The Rise of Wolf 8

Witnessing the Triumph of Yellowstone’s Underdog 

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“The powerful origin story of one of Yellowstone’s greatest and most famous wolves.”
Washington Post

Yellowstone National Park was once home to an abundance of wild wolves—but park rangers killed the last of their kind in the 1920s. Decades later, the rangers brought them back, with the first wolves arriving from Canada in 1995.

This is the incredible true story of one of those wolves.

Wolf 8 struggles at first—he is smaller than the other pups, and often bullied—but soon he bonds with an alpha female whose mate was shot. An unusually young alpha male, barely a teenager in human years, Wolf 8 rises to the occasion, hunting skillfully, and even defending his family from the wolf who killed his father. But soon he faces a new opponent: his adopted son, who mates with a violent alpha female. Can Wolf 8 protect his valley without harming his protégé?

Authored by a renowned wolf researcher and gifted storyteller, The Rise of Wolf 8 marks the beginning of The Alpha Wolves of Yellowstone series, which will transform our view of wolves forever.

Praise for The Rise of Wolf 8

  •   An Amazon.com Best Science Book of 2019

  • Runnerup — 2020 Reading the West Book Awards

  • Named a Notable Book by the 2019 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Awards

  • “A goldmine for information on all aspects of wolf behavior and clearly shows they are clever, smart, and emotional beings.”
    —Marc Bekoff, Psychology Today

  • “Yellowstone’s resident wolf guru Rick McIntyre has been many things to many people: an expert tracker for the park’s biologists, an indefatigable roadside interpreter for visitors, and an invaluable consultant to countless chronicles of the park’s wolves—including my own. But he is first and foremost a storyteller whose encyclopedic knowledge of Yellowstone’s wolf reintroduction project—now in its 25th year—is unparalleled.”
    —Nate Blakeslee, New York Times bestselling author of American Wolf