Woman Among Wolves

Called the Jane Goodall of wolves, world-renowned wildlife biologist Diane Boyd has spent four decades studying and advocating for wolves in the wilds of Montana near Glacier National Park. When she started in the 1970s, she was the only female biologist in the United States researching and radio-collaring wild wolves. With her two dogs for company, she faced the rigors of the Montana winter in an isolated cabin without running water or electricity.

Boyd fearlessly forded icy rivers, strapped on skis to navigate thick stands of lodgepole pine, and monitored packs from the air in a tiny bush plane that skimmed the treetops so she could count wolves and see what they were feeding on. She faced down grizzly bears, mountain lions, wolverines—and the occasional trapper—as she stalked her quarry: a handful of wolves that were making their way south from Canada into Montana. Resilient and resourceful, she devised her own trapping methods and negotiated with locals as wolf populations grew from the first natural colonizer to more than 3,000 wolves in the West today.

Diane Boyd holds a PhD in Wildlife Biology from the University of Montana. She divides her time between her home in Kalispell, Montana, and her beloved cabin in the North Fork. She is the author of numerous scientific papers on wolves.

Douglas H. Chadwick is a wildlife biologist. He is a frequent contributor to National Geographic, the author of more than two hundred articles on wildlife and wild places, and fifteen books, including The Wolverine Way and Four Fifths a Grizzly.

Paperback, 240 pages, published by Greystone Books, 2024