[3] It is recognized as a subspecies of Canis lupus in the taxonomic authority Mammal Species of the World (2005).

Miners, fearing rabies, commenced poisoning, hunting and trapping the wolves and by 1915 they had been extirpated.

It has been shown through DNA studies that, at minimum, the current population of wolves on the Kenai Peninsula mated with other Alaskan subspecies, as the structure of the current wolf population's DNA is similar to other mainland Alaskan subspecies.

[11][12] The Kenai Peninsula wolf was dependent on the very large moose of the region (hence the trinomial alces, or moose) and Goldman proposed that its large size was an adaption to this.

[13][14] The Smithsonian Institution has a skull specimen of the Kenai Peninsula wolf, numbered as USNM 147471.