It’s not just Fat Bear Week in Alaska. Trail cameras also capture wolves, elk and more.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — This month, millions of people around the world attended the celebration of “Fat Bear Week” in a remote Alaskan national park, as captivating live camera footage filmed the chubby predators munching on salmon and fattening up for the winter.

But in this vast state known for its abundant wildlife, the magical and sometimes violent world of wild animals is close to home.

Less than a half-mile from a well-populated neighborhood in Anchorage, the state’s largest city, several surveillance cameras regularly capture animals ranging from wolverines to moose. And a Facebook group that showcases animals captured on webcams has seen its number of followers increase almost sixfold since September, when it posted footage of a pack of wolves taking down a yearling moose.

But there are not only pessimistic videos on the page, and the real death of the moose calf was not shown. The group, named Muldoon Area Trail Photos and Videos, also features light-hearted moments such as two brown bear cubs standing on their hind legs and enthusiastically rubbing their backs on either side of a tree to mark it.

Ten cameras capture bobcats, wolves, foxes, coyotes, eagles and black and brown bears — “everything that’s here,” said Donna Gail Shaw, co-administrator of the Facebook group.

In addition to Anchorage’s approximately 290,000 residents, nearly 350 black bears, 65 brown bears and 1,600 elk also call it home.

Joe Cantil, a retired tribal health officer, said the idea for the page came from observing Alaska’s vast open lands from an airplane during a hunting trip near Fairbanks.

“You’re in the middle of nowhere, so you see the animals acting like they do whenever we’re not there,” he said.

He then met with wildlife officials at the Anchorage park, who were conducting a predator inventory. He saw them set up a trap and three webcams at the spot where a moose had been killed.

“When I saw that, I was like, ‘Yeah, I can do that,’” he said.

Cantil installed a low-tech camera and captured his first animal, a wolverine, fueling a passion that led to the creation of the Facebook page in 2017.

Then, while hiking, he met Shaw, a retired science education professor and associate dean of the College of Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Shaw was intrigued by his game cameras and began bugging him to view the footage.

“Well, he finally got tired of me pestering him and one day he said to me, ‘You know, you can have your own camera,’ and that’s how my hobby was born ” said Shaw, a Texas native.

She started by attaching a single $60 camera to a tree. It now has nine cameras, seven of which are active in Far North Bicentennial Park, a 4,000-acre (1,619-hectare) park that stretches for miles along the Front Range of the Chugach Mountains, east of ‘Anchorage.

Her cameras are installed between 402 and 804 meters in the Chugach Foothills neighborhood and she posts frequently on the Facebook group page. Cantil also posts videos from his three cameras.

“I knew there was wildlife here because I occasionally encountered a moose or bear on the trail, but I didn’t know how much wildlife there was here until I set up the cameras on it,” Shaw said.

She replaces batteries and storage cards about once a week, walking through the woods to do so, armed with an air horn to announce her presence, two bear sprays, and a caliber handgun. .44 for protection.

Many of the page’s followers are Anchorage residents looking for information about animals that may currently be roaming the popular trail system. Other users join in to see what the cameras capture, including people from other states who “love looking at the wildlife we ​​have here,” she said.

Shaw said every few years his cameras capture a wolf or two – and sometimes even a pack. This year, she was surprised when a pack of five wolves passed by, walking quietly in single file.

Last month, while collecting memory cards, she saw moose fur on the ground across the creek through two of her cameras. After spotting what looked like a rough patch of dirt where a bear might bury its prey, she assumed it was another moose being attacked by a black bear, similar to what had happened earlier not far from there.

But when she checked the memory card, it instead showed the wolves taking down the yearling moose as the moose’s mother tried to protect her offspring by trying to fend off the wolves with her long legs.

Today, demand for the page is growing, but Shaw said she is finished adding cameras.

“I think I’m maxed out on my camera,” she said. “Nine, that’s enough!”

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This story has been edited to correct that Shaw’s cameras capture wolves every few years, not every week.