The Lassen Wolf Project: How It Started and Where We’re Going

Filmmaking
Written By Alexander Joseph

It started with a phone call a year ago.

Sometime in the late summer of 2025, I got connected with a biologist based out of Northern California who had been spending serious time in the backcountry of Lassen Volcanic National Park and Lassen National Forest documenting wolf activity and various other wildlife species across the region. We started talking. Then we kept talking. Over the course of the next several months what began as an exchange between two people who cared deeply about wolf recovery in the American West slowly became something more deliberate. A plan. A scouting opportunity. A shared conviction that this story deserved to be told on film.

We were always working toward this. The momentum just arrived faster than either of us anticipated.

A Title Finds Its Shape

Early in the development process the project carried a working title that reflected the emotional weight of what wolf recovery means in California. "The Pack That Rose From Ashes." It was evocative. It was dramatic. And ultimately it wasn't quite right.

The more time I spent thinking about what this film actually is, the more that title felt like it was reaching for a conclusion the story hadn't earned yet. Wolf recovery in the American West is not a triumphant narrative with a clean ending. It is a complicated, ongoing, and deeply human story full of tension, compromise, and unresolved questions. A title that announced victory before the cameras rolled felt dishonest to the project we were actually making.

So we simplified. We stripped it back.

The Lassen Wolf Project.

Specific. Clean. Open ended. A title that sounds like field work because that's exactly what it is.

What Happened on Social Media

Last week I posted something on 𝕏 that I almost didn't post. An honest, unplanned update about the expedition, what it would cost, and where we stood. I wasn't running a campaign. I didn't set a goal. I just told the truth and asked for help.

In less than 48 hours the XPLORIST community donated $1,215.

That number stopped me cold. It still does. What began as an impromptu post turned into one of the clearest signals I've received that this community is paying attention and believes in what we're building. The response didn't just fund the expedition. It changed the scope of it.

Because of that momentum we're not just going into Lassen to scout. We're going in to begin principal photography. The storytelling starts on day one.

The Expedition

California's wolf population has been quietly growing for nearly a decade. There are roughly a dozen wolf packs currently documented across the Lassen region, descendants of a founding pack that reestablished itself in the volcanic highlands of Northern California after nearly a century of absence.

For this first trip we're keying in on three packs. The Lassen Pack, the founding pack, the one that started it all when wolves returned to California after nearly 100 years. The Harvey Pack, which has established territory in the rugged country to the north and west. And the Whaleback Pack, pushing into the volcanic highlands near the Oregon border in one of the most remote wolf territories in the state.

We're going in on foot across serious backcountry terrain, deploying trail cameras at remote lake access points that require up to 16 miles round trip to reach, surveying for wolf activity at dawn and dusk, and reading the landscape for the game trails and water sources these packs move through. My biologist friend brings the science. I bring the glass and the storytelling.

The Bigger Questions

The Lassen Wolf Project will ask questions that go beyond the wolves themselves.

Can an apex predator be reintroduced into a landscape that has fundamentally changed since it was removed? Is coexistence between wolves and the ranching communities that depend on this land not just possible but achievable? And what does it mean to pull wolves from their home range in Canada and place them into a foreign wilderness and ask them to survive?

This is not a political film. It is not a one-sided conservation piece. It is an honest field investigation into one of the most complicated wildlife stories in the American West right now. We believe the conversation around wolf recovery in America has been dominated by two extremes for too long. This film is looking for the more difficult, more honest ground in between.

Where This Fits

A year go, XPLORIST published an ambitious two year roadmap outlining our production slate and the direction we were building toward. The Lassen Wolf Project fits squarely within that vision. In a way the timing, though faster than planned, keeps us on track. Adding a field film about wolf recovery in Northern California to our catalog alongside King of the Everglades and America's Forgotten Prairie gives XPLORIST three distinct American wilderness stories spanning three completely different ecosystems. The Everglades. The wet prairie. The volcanic highlands of the West.

That's exactly the kind of catalog we set out to build.

For Our Donors

If you contributed to The Lassen Wolf Project, a signed printed poster of the official project art and an XPLORIST sticker pack are coming your way. We want you to have something tangible from this project that you can hold onto.

If you'd like to contribute before we head into the field, the fund remains open at xplorist.org/donate. Select the “Lassen Wolf Project” fund at checkout. Everything raised beyond our core expedition expenses goes directly into elevating the production and storytelling.

Donate Today

The Lassen Wolf Project is an independent field film presented by Xplorist Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to conservation through cinematic wilderness storytelling.

Alexander Joseph
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Announcing: America's Forgotten Prairie