Dan Stahler: Yellowstone Wolf Project’s New Alpha

For biologist Dan Stahler, flying over Yellowstone National Park in search of wildlife never gets old. Recently, as he helicoptered over a land painted with aspen yellows and whortleberry reds, he spied an animal moving through the trees: cougar.

With a start, Stahler realized he knew the big cat. A car had struck her in the park a few months earlier, and after seeing the scene, Stahler had given her up for dead. Yet there she was, on the prowl. She reminded him of another animal, a wolf from the Junction Butte Pack, who had somehow suffered a severe lower-jaw injury over the summer. He doubted she would survive but had seen her continuing to lope along with the pack.