With their bright minds and keen ways of survival, the wolf can live almost anywhere. Wolves usually live in packs or families. The pack usually consists of six to ten wolves. The dominant pair of the group (a female and male) are in charge of the pack. The territory of the pack consists of 20-120 square miles. This is about one tenth the size of Wisconsin county. Because the wolf requires much space there are usually conflicts with humans. You can learn more about the reactions of people with wolves by visiting the opinions page. The wolves territory usually never overlaps more than a mile with their neighboring packs. The wolf knows where their territory ends and another packs begins by the scent messages left by the other wolves. One other way that wolves mark their territory and letting other wolves know is by howling. Howling can also help to guide a wolf back to the pack. Some wolves disperse from their pack to find a mate and a vacant area to start a pack of their own. Nobody knows why only some wolves disperse and others do not. In former days, wolves lived in every biotope in the Northern Hemisphere, except plain desert. The Gray Wolf used to range throughout Canada and almost all of the United States including Alaska. Today, the number of Gray Wolves in Canada is 50,000, Alaska 10,000 and the rest of the United States fewer than 1,300. In the lower 48 states such as Minnesota, there still lives about 1,200. The wolf may make his home in a den, lair, cave, hollow tree trunk, thicket or a hole in the ground dug by the wolf himself. The wolf is equally at home on prairies or forest lands, all but the highest mountain. The wolf is abundant in northern Europe and Asia and fairly abundant in Alaska and Canada, little remain elsewhere. The number of Gray Wolves in North America is greatly diminishing also, but we are reintroducing the wolf to parts of North America. Many funds are raising money to help the wolf and its habitat stay.