Just eight wolves can be found at Isle Royale National Park, the lowest count ever tallied, and no new pups were brought into the population last year, another first that seemingly moves the population closer to extinction.
But against that dire news, National Park Service officials continue to work towards a solution that could reverse the wolves' plight, and a rebounding moose population could contribute by offering the eight a bountiful prey base.
If there's any good news to be found in the annual census released Tuesday, it's that biologists now believe at least four, and maybe five, of the wolves are females; a year ago they thought there were just two.
Tracking the vagaries of wolf dynamics at Isle Royale is difficult, wildlife biologist John Vucetich explained Tuesday, because genetic sampling is used to determine sex, and those tests take time. Lack of funds prevented testing on scat samples collected the past two years until this past January, when the results became known.
Rebuilding the island's wolf population won't be easy, though, as the animals long have suffered from inbreeding.
Three decades ago Isle Royale was home to multiple packs totaling 50 individuals. But lone wolves searching for new territories don't easily find themselves on Isle Royale, as ice bridges that allow them to cross Lake Superior from Ontario to the island are few and fragile due to warming waters and somewhat mild winters. As a result, there hasn't been a refreshing infusion of off-island wolf genes since a Canadian male made that 15-mile ice bridge crossing in 1997.
His arrival did provide a welcome burst of genes. He sired 34 offspring, which in turn produced at least 22 of their own. But the passage of time without additional mainland interlopers has narrowed the gene pool.
Park officials are expected to propose possible solutions later this year. In the meantime, wildlife biologists will be carefully watching to see if any pups are born this spring. Last year's failure to produce a litter was startling.
"For wolves, making pups is a relatively easy thing to do," Dr. Vucetich, who monitors the wolves along with Dr. Rolf Peterson from their Michigan Tech base in Houghton, Michigan, said Tuesday during a phone call. "When they are unable to do it, it certainly is noteworthy."
Adding concern to that failure a year ago was the new realization that there were at least four females for breeding a year ago, said Dr. Vucetich. "What's of a concern now, is that the reason they're not reproducing is not because they can't find females; it's for some other reason," he said.
And yet, that concern could vanish overnight if pups show up next month.
"If they have pups this April, then I guess you'd say (last year's failure) is a fluke, they just couldn't do it," the wildlife biologist said. "But if they don't reproduce two years in a row, then of course, it's already an OK question to ask: Is this the beginning of the end?"
Moose, Vegetation Thriving As Wolves Decline
The steady decline of wolves at Isle Royale comes as other facets of the park's natural kingdom are on the rise.
While the moose population plummeted to as few as 530 in 2009, that decline allowed robust vegetative growth to occur on the 45-mile-long island in Lake Superior. That growth fed a rebound, and today the ungulates number roughly 900.
"Because moose were so low for so long, it gave an opportunity for the vegetation to just rebound in a way that I'd never seen in my time on Isle Royale," Dr. Vucetich said. "Balsam fir has experienced a release of growth that they have not seen in 100 years. Moose are up to their eyeballs in food."
And that bountiful buffet has led to an abundance of moose calves, noted Isle Royale Superintendent Phyllis Green.
It remains to be seen if the burgeoning prey base will be enough to buoy the wolf population. Understanding that, the park superintendent has been working with experts in and out of the Park Service to explore options for giving the wolves a lift.
Those options range from doing nothing and possibly watching the predators vanish from the island to bringing in some new animals to perform a "genetic rescue" by contributing to the currently shallow gene pool.
"Some people say, 'Why don't you just go out there and throw wolves at the problem?'" she said Tuesday during a call from her office. "Well, wolves kill wolves. They have territorial disputes all the time. So if your intent in doing that was to replenish the genetics that are there, that might not be your end result.
"Whatever action we take has to be extermely well-thought out. We've gained a lot from the research that's been done for the last 50 years, I think. We need to sort out what are the critical things we need to learn in the next 50 years, too."
For now the eight wolves are roaming the island in two packs of three -- the remnants of the old Chippewa Harbor Pack at the east end and the so-called "West-end Trio -- and two lone wolves in between.
While Superintendent Green expects to have a draft proposal for how to manage the wolves for public review in a few months, she noted Tuesday that climate change is bringing a lot of changes to the park and affecting a lot of species. All that information, plus genetic projections, must be considered in looking at the wolves' future.
"We know these wolves are having genetic issues. Other populations that get isolated because of climate change will, too. So there's going to be limited resources to address all of the issues that come out of climate change," she said. "We have to be really smart about where we focus our resources. That's part of this. That's why we need a good discussion internally on policy and wildlife management and intervention vs. non-intervention. The wolves, they're certainly tenuous, but we've got time to be thoughtful."
Comments
I think that's another point to consider, CROTALID. Even with the periodic freezing of Lake Superior, there are simply less wolves to wander over.
In 1988 Yellowstone and environs burned up. The road system was a huge hazard to travel. Dead hazard trees presented real and deadly hazard for visitors and park workers. The NPS resisted efforts for some time to remove the hazard trees along the roadways because it was not within their mandate to manage 'natural systems'. I traveled through the park in 1989 and it was really strange to see the accumulated logging equipment everywhere removing those trees. I'm sure the Park Service hated doing it. It was clearly reasonable to remove those trees so la touristas weren't unnecessarily maimed.
Fuel loading on Chapin Mesa in Mesa Verde has been excessive for many years.In the mid ninties Mesa Verde had a large fire, the Chapin 5, that ran through Chapin Mesa. It burned around the visitor center, actually ignited a small piece of the Far View Lodge. It burned up most of the guardrails along the highway and destroyed the parks most significant petroglyph panel. The fire was suppressed but some thousands of acres was torched. The Fire Management Officer for the park had become something of a pariah at Mesa Verde because he had recognized the danger to park facilities and tourists and wanted to do a bit of fuel management. He had not been successful.
After the fire, management was willing to consider doing some mitigation work on the mesa. Hot shot crews were stationed there during the summer when not engaged in fire suppression and they did lots of fuels mitigation, largely out of public view.
A couple of years later the Pony fire raged out of the Ute Mountain Reservation on the west side of the park and burned more facilities and roadways. After that the Bircher fire came up from Mancos and burned most of what was left from the east side.
The park service then got serious about fuels work. This time, it was clearly in public view and was interpreted for the public. Work had just been accomplished around the employees residence area and the Chapin museum when the Long Mesa fire erupted. A couple of homes were burned but the fuels work had minimized the damage. they still lost their million or more gallon water tank that brought all the parks potable water up from the valley bottom. The FMO was no longer the goat.
In both of these cases, the public was 'ok' with what the Park Service was doing. It was just the Park Service that had reservations about "the mission".'
I guess the point of this is that management has to make decisions and not simply rely on policy for their parks. I don't have an opinion on whether or not they should re-introduce wolves or not but it's clear to me that these areas are not the static systems they were once viewed as and sometimes, management needs to do something different. I think that might hold true for their budgeting too....
Regular freezes? It was an "unusually cold winter" in 1948-1949 which allowed for the first recorded crossing. There wasn't another documented crossing until 1997 - well after the proverbial (and discredited) "hockey stick" and into the supposed warmest year on record. Global warming has nothing to do with this.
Like you mike, but you are wrong here. Check out the work of Jack Cohen, with the National Forest Service or some of the studies of the Yellowstone fire. The NFS and NPS made mistakes not allowing natural fires to burn but they are wasting dollars cutting "hazard" trees.
Thanks EC. I should have been more clear. The hazard trees I'm speaking of were those standing dead that would fall directly upon roadways or other improvements if not removed. Generally, those trees fall, without warning, within 3 to 10 years. Leaving those trees is tantamount to pitching your tent under a dead snag with wind predicted.
Mr. Jack Cohen is the relevant authority for mitigation work. I've read a lot of his stuff, heard him speak and met him on two occasions. I agree that simply removing trees isn't effective mitigation but that isn't what I was speaking of.
Aahh, Mike we are on the same page. Mitigation along roads, camp grounds, utilities et al makes sense. Unfortunately, the NFS and local officials here in Summit County, CO and elsewhere in the state have wasted $100s of thousands of dollars cutting trees in the middle of nowhere that will have no impact. But it makes people feel good that " something" is being done - even though it is a total waste, or even counter productive. Sound familiar?
Croatalid - An Inconvenient Truth
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/twenty-year-hiatus-in-risi...
Of additional interest:
"Should Isle Royale Wolves be Reintroduced? A Case Study on Wilderness Management
in a Changing World"