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

ANKERAGE, Alaska — Millions of people around the world tuned in to a remote national park in Alaska “Fat Bear Week” celebration this month, when captivating livestream camera footage caught the plump predators munching on salmon and fattening up for the winter.

But in the vast state known for its abundant wildlife, the magical and sometimes violent world of wildlife is close to home.

Within a half-mile of a densely populated neighborhood in Anchorage, the state’s largest city, several cameras regularly capture animals ranging in size from wolverines to moose. And a Facebook group that showcases animals captured on webcams has grown its number of followers nearly sixfold since September, when the group posted footage of a pack of wolves taking down a yearling moose.

But it’s not all doom and gloom videos on the page, and the actual death of the moose calf wasn’t shown. The group called Photos and videos of Muldoon Area Trailalso includes light-hearted moments, such as two brown bear cubs standing on their hind legs and enthusiastically rubbing their backs against either side of a tree to mark it.

Ten cameras capture lynx, wolves, foxes, coyotes, eagles and black and brown bears — “just what’s out here,” said Donna Gail Shaw, co-manager of the Facebook group.

In addition to Anchorage’s approximately 290,000 human residents, there are nearly 350 black bears, 65 brown bears and 1,600 elk also call it home.

Joe Cantil, a retired tribal health worker, said the idea for the page started when he was looking out at the vast open spaces of Alaska from an airplane during a hunting trip near Fairbanks.

“You’re in the middle of nowhere, so you see animals behaving the way they behave when we’re not there,” he said.

He later met with wildlife officials at the Anchorage park who were conducting a predator inventory. He saw them setting up a trap and three webcams showing a moose killed.

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

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

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

Shaw was intrigued by his game cameras and started pestering him to see the footage.

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

She started by tying a single $60 camera to a tree. Now she has nine cameras, seven of which are active in Far North Bicentennial Park, a 1,619-acre park that stretches for miles along the front of the Chugach Mountains on the east side of Anchorage.

Her cameras are set up somewhere between a quarter mile and a half mile (402 meters to 804 meters) of the Chugach Foothills neighborhood and she regularly posts on the Facebook group page. Cantil also posts videos from his three cameras.

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

She replaces batteries and memory cards about once a week, walking into the woods armed with an air horn to announce her presence, two cans of bear spray and a .44 caliber pistol for protection.

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

Shaw said her cameras catch one or two wolves every few weeks — and sometimes even a pack. This year she was surprised when a pack of five wolves passed by, walking quietly in a line.

Last month, while collecting memory cards, she saw moose fur on the ground across the creek through two of her cameras. After seeing what looked like a rough patch of dirt where a bear might bury its prey, she assumed it was another moose being attacked by a black bear, similar to what happened earlier not far away.

But when she checked the memory card, it showed the wolves taking down the yearling moose while the moose’s mother tried to protect her offspring by kicking the wolves away with her long legs.

Now demand for the page is growing, but Shaw said she’s done adding cameras.

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