Wildlife of Denali

In 1917 Mt. McKinley National Park was established as a game preserve. While the Park's main geographic feature is Mt. McKinley, for most visitors the wildlife is equally important. Those who fought to establish the Park placed a high value on maintaining the Park as a wilderness with a variety of wildlife in a setting unaffected by humans. Therefore, the decision was made not to allow private vehicles more than a few miles into the Park. Visitors see the Park on buses or flight-seeing excursions. 

We took a bus from the Wilderness Access Center. At this season of the year, buses can travel 42 miles into the Park to the Toklat River. Later in the summer, these excursions will extend to 90 miles into the Park. 

During our six-hour excursion, we saw and photographed many key wildlife species in the Park: caribou, wolf, Dall sheep, grizzly bear (all pictured) as well as moose, ptarmigan (Alaska's state bird), Artic ground squirrel, hawk owl, and many snowshoe rabbits. 

We had three separate opportunities to see grizzlies--including one at some distance of a sow with her two spring cubs, which our driver estimated weighed about 15 pounds apiece. Our driver assured us that seeing and photographing a wolf was uncommon. Seeing one as close as we did was awesome!

We were fortunate also to have a young, highly skilled birdwatcher on our bus excursion. He could identify virtually instantly nearly every bird we saw, adding greatly to our wildlife viewing experience.