Raissa was a remarkable lesson in the resilience of wolves.
Raissa was born on April 24, 1989 and was a littermate to Ballazar, Bausha, and Jedadiah. These four were the International Wolf Center’s first ambassador wolves! Raissa was an incredibly resilient pup, surviving an intense case of canine coronavirus. By four months of age, Bausha and Raissa’s rank-order dominance began to increase. By the fall of 1989, both females appeared to have dominant tendencies, and neither seemed to submit, creating intense interactions. In the wild, a situation of competing rank order may be a stimulus for one of the wolves to disperse. The wolf management team decided that placing one of the females at another facility would be best for the quality of life of both wolves. Consequently, Raissa became a dominant female at Brown County Reforestation Camp in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where she received wonderful care before passing away in 2002.
