Encounter with lone wolf closes Discovery Island

By Deborah Wilson/CBC News, Sep 19, 2016

Discovery Island Marine Provincial Park off Victoria has been closed to the public after a group of campers had a frightening encounter with a lone wolf.

BC Parks announced the small island is off limits until spring 2017 to allow “behavioural assessments on the animal to determine if there are any public safety concerns.”

But a former environmental consultant who has been studying the island’s resident predator for several years says it is people who pose a threat to the wolf, not the reverse.

“I’ve been very near this wolf many times and felt no fear,” Cheryl Alexander told CBC Radio’s On the Island host Gregor Craigie. They went to Discovery Island to see the wolf just before the park closure was announced.

“He has shown no aggression in any of the observations I have had with him.”

On Sept. 10, a family camping with a dog contacted the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Victoria and said they were cornered by the animal.

The rescue centre dispatched a Coast Guard vessel and armed fisheries conservation officers escorted the campers back to their own boat… continue reading.

(Discovery Island is covered in Salish Sea Pilot’s Cruising Guide to the Gulf Islands.)