Today I visited Wolf Hollow in Ipswich, MA. The facility is designed to be a place to educate people about wolves and their role in the environment. I was not sure what to expect but thought it sounded like something that could be interesting and fun. It could also be quite bad too, as some of these types of “lets show wildlife to people for a fee” can sometimes end up.
We went on a Saturday to see the 1:30 “show.”
The show turned out to be a roughly 1 hour interactive lecture and it was pretty darn good. The audience (all of us) were seated in some bleachers and the wolves were in a fenced area that was mostly naturally vegetated. It was maybe a few acres on size. There were two wolves, a male and female. The educator stood about 10 feet from the fence. So he was with the wolves and about 15 – 20 feet from us. He talked about wolves in general and about the two wolves in the fenced area. This guy was great and kept asking for questions from the audience, while paying a lot of attention to the kids that were there.
The wolves were cool to see although they did not do too much. It was hot and they were just as happy to sit in the shade than stand around showing off. The educator interacted with them as much as was reasonable but this was not nor was it meant to be some kind of circus act where the wolves were performing tricks or anything.
The talk was very informative and covered a lot of details about the biology of wolves. Wolf Hollow is clearly doing what they say they are trying to do, educate the public about these animals.
There were a few other wolves at the place besides the male and female in the main fenced areas. An additional three wolves were off in two other pens just to the side of where we were sitting. We had an opportunity to see these other animals after the talk was over.
I thought this was a great educational presenatation and I give Wolf Hollow a gold star for their efforts.
The audience was allowed to try to get the wolves to hollow at the end of the presentation. They did not react to much, only responding with a few week replies. We were also informed that wolves do not actually hollow at the moon!