Grayson, Ely’s beloved 9-year-old ‘ambassador’ wolf, has died

Grayson, a stark white arctic wolf that greeted visitors for years at the International Wolf Center in Ely, died suddenly over the weekend.

The beloved wolf became something of an ambassador for the center, drawing viewers and fans from across the globe who either saw him in person or followed a live feed of him and his five packmates in their enclosure.

Grayson, who was 9, had grown to become the dominant male of the Wolf Center’s pack, leading patrols throughout their landscaped pen, grooming the others and, at times, stirring them with his haunting melodic howl.

“There’s just not a lot of places where you can see an arctic wolf,” said Giselle Narvaez Rivera, the center’s wolf curator. “People were, my gosh, they felt that very personal connection with him and his personality. He was just so social, very observant, very aware.”

The cause of death is unknown; Grayson had seemed in relatively good health. His body was sent to veterinarians with the University of Minnesota for a necropsy, the animal equivalent of an autopsy.

Nine would be a ripe old age for any wolf in the wild, but those in captivity tend to survive for several years longer. He was entering the age where captive wolves show signs of slowing down or weakening. That can be a stressful moment, as younger wolves naturally begin to test their dominance. The Wolf Center tends to step in at that point, by moving some of their oldest wolves into a “retirement” enclosure, where they are safely fenced off from would-be rivals or replacements and live out their final years in peace.

Buy Grayson had shown no signs of slowing down.

The Wolf Center, which opened in 1993, tends to add new wolf pups to its small pack every four years. The center was the idea of renowned wolf researcher L. David Mech, one of the first to lead exhaustive studies of the elusive animal in Minnesota’s northern woods, the only place in the contiguous United States where wolves were never eradicated. It seeks to dispel myths about the predators, and offer a place for residents to learn about their history, impact and function in a healthy environment.