplane on a hunting trip near Fairbanks.

“You’re in the middle of nowhere, so you see the animals acting the way they do whenever we’re not around,” he said.

He later met wildlife officials at the Anchorage park, conducting a predator inventory. He saw them set a trap and three webcams where a moose had been killed.

“When I saw that, I thought, ‘Yes, I can do that,’” he said.

Cantil set up a low-tech camera and captured his first animal, a wolverine, fueling a passion that led to the creation of the Facebook page in 2017.

Then, while hiking, he met Shaw, a retired professor of science education and associate dean of the College of Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Shaw was intrigued by the game’s cameras and began bugging him to see the footage.

“Well, he finally got tired of pestering me and one day he said, ‘You know, you can buy your own camera,’ and that started my hobby,” said Shaw, a Texas native.

She started by tying a single $60 camera to a tree. It now has nine cameras, seven of which are active in Far North Bicentennial Park, a 4,000-acre (1,619-hectare) park that stretches for miles along the Chugach Mountain range on the east side of Anchorage.

Her cameras are set up anywhere between 1,500 and 2,500 feet from the Chugach Foothills neighborhood and she frequently posts on the group’s Facebook page. Cantil also posts videos from his three cameras.

“I knew there was wildlife here because I would occasionally come across a moose or a bear on the trail, but I didn’t know how much wildlife was here until I put the cameras on it,” Shaw said.

She replaces batteries and storage cards about once a week, walking through the woods to do so armed with a horn to announce her presence, two cans of bear spray and a .44 caliber gun for protection.

Many of the page’s followers are Anchorage residents looking for information about what animals may currently be roaming the popular trail system. Other users join in to see what the cameras capture, including people from other states who “like watching the wildlife we ​​have here,” she said.

Shaw said that every few years, his cameras capture a wolf or two — and sometimes even a pack. This year she was surprised when a pack of five wolves passed by, walking silently in single file.

Last month, while she was collecting memory cards, she spotted elk hair on the ground across the creek with two of her cameras. After spotting what appeared to be a patch of land where a bear might bury its prey, she assumed it was another elk attacked by a black bear, similar to what happened earlier not far away.

But when she checked the memory card, it showed the wolves knocking down the elk calf while the mother elk tried to protect her offspring, trying to kick the wolves away with her long legs.

Now, demand for the page is growing, but Shaw said he has stopped adding cameras.

“I think I’m maxing out my camera,” she said. “Nine is enough!”

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This story has been edited to correct that Shaw’s cameras capture wolves every few years, not weeks.