The range of eastern wolves is limited to a core area in and around Algonquin Provincial Park. Although a few Algonquin-like animals have been documented in regions slightly north of the park and as far south as the Kawartha Highlands Signature Site, the wolf-like animals in northern Ontario are hybrids between grey wolves and eastern wolves, and the coyote animals in southern Ontario are hybrids between western coyotes and eastern wolves. Prior to 2000, the eastern wolf was considered a grey wolf subspecies (Canis lupus lycaon), but we now know from mounting genetic evidence that the eastern wolf has an evolutionary history that is distinct from the grey wolf. It is, therefore, considered its own species, Canis lycaon, rather than a grey wolf subspecies. Outside of Algonquin Park, eastern wolf genes are distributed west throughout northern Ontario into southern Manitoba and east into parts of Quebec in the form of a grey wolf-eastern wolf hybrid hybrid animal. South of Algonquin Park, eastern wolf genes are also found in eastern coyotes that are the result of western coyote-eastern wolf hybridization events that occurred when western coyotes colonized southern Ontario about 100 years ago. Although animals in Algonquin Park have been influenced by hybridization with both grey wolves and western coyotes, they remain genetically differentiated from the hybrid populations surrounding them.

The grey-eastern wolf hybrid of northern Ontario also occurs in the Great Lakes states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. This wolf has many common names including the eastern timber wolf, the Ontario type grey wolf, the Boreal type grey wolf, and the Great Lakes wolf. But genetically they are all similar and as a group they are distinct from the eastern wolves in Algonquin Provincial Park. Although few samples have been analyzed from Ontario’s far north, the grey wolves near the coastal regions of Hudson and James Bay seem unaffected by hybridization with eastern wolves and are considered a grey wolf subspecies (Canis lupus hudsonicus).