RANGE AND HABITAT
The wolf is describe as being "the most widely distributed mammal in the world" by L. David Mech (pronounced Meech), in his book "The Way of the Wolf".
Historically the wolf occupied a Holarctic distribution across North America, Europe and Asia. The wolf inhabited the high Arctic, tundra, taiga, forests, plains & deserts. Basically the wolf lived in every ecological niche that provided enough food to survive. The only place that wolves have not been known to live is tropical jungles.
It lived as far north as Cape Morris Jessup, in Greenland and as far south as Ethiopia in Africa.
Strictly speaking the wolf does not need pure wilderness to survive. A Canadian wolf biologist name Paul Paquet, who worked with the Southern Rockies Canine Project describes surviving wolf populations as a barometer of wildness: "If you see wolves there, that wilderness is intact."
North America
The range of the wolf at one time was from the arctic islands to central Mexico. They never penetrated the Sierra Nevada into California and never existed in Baja, California.
They lived on Vancouver Island but not Queen Charlotte Island or Kodiak Island in western Canada. In the east they once lived on Newfoundland, but not on Prince Edward or Anticosti Islands. In southeast United States the red wolf dominated the greater part of the territory. They had very little overlap with the gray wolf.
Presently, the wolf has been exterminated from more that 95% of their territory in the states and 15% in the Canadian provinces. There has been no documented proof of red wolves in Mexico for more that 2 decades.
Eurasia
The wolf once occupied most of the Eurasian continent from about the 20 degree latitude north. It also survived on the coastal terrain of Greenland but never populated Iceland. Today it is nearly extinct from much of its terrain, the largest concentration of wolves today is in Russia.
The distribution in Asia was never clearly defined. Today they can be found in parts of China and are thought to be spreading south.