A Fair Fight?

Moskey Basin - 1994

Over the years, I have subscribed to a large number of wildlife and environmental list services, so it is not uncommon to have 5-10 messages waiting for me every morning. Most emails are quickly scanned for items of interest and deleted. But occasionally an article catches my attention that has me returning to it repeatedly.

Yesterday was one such message. The Stewardship Network, an Ann Arbor based environmental organization is sponsoring a free webinar for next Wednesday. The subject is the Predator / Prey Study that has been taking place on Isle Royale National Park for more than 50 years. The presenter, John Vucetich, PhD, is a Michigan Tech professor in the School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science.

While I always appreciate the convenience and quality of webinars, this particular one holds a special appeal for me. Michigan Tech is my alma mater with the university only four miles from where I grew up. Isle Royale is my favorite place to backpack. Only forty five miles in length, the park is protected by the National Park Service and is a recognized International Biosphere Reserve. With the exception of Rock Harbor on the eastern end and Windigo on the western end, the interior of the main island is wilderness, accessible only by hiking trails.

I have been to Isle Royale many times, the first with a church youth group. The summer of my sophomore year at Tech, I worked at Rock Harbor Lodge. Years later, I returned first as a guest at the lodge then as a backpacker hiking the trails on the eastern end of the island.

Isle Royale is beautiful and wild. As the least visited national park, hikers are given the opportunity to walk its trails without meeting up with any more than one or two other hikers all day. It is not an easy journey for the topography of the island is steeply undulating with heights of bare rock and valleys of treed marshes. But what you can experience there is pure wilderness where nature rules and people are only a four month distraction.

But I return to the webinar. The Predator/Prey Study is the longest continuous research study in the world. What began as a short term project to study the relationship between the wolf and the moose has evolved for some, a lifelong career. The work performed there has provided a significant amount of scientific information about the role that predation plays in maintaining an ecosystem. The moose and wolf populations have fluctuated greatly over the years and in recent times, a disconcerting trend has emerged. The wolf population has been declining and there is concern that the current packs cannot sustain themselves. If that happens the wolf could disappear completely from the island.

If the wolf goes extinct on the island, will the moose also disappear? Without a predator, the moose population will explode and the vegetation will suffer from overconsumption.  Eventually the moose population will decline as the food sources die off.

There has been discussion about introducing more wolves into the current population. Over the years, inbreeding between the wolves has resulted in genetic deformities. Introduced wolves could bring in new genetics that could help re-establish the packs.

The question becomes, are we playing God? The appeal of hiking Isle Royale is that chance, albeit slim, to see a wolf in the wild. Would that appeal disappear with the wolves? On the other hand, there is thought that human behavior has caused the decline. The ice bridge that once allowed new wolves to cross Lake Superior from the mainland does not form now with the warm winters we are experiencing. Do we owe it to the wolves to give them a fair fight?

These are not easy questions to ask but the time is now if we want to help the wolves. I don’t have an answer except that I love this place too much to see it harmed.