- A new documentary film, “Mollie’s Pack,” tells the story of the then-head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Mollie Beattie, and the controversial, but ultimately triumphant, restoration of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1995.
- The filmmakers were able to find and access lost footage to make a compelling and emotional film about success and loss.
- The restoration of wolves into Yellowstone was a “moon shot” moment, according to director Tom Winston.
- Winston says the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone will be “a motivating factor” for future rewilding initiatives around the world.
In March 1995, a few wolves cautiously exited their pens into the melting snow of Yellowstone National Park, returning there 70 years after guns, traps and poison had wiped them out. The dramatic return of these top carnivores was watched around the world, the culmination of twists and turns rivaling any Hollywood blockbuster. Now, a new documentary film, Mollie’s Pack, tells the story in a new and emotional way.
Mollie’s Pack pairs the story of the controversial reintroduction of the wolves with the life of Mollie Beattie, then head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Beattie was not only instrumental in bringing the Canadian wolves into Yellowstone National Park, but was also there to carry in the wolves on their arrival, specifically number five, an alpha female whose line would form the backbone of Yellowstone’s wolf population.
Eighteen months after successfully bringing wolves back to Yellowstone, Beattie died from a brain tumor. She was 49 years old. These two stories — of Beattie’s life and death, and of the resurrection of wolves in one of the best-known ecosystems on the planet — form the film Mollie’s Pack. The film will be screened at the 2025 DC Environmental Film Festival, where Mongabay is a media partner.
Mongabay’s Jeremy Hance interviewed the film’s director, Tom Winston, from the production company Grizzly Creek Films, about its serendipitous coming together and the legacy of Mollie Beattie — and wolf number five — in Yellowstone National Park today. Winston compares the herculean task of reintroducing wolves to the moon landing, saying “[It’s] a great American story, more than just another wildlife story.”
The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Mongabay: What drew you to tell the story of the restoration of the wolf to Yellowstone?
Tom Winston: I’ve been shooting in Yellowstone for 20 years, and I’ve done many films that are either completely about wolves or include wolves … It’s really hard to tell a true wolf story. Wolves are very difficult to film, because they stay pretty far away from people. But I always thought that the origin story [of the reintroduction in 1995] had never truly been told, and the first time I learned why was when we were doing a project back in 2008 and we looked for that reintroduction footage [of wolves into Yellowstone]. I had seen clips … I figured there must have been someone there filming it.
We asked the park in 2008 about having access to that archive. And that’s the first time they told us, unfortunately, it was all lost. [The park said] we gave one film crew exclusive access to the recovery program, because we didn’t want to overwhelm the wolves. Then the deal was … three years after [the film crew] were done using the footage, they were going to turn over all the footage and put it in the public domain. But that never happened. And it wasn’t until 2018 … that we started looking for that footage again and … we found it, and that was basically the opportunity to tell this origin story through both the wolves and the people in a way that it had never been told before.
Mongabay: How much footage was there? And what was the process like of going through it and deciding what to put in the film?
Tom Winston: Avela Grenier, the editor, did a fantastic job in the edit with the footage. She had done a previous film at Grizzly Creek called Rewind that was heavily based on archival footage, and she is now, I would say, as good as anyone at really refining those moments that are key to the story in the archive.
One interesting thing about this archive is it wasn’t thousands of hours, because it was shot on film and in the days of film, if you shot 30 to 45 minutes of film a day, that was very costly and expensive. Every roll of film was 15 minutes long. That was $400 for the roll, another $400 to process. And so it was a real asset to us that it was shot on film, because it’s so much richer in terms of the visual fidelity and the look.
If this had all been shot on video, we could have had maybe thousands of hours. Avela and I, in the edit process, really homed in on a very particular story that we wanted to tell … Wolf number five, that very first wolf carried in by Mollie, happened to be probably the most profiled wolf in all the footage. So that was a very amazing discovery within the footage.
A real key decision we made in the storytelling is [that] this is going to start the day that first wolf arrives. It’s going to end the day Mollie’s Pack gets its name. You know, we didn’t want this to be a film about the idea of reintroduction. We wanted this to be a story with a start point and end point.
Mongabay: Let’s talk about Mollie, because in some ways you could have done a film about the restoration of the of the wolves in Yellowstone, and have Mollie be a minor character. She’s the head of the Fish and Wildlife Service, but she’s not necessarily on the ground all the time, right? How did the idea come about to pair these two stories of the restoration of the Yellowstone wolf and Mollie Beattie?
Tom Winston: Again, I’ve filmed wolves in Yellowstone for the last 20 years, and on certain days, when I was filming, I would find out, “Oh, that’s Mollie’s pack.” I knew it was a former director of the [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service], but it wasn’t until one day that I [learned] for the first time, she was only 49 when she passed away — and only 18 months earlier, she carried that first wolf.
And so that really piqued my interest, that there was this remarkable story of a woman whose life was cut short. I wanted to dig in and see what was there. And it was because of that serendipity of her carrying in the first wolf, the alpha female — number five — that would go on to carry her name, that we felt there was a true story at the heart of this, that the reintroduction could be told by way of Mollie’s Pack. The next step was reaching out to Mollie’s family and then meeting people like Rick [Schwolsky, Mollie’s husband].
The first time I went to Rick’s house, he had every single photo and document for Mollie’s career perfectly laid out in his basement. It took up his entire basement on separate tables, and he’s just an amazing storyteller, an amazing person. So, it was a risk, but I do feel like we wanted this to be a story driven by characters. And, you know, Mollie has a very compelling story. The reintroduction wouldn’t have happened without her, and her name lives on in the park today.
Mongabay: Mollie is courageous, heroic, inspirational, but we often don’t lionize the heads of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or park rangers. So I’m curious how you see your film as giving voice to people who work for park services, or work for the Fish and Wildlife Service?
Tom Winston: It does take a pretty remarkable story to bring that to life. It is Mollie and her courage in the face of an end-of-life diagnosis that I think makes her story. She was taking totally new ideas into that role, as well. There are a lot of heads of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who are going to take the platform of their predecessor and make sure the ship is steady as it goes. But Mollie was bringing new ideas into that role.
And, you know, I think that relationship with [former Alaska member of Congress] Don Young that was adversarial, politically, but personally, they found real alignment. I think that is exemplary of the type of person Mollie was.
There’s only been three wolf packs that have carried names of individuals [in Yellowstone]: the Leopold pack in honor of Aldo Leopold [a pioneering conservationist]; Chief Joseph [a legendary Nez Perce warrior during the so-called American Indian Wars]; and Mollie Beatty. So, you’re talking about a very rarefied group. Whereas every other pack takes on the name of a geographical feature, these are the three packs that were bestowed with names of individuals, and then each of those individuals has a pretty remarkable story. And this is Mollie’s story.
Mongabay: What’s the legacy of Mollie’s Pack today?
Tom Winston: Doug Smith, the [wolf expert] and biologist in the film, would [study Mollie’s pack] for the entire duration of his career. Other packs would come and go … What he really learned from Mollie’s pack was how important the alpha female was. It would be in Yellowstone, where the alpha female, really, through science, would prove to be so much more prominent. Not to say the alpha males aren’t important also, but the alpha female [is] just as important and in different ways.
Mongabay: From a historical perspective, how do you think that the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone has influenced initiatives of rewilding around the world today?
Tom Winston: Journalists have referred to the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone as the greatest wildlife restoration project of the 20th century. There is something about the power of Yellowstone, and you combine that with the power of wolves and the controversy around wolves — the polarization around wolves — that made this the ultimate move. A moon shot in many ways.
I think this film is kind of like an Apollo 11: look at this thing we pulled off. It could have never happened and could have failed, but it worked. [It’s] a great American story, more than just another wildlife story. And I think because wolves and Yellowstone capture the imagination of the globe, this restoration project will be forever a real motivating factor around rewilding. It’s usually the touchpoint: the wolves in Yellowstone.
And within the last five years, right before I started [making] this film, I started talking to people, including very important executives in the film business, who had no idea that the wolves were ever gone from Yellowstone! … There’s a whole audience out there, especially people born after 1995, that have no idea that this ever happened and take for granted that wolves are there. So, I think that’s a whole audience that I’m very excited to activate.
Banner image: A collared wolf from the Druid pack, Yellowstone National Park. Image byDoug Smith/National Park Service via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).
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