Shaun Ellis (wolf Researcher) - Background

Background

Brought up deep in the countryside in the small picturesque village of Great Massingham, which is near King's Lynn Norfolk, he began observing wild animals at a young age, learning to use his sense of smell and sound to find his way at night when studying foxes and badgers.

Ellis first trained to be a gamekeeper, but left the job when the Head gamekeeper found out that Ellis was feeding rather than culling foxes. He then joined and served with the Royal Marines.

After he left the Marines he met a Native American biologist at a wolf seminar, and from that meeting he was able to spend several months living with the Nez Perce Native Americans on their reservation in northern Idaho, United States as a volunteer in a project studying wolves at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. They taught him how to observe wolves, and he was able to get in to a pack of wolves and live among them. He recorded wild wolf howls and gradually learned to identify individual pack members and began to realise that wolves are highly intelligent and instinctive individuals that show trust and balance within their pack's social structure.

He was the founder and head of Wolf Pack Management at Combe Martin Wildlife Park in North Devon where he worked with seventeen captive wolves, which included four pups born on 19 May 2008. There were originally six wolves at the park which he rescued from private ownership. He also used to regularly give educational talks about wolves.

In 2005 Ellis spent eighteen months living in captivity at Combe Martin Wildlife Park with three abandoned wolf pups - Yana, Tamaska and Matsi, educating them to be wild wolves and becoming the pack's alpha male.

Ellis has spent much of his adult life studying and living with wolves and has learned to communicate with them through scent and sound. He used to live directly outside the wolf enclosure at Combe Martin Wildlife Park, so that he could be in close proximity to the wolves at all times.

The research projects Ellis is involved with in Poland and Yellowstone National Park in the United States have the goal of developing humane methods to discourage wolves from entering areas of potential conflict with humans.

Ellis has stated that he would like to see wild wolves eventually reintroduced into England, where they last lived in the 17th century when the last wolves were killed (see Wolves in the British Isles). Ellis has said about wolves, "Although many people refer to wolves as savage killers, I’ve come to know and love them as family."

During the summer of 2011 Ellis relocated along with his wolves and his new wife, conservation biologist Dr Isla Fishburn, to 'The Wolf Centre' (www.thewolfcentre.co.uk). The centre is located at the seaside end of Combe Martin at Newberry Farm, Woodlands. The centre provides Ellis with his own dedicated base of operations from which to continue his work with the wolves. The Wolf Centre is not open to the general public however it does offer a range of experiences and encounters to the public including meet and greet sessions with Ellis and his wolf hybrids, and courses covering dog behaviour, instruction and training.