Wolf Hollow
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:
IPSWICH, Massachusetts––One of the newest and smallest
of the groups fighting to save Alaskan wolves is the North American
Wolf Foundation, the lifelong dream of retired clamdigger Paul
Soffron and his wife Joni. Incorporated in 1988, NAWF opened a 5-
acre wolf sanctuary two years later in the back yard of the coastal
Massachusetts home where Paul grew up. Funding thus far comes
mainly from the Soffrons’ savings, sympathetic relatives, and the sale
of Paul’s art prints and other wolf-related merchandise to the visitors
who crowd the facility every afternoon throughout the summer to see
and learn about the only grey wolves in New England.
The NAWF pack began with a pair obtained from Wolf Park,
a similar but larger sanctuary run by wolf researcher Erich
Klinghammer in Battleground, Indiana. Wolves born at Wolf Hollow,
as the Soffrons call their sanctuary, are in turn sent to other members
of a growing sanctuary network. Because of limited space and the need
to do face-to-face public education, many of the sanctuaries superfi-
cially look much like roadside zoos. But the sanctuarians aren’t in it for
the money, and their hope is that there will some day soon be a place
where at least some of the wolves can run free. (For info about
NAWF, send SASE to Rt. 133, Ipswich, MA 01938.)
––Merritt Clifton
