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Jim Dutcher (born 1943), is an American naturalist, cinematographer, director and author. He has written eight books and produced three wildlife films about wolves. Jim and his wife, Jamie Dutcher, are the creators of the two-time Emmy winning documentary, Wolves at Our Door, and founders of the non-profit organization, Living with Wolves. The Dutcher's are recognized as two of America's most knowledgeable experts on wolves.
In 1962, Jim Dutcher began his career as an underwater cinematographer, and then as a wildlife film producer for National Geographic, a dream he had pursued since childhood. His early experiences with a camera were spent underwater on the Florida coast. In 1985, his first television film, Water, Birth, the Planet Earth, began a career spent with animals that range from tiny hatchling sea turtles to one of the top ranking predators in North America – the wolf. Combining extraordinary camera work and the trust he gains from his subjects, Jim’s films take audiences into a world never before filmed: inside beaver lodges, down burrows to observe wolf pups, and into the life of a mother mountain lion as she cares for her newborn kittens. His work includes the National Geographic special A Rocky Mountain Beaver Pond, and ABC World of Discovery’s two highest-rated films, Cougar: Ghost of the Rockies and Wolf: Return of a Legend.
During the 1990s, Jim began a film project in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho with the now-famous Sawtooth Pack. Determined to overcome deadly misperceptions about wolves, Jim and his wife, Jamie Dutcher, camped in the wilderness observing the wolves' social hierarchy, recording their vocalizations, filming their activities, and earning their trust. What they discovered were animals devoted to one another, capable of emotional bonds and affection resembling those of human families. Their six-year experience led to the creation of the National Geographic Society book The Hidden Life of Wolves as well as seven other books and three prime-time television documentaries on wolves. With more than 30 years of their lives devoted to eradicating ancient myths surrounding wolves, they remain dedicated to sharing their unique and personal eye-witness knowledge.
In 1991, Jim received the prestigious Wrangler Award for his cougar documentary from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. In 1995, the Governor of Idaho appointed Jim as an ex officio member of the Idaho Wolf Management Committee, where he served until 2001. As part of the wolf reintroduction initiative at Yellowstone National Park in 1994, Jim served as a consultant for the design of pack holding enclosures, and as a specialist in the handling of the reintroduced wolves brought from Canada. The Dutcher's also led three National Geographic expeditions to Alaska, working with the late revered wolf biologist Dr. Gordon Haber, observing pack hunting techniques and the culture of shared knowledge within individual wolf families.
In 2005, moved by the plight of wolves, the Dutchers put down their filmmaking equipment and founded the national nonprofit organization, Living with Wolves, seeking to re-establish the wolf in its rightful place in the American West. Since then, they have presented trusted factual information in multimedia presentations, books, films, educator guides for schools, social media, and museum exhibits as they continue to promote understanding of this persecuted species by sharing their knowledge and lifetime of study. Living with Wolves has become a premier advocate for wolves, reaching more than 30 million people worldwide.
| Year | Work | Functioned as | Notes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Director | Cinematographer | Producer | |||
| 1985 | Water, Birth, the Planet Earth | Yes | Yes | Yes | National Geographic Explorer |
| 1987 | Rocky Mountain Beaver Pond | Yes | Yes | Yes | National Geographic Explorer |
| 1990 | Cougar: Ghost of the Rockies | Yes | Yes | Yes | ABC's World of Discovery |
| 1993 | Wolf: Return of a Legend | Yes | Yes | Yes | ABC's World of Discovery |
| 1997 | Wolves at Our Door | Yes | Yes | Yes | Discovery Channel |
| 2005 | Living with Wolves | Yes | Yes | Yes | Discovery Channel |
Working together, Jim and Jamie Dutcher created two of Discovery Channel’s highest rated wildlife films, Wolves at Our Door and Living with Wolves. Their television specials on wolves have won three Prime-Time Emmys, for Cinematography, for Outstanding Programming and for Sound Recording.
The wolf, also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of Canis lupus have been recognized, and gray wolves, as colloquially understood, comprise non-domestic/feral subspecies. The wolf is the largest extant member of the family Canidae, males averaging 40 kg (88 lb) and females 37 kg (82 lb). Wolves measure 105–160 cm (41–63 in) in length and 80–85 cm (31–33 in) at shoulder height. The wolf is also distinguished from other Canis species by its less pointed ears and muzzle, as well as a shorter torso and a longer tail. The wolf is nonetheless related closely enough to smaller Canis species, such as the coyote and the golden jackal, to produce fertile hybrids with them. The banded fur of a wolf is usually mottled white, brown, gray, and black, although subspecies in the arctic region may be nearly all white.
The cougar is a large cat of the subfamily Felinae. Native to the Americas, its range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America and is the most widespread of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere. It is an adaptable, generalist species, occurring in most American habitat types. Due to its wide range, it has many names, including puma, mountain lion, catamount, panther and painter.
Lucyan David Mech, also known as Dave Mech, is an American biologist specializing in the study of wolves. He is a senior research scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota. He has researched wolves since 1958 in locations including northern Minnesota, Isle Royale, Alaska, Yellowstone National Park, Ellesmere Island, and Italy.
Pack is a social group of conspecific canines. Not all species of canids form packs; for example, small canids like the red fox do not. Pack size and social behaviour within packs varies across species.
The Sawtooth Wilderness is a federally-protected wilderness area that covers 217,088 acres (87,852 ha) of the state of Idaho. Managed by the U.S. Forest Service in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it was designated the Sawtooth Primitive Area in 1937 to preserve the exceptional scenic beauty of the Sawtooth Mountains. On August 22, 1972 Public Law 92-400 designated the Primitive Area as the Sawtooth Wilderness and part of the newly created Sawtooth National Recreation Area. As part of the National Wilderness Preservation System, the Sawtooth Wilderness is an area where human development and use are restricted and people are to remain only visitors. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the Sawtooth Wilderness has some of the clearest air in the lower 48 states.
Sawtooth National Forest is a National Forest that covers 2,110,408 acres in the U.S. states of Idaho and Utah. Managed by the U.S. Forest Service in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it was originally named the Sawtooth Forest Reserve in a proclamation issued by President Theodore Roosevelt on May 29, 1905. On August 22, 1972 a portion of the forest was designated as the Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA), which includes the Sawtooth, Cecil D. Andrus–White Clouds, and Hemingway–Boulders wilderness areas. The forest is managed as four units: the SNRA and the Fairfield, Ketchum, and Minidoka Ranger Districts.
Wolf reintroduction involves the reintroduction of a portion of grey wolves in areas where native wolves have been extirpated. More than 30 subspecies of Canis lupus have been recognized, and grey wolves, as colloquially understood, comprise nondomestic/feral subspecies. Reintroduction is only considered where large tracts of suitable wilderness still exist and where certain prey species are abundant enough to support a predetermined wolf population.
The Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA) is a national recreation area in central Idaho, United States that is managed as part of Sawtooth National Forest. The recreation area, established on August 22, 1972, is managed by the U.S. Forest Service, and includes the Sawtooth, Hemingway–Boulders, and Cecil D. Andrus–White Clouds wilderness areas. Activities within the 730,864-acre (2,957.70 km2) recreation area include hiking, backpacking, White water rafting, camping, rock climbing, kayaking, mountain biking, fishing, and hunting.
Shaun Ellis is an English animal researcher who is notable for living among wolves, and for adopting a pack of abandoned North American timber wolf pups. He is the founder of Wolf Pack Management and is involved in a number of research projects in Poland and at Yellowstone National Park in the United States.
Densey Clyne was an Australian naturalist, photographer and writer, especially well known for her studies of spiders and insects.
Ronald Douglas Lawrence was a Canadian naturalist and wildlife author. He was an expert on the wildlife of Canada, on which he wrote more than thirty books, which have been published in 14 languages.
The History of wolves in Yellowstone included extirpation, absence and reintroduction of the gray wolf to Yellowstone National Park. The reintroduction of wolves was controversial as it is with the worldwide reintroduction of wolves. When Yellowstone National Park was created in 1872, wolf populations were already in decline in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. The creation of the national park did provide protection for wolves or other predators, and government predator control programs in the first decades of the 1900s didn't eliminate the gray wolf from Yellowstone. The last wolves were killed in Yellowstone in 1926. After that, sporadic reports of wolves still occurred, but scientists confirmed that sustainable wolf populations had been extirpated and were absent from Yellowstone during the mid-1900s.
The Kenai Peninsula wolf, also known as the Kenai Peninsula grey wolf, is an extinct subspecies of the gray wolf that lived on the Kenai Peninsula in southern Alaska.
The northern Rocky Mountain wolf is a subspecies of gray wolf native to the northern Rocky Mountains. It is a light-colored, medium to large-sized subspecies with a narrow, flattened frontal bone. The subspecies was initially listed as Endangered on March 9, 1978, but had the classification removed in the year 2000 due to the effects of the Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery Plan. On August 6, 2010, the northern Rocky Mountain wolf was ordered to be returned under Endangered Species Act protections by U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in a decision overturning a previous ruling by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They were later removed on August 31, 2012 from the list because of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming meeting the population quotas for the species to be considered stable. This wolf is recognized as a subspecies of Canis lupus in the taxonomic authority Mammal Species of the World (2005).
OR-7, also known as Journey, was a male gray wolf that was electronically tracked as he migrated from the Wallowa Mountains in the northeastern corner of the U.S. state of Oregon to the southern Cascade Range. After the wolf dispersed from his natal pack in 2011, he wandered generally southwest for more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) through Oregon and northern California. He was the first confirmed wild wolf in western Oregon since 1947 and the first in California since 1924.
Wolves at Our Door is a 1997 documentary film about the "Sawtooth Pack", a group of wolves in the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho. The film was produced and directed by Jim Dutcher and first aired on The Discovery Channel. It is narrated by Richard Kiley. A two–hour sequel, Living with Wolves, was released in 2005.
Jamie Dutcher, is an American naturalist, author and sound recorder/sound mixer. Jamie and her husband, Jim Dutcher, have collaborated on seven books and two films about wolves.
O-Six (2006–2012), also known as 832F or "The 06 Female", was a female gray wolf, whose death by hunting just outside the protected area of Yellowstone National Park stirred debate about the hunting and protection of wolves in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. The bestselling book American Wolf focused on O-Six's life and on conservation policies in the Yellowstone region.
Takaya: Lone Wolf is a documentary film which premiered on CBC’s TheNature of Things in October 2019. The film documents the life of Takaya, a wild lone wolf, and the development of his unique relationship with conservation photographer Cheryl Alexander.
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