Shila, the sole surviving gray wolf at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, died Friday.
She was the last of four wolf sisters who arrived in 2010 from the New York State Zoo at Thompson Park, where they were born. Shila’s keepers found her dead in her habitat Friday morning.
At 14, Shila (SHY-la) had lived two to three years beyond the median life span for gray wolves in captivity, zoo officials said. She also suffered from cardiac arrhythmia and, in June, had been fitted with a pacemaker. Zoo officials believe it was the first such procedure for a wolf.
Results from a postmortem exam will be available in several weeks, zoo spokesperson Gigi Allianic said.
News of Shila’s death brought an outpouring from zoo visitors, and the zoo Facebook page quickly filled with stories, photos and videos of Shila and her sisters.
“They were our favorite part of our visits,” Brittany Jarvis wrote on the zoo’s Facebook page. “How heartbreaking.”
On Saturday morning, under a fittingly somber sky, visitors peered into the now-vacant wolf habitat that had been Shila’s home.
“It was always nice to check in and see how they were doing, how she was doing,” said Mouse Reusch, who was standing with her husband, Dave Reusch, by the habitat, where a sign read: “There are no animals in this habitat today.”
Shila’s death was felt keenly by zoo staff, who were well aware of the animal’s health issues and advanced age.
“It’s hard to say goodbye,” said Mike Dykens, a zoo gardener, from the seat of his utility cart. “Absolutely, we get attached.”
Zoo officials said they “will now begin the process of finding other gray wolves to live at the zoo.”
Shila and her sisters — Doba, Aponi and Kaya — were 5 months old when they arrived at Woodland Park Zoo from New York, said Allianic, who remembers the pups fondly.
“I watched them grow up,” she said.
The four sisters quickly endeared themselves to zoo staff and visitors alike. They eventually became locally famous for impromptu howling sessions, which visitors sometimes tried to provoke with their own imitation howls.
Eventually, the zoo had to post signs asking visitors to refrain from howling.
“We didn’t want people encouraging them,” said Allianic, adding that police and ambulance sirens were still enough to set the wolves off again.
Zoo officials said Shila and her sisters played an important role in connecting visitors to a species that has become controversial amid a debate over the often-conflicting demands of wildlife preservation and livestock management.
“Shila and her sisters were wonderful ambassadors for their kin in the wild,” Erin Sullivan, an animal curator at the zoo, said in a statement Friday.
“They helped to inspire awe of these oft-misunderstood carnivores and helped us shed an important light on the critical need for coexisting with these social canines and other wildlife in urban and remote areas,” Sullivan added.
Almost wiped out in 1930s
The wolf population in Washington was nearly wiped out in the 1930s but has recovered strongly since 2008, when a pack was observed in Okanogan County, according to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Gray wolves have been classified as endangered in all or part of Washington since the adoption of the Endangered Species Act in 1973.
Since 2008, when the state began its annual wolf survey, the wolf population in Washington has increased an average of 23 percent annually. In 2011, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ended wolf protection in the eastern third of the state. As of December, the state had 260 wolves.
Shila was the most shy of the four siblings, “so it took a little while for her to warm up to people,” said Beth Carlyle-Askew, the zoo’s animal care manager.
But she was also known for the enthusiastic way she greeted keepers at the start of each day, when she would offer up “a little minihowl to say, ‘Good morning,'” said Carlyle-Askew. “All of the keepers really enjoyed working with her.”
In the end, it was shy Shila who outlasted her sisters, the last of whom, Kaya, died in May 2023 at the age of 13. (Aponi and Doba were moved to Wolf Haven International, in 2019 and 2021 respectively; Aponi died in 2021 and Doba in 2022, both from cancer.)
“It was kind of sad there being only one with no company anymore,” Dave Reusch said.
In early June, Shila began exhibiting signs of health problems, including decreased activity, weight loss and physical weakness to the point of immobility, zoo officials said.
Veterinarians determined Shila’s heart rate was too low, and on June 12, a team with Olympic Veterinary Cardiology implanted a pacemaker.
Shila recovered well from the procedure and showed signs of improving health.
“Her normal behavior was back, and she kind of acted like a younger wolf again,” Carlyle-Askew said.
Allianic wasn’t sure whether Shila had been showing renewed signs of deteriorating health before Friday.
As zoo visitors digested news of Shila’s death Saturday, many recalled the last time they had seen the gray wolf.
For Jasmine Alvarado-Salinas, 25, of Seattle, the memory brought a smile. In 2019, she had been standing by the enclosure when a group of youngsters next to her began howling at the wolves.
Alvarado-Salinas saw the “no howling” sign and considered holding her tongue — but decided that with “a bunch of little kids howling already, I was like, it doesn’t really matter at this point — we might as well just howl with them.”
She said that eventually, Shila and her sisters started howling back.
