Jim And Jamie Dutcher have spent six years of their lives living with and studying wolves. Their book about this incredible adventure is The Hidden Life of Wolves. They were interviewed on the Diane Rehm show earlier this year, which is where I first heard about them.

Now there is also a 30-minute documentary about their lives with the wolves and the work that went into their book. Fascinating stuff.


Jim & Jamie Dutcher: The Hidden Life of Wolves from National Geographic Live on FORA.tv

Jim & Jamie Dutcher: The Hidden Life of Wolves

Partner: National Geographic Live 

Location: National Geographic, Washington, D.C. 

Event Date: 02.08.13 

Speakers: Jim Dutcher, Jamie Dutcher

This husband-and-wife team, Jim and Jamie Dutcher, spent six years living alongside a pack of wolves in order to reveal the majestic, social, and intelligent nature of these long-misunderstood animals.

BIOs

Jim Dutcher  Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and cinematographer Jim Dutcher began producing documentary films in the 1960s. His early adventures with a camera were spent underwater, part of a Florida coast childhood. In 1985, Water, Birth, the Planet Earth, his first television film, initiated a career spent with animals that range from tiny hatching sea turtles to one of the top-ranking predators on the continent, the wolf. Jim's extraordinary camerawork and the trust he gains from his subjects have led audiences into places never before filmed: inside beaver lodges, down burrows to peek at wolf pups, and into the secret life of a mother mountain lion as she cares for her newborn kittens. His work includes the National Geographic special A Rocky Mountain Beaver Pond and ABC World of Discovery's two highest-rated films, Cougar: Ghost of the Rockies and Wolf: Return of a Legend. In 1991 Jim received the extremely prestigious Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame for his documentary Cougar: Ghost of the Rockies. Jim's intense personal involvement with the details of his subjects' lives and his eye for the beauty of the natural world have placed his work in a category all its own. In 1995, the Governor of Idaho appointed Jim as an ex officio member of the Idaho Wolf Management Committee, a position he served in until 2001.

Jamie Dutcher  Jamie Dutcher, Jim's wife and co-producer, made her mark on the world of film when she won an Emmy Award for sound recording with her carefully collected vocalizations of the Sawtooth wolves. A former employee in the animal hospital of the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., Jamie brought to Jim's projects a knowledge of animal husbandry and medical care. Combined with her gentle instinct, these skills enabled Jamie to quickly gain access to the sensitive and secret inner lives of wolves. Her photographs complement the Dutchers' three books on The Sawtooth Pack. Together, Jim and Jamie Dutcher have been nominated for five Emmy Awards and have won three. Jointly, they created the Discovery Channel's most successful wildlife documentary, Wolves at Our Door, and have been interviewed extensively on numerous television and radio programs and in print articles, in both the United States and Europe. Their most recent film and book, Living with Wolves, continues the story of the Sawtooth wolf pack that became a part of their lives. The Dutchers have brought the story of wolves to hundreds of millions of television viewers, radio listeners and readers in media such as: The Today Show, NBC Good Morning America, ABC Dateline, NBC 48 Hours, CBS National Public Radio BBC People Magazine New York Times San Francisco Chronicle Washington Post and countless others Jim and Jamie live in Ketchum, Idaho, in a log home at the edge of a wild pond with ducks, flying squirrels, elk, deer, owls, coyotes and a mischievous black bear for neighbors.