Wolf moose annual report 2014 - color for web. Wolf%20moose%20annual%20report%202014%20-%20color%20for%20web. Isle Royale researchers debate intervention to help wolf population. Listen Isle Royale wolf intervention at center of debate The wolf population on Isle Royale is down to eight individuals and for the first time in 50 years of intense study there is no evidence of reproduction over the winter. The National Park Service faces a thorny set of choices to either intervene or let nature take its course. A panel of experts Thursday evening will debate the options and explore possible consequences. • Today's Question: Should humans intervene?
Isle Royale is a unique place -- 200 square miles of rugged woods and swamps, rocks and waves. Perched 15 miles from the Minnesota shore in Lake Superior it is effectively isolated from the mainland. For more than 50 years scientists have trekked to this self-contained ecosystem to study the relationship between wolves and moose. Last year, researchers found only eight wolves -- the fewest wolves ever recorded on the island.
“If we don't do anything now, we can do something later if it's necessary. The forum is 7 to 9 p.m. The Wolves and Moose of Isle Royale. Silent summer: No wolf pup yips heard on Isle Royale. On the largest island in Lake Superior, scientists gather year after year to study the dynamics between wolves and moose. For forty years, the scientists have come to take part in this iconic predator-prey study, and for forty years the sound of high-pitched yips have greeted their ears, heralding a new generation of wolf pups. That is, until last summer. It was a summer without yips. Aerial surveys supported the implications of that silent summer—the wolves of Isle Royale did not produce pups.
Physical abnormalities had already been witnessed in the wolves. The situation has left conservation biologists to ponder whether or not they should intervene. A genetic rescue would not only be for the sake of the study of these wolves but for the island as well. The study has become the world’s longest running on predator-prey dynamics and is one of science’s most famous data sets. Save the Wolves of Isle Royale National Park. IN Lake Superior lies a remote island, Isle Royale National Park, 134,000 acres of boreal and hardwood forests where a life-or-death struggle between wolves and moose has been the subject of the world’s longest study of predators and their prey, now in its 55th year. Moose first appeared on this Michigan island in the first decade of the 20th century, apparently by swimming from the mainland.
With no predator to challenge them, the moose population surged (interspersed by two crashes, from starvation) and devastated the island’s vegetation in search of food. Then wolves arrived in the late 1940s by crossing an ice bridge from Canada, and began to bring balance to an ecosystem that had lurched out of control.
Today, moose are essentially the only supply of food for the wolves, and wolf predation is the most typical cause of death for moose. But the wolf population is small, and decades of inbreeding have taken their toll. Photo.
Wolves Teach Scientists Their Limitations - Percolator. The “West-End Trio,” one of two wolf packs remaining on Isle Royale. The gray wolves of Michigan’s Isle Royale may soon go extinct. But before they do, they’re offering an important lesson for scientists: Have a little humility. For more than 60 years, after their intrepid ancestors scrambled 14 miles across an ice bridge, packs of heavily inbred wolves have stalked the snow and evergreens of Isle Royale, a remote 850-square-mile archipelago in northwestern Lake Superior.
For all that time, the wolves, normally known for their catholic prey selection, have feasted and famished off a single species, the yin to their predatory yang. They have hunted moose. We know this because for as long as the wolves have stalked the moose, they have been tracked by a pack of Michigan scientists, in what has become a classic, 55-year-old study of the dynamics between a predator and its prey. In an age when much research lasts no longer than a graduate student’s labors, the study is an anomaly. No pups born to Isle Royale wolves.