Hold off/new wolf introduction

[Lee Borgersen]

Park Service holds off on new wolf introduction at Isle Royale

Posted: April 10, 2014 - 9:03am

The environmental review will look not just at why wolf numbers have declined in recent years – and whether their inbreeding has doomed the small population -- but will include a review of the island’s entire ecosystem.

  .....
By Forum News Service:
DULUTH - The National Park Service has opted against conducting an emergency genetic rescue of wolves on Isle Royale, and will instead conduct a long-term environmental review on the park’s diminished wolf population.

Isle Royale Superintendent Phyllis Green announced Wednesday that she won’t allow the introduction of transplanted wolves onto the Lake Superior island at this time – an effort some wolf researches have suggested to revitalize wolf genetics and bolster the population.

Instead, Green said she has begun the formal environmental impact statement process, an action that could take up to three years to reach a conclusion.

The environmental review will look not just at why wolf numbers have declined in recent years – and whether their inbreeding has doomed the small population -- but will include a review of the island’s entire ecosystem. Most important is how wolves relate to moose on the island, how moose relate to vegetation, and how the entire system is being affected by climate change, Green said.

Isle Royale is about 18 miles off Minnesota's North Shore at the Canadian border. Last spring, researchers reported only eight adult wolves remained on the island, down from 24 in 2009 and the lowest level since 1958.

[dew2]

That artical is almost identical as a artical I remember from the early 70s.Jeeze still doing the same studies.Now cilmate change is involved??? Same ole same ole.They know every wolf by name or number same with the moose.They want to insure their jobs thats it! Drag it out longer!  I'm sure before the early 70s studies took place then also

[Bobby Bass]

the wolves will die off and the lake will freeze over again and a new pack will come over from the mainland. That is how they got there to begin with. Would not be surprised if some bade it over this past winter with the lake just about freezing over. three year study to tell them that history will just repeat itself. 

[dew2]

the wolves will die off and the lake will freeze over again and a new pack will come over from the mainland. That is how they got there to begin with. Would not be surprised if some bade it over this past winter with the lake just about freezing over. three year study to tell them that history will just repeat itself. 

Just this past winter a wolf was documented leaving the island.When it made it to the mainland I read is was in really poor condition.Since I havent followed it>>Probably because I didnt hear anymore of it.I betit could be found on the net??

[Lee Borgersen]

  more Isle Royale.......

A Mystery Solved: 3 Wolves Drowned in Old Mine Shaft at Isle Royale National Park
 


June 14, 2012—

During their 2012 Winter Study, Michigan Technological University population biologist John Vucetich and wildlife ecologist Rolf Peterson started wondering where the wolves of Isle Royale National Park had gone.   They only found nine wolves, and as far as they could tell, only one was a female. They expressed serious concern that the wolves of Isle Royale might be well on their way to extinction.

Now they know what happened to at least three of those wolves, one of them a young female, who likely would have contributed to the population’s viability in the future.

In late May,  National Park Service biologist Ted Gostomsk reported one or more animal carcasses floating in water in a deep, 19th century mine shaft at Isle Royale. With the aid of the Park Service, Peterson and his wife, Carolyn, went in to investigate.  They recovered and examined what was left of the animals and then collected the bones..

"We found there had been a real catastrophe in early winter, before we arrived on the island in January,” said Vucetich. “There were three dead wolves from the Chippewa Harbor Pack in the shaft: a collared male that we had been unable to locate this winter, an older male—maybe the alpha male—and a female born in 2011.

“We believe the incident occurred between mid-October and mid-January,” Vucetich went on to say. “There is no way to know how the three wolves ended up falling into the pit, but very likely, accumulating snow and ice played a role in the accident.

The collared wolf was Romeo, whom the researchers could not locate during their 2012 Winter Study, although they picked up his collar signal briefly once or twice.  

“We now understand a major reason for the decline in pack size of the Chippewa Harbor Pack in 2012, and perhaps why we saw such a desultory pattern of travel and low kill rate in this pack,” Vucetich said. The pack seemed to have no “game plan” following the large loss of so many individuals, he explained.

The drowned female pup and the old male showed noticeable fat in their internal body organs, suggesting they were not suffering from a food shortage before they died. “This was true even for the old male, who had very heavily worn/broken teeth and a healed fracture in one femur that left one of his back legs 1.5 inches shorter than the other,” the scientist noted.

Vucetich and Peterson point out that the young female was lost at a critical time in the wolves’ history, when a shortage of females represents the largest extinction risk for the population.  The researchers noted breeding activity in a pack of two animals during the 2012 winter study, and in the spring of 2012 found an additional female in the Chippewa pack. There were no signs of breeding with this female.  


 
The National Park Service will be investigating potential safety issues associated with the historic mine shaft in which the wolves died. The mine shaft dates to the time of the Pittsburgh and Isle Royale Company, which operated in the Todd Harbor area between 1846 and 1853.

“This is not the first time we have been fortunate enough to learn about discrete events that have greatly influenced this population of wolves,” stated Phyllis Green, park superintendent, referencing this event and the discovery of canine parvovirus, which caused the population decline of the early 1980s.  “Random events often play a large role in isolated, island populations and although tragic, information from this event will serve to help us evaluate future management of this population.”

Meanwhile, Peterson and Vucetich are cleaning the bones of the dead wolves and examining their spines—affected by inbreeding history—to collect some data about the animals. They will also be doing DNA analysis to determine or confirm the animals’ age and prior history.

Supported by the National Park Service (NPS), the National Science Foundation (NSF), Michigan Tech, and numerous private donors and field volunteers, the wolf-moose study at Isle Royale National Park has been going on for more than 50 years, the longest continuous predator-prey study in the world.





Romeo, one of the wolves that died in the mine shaft, is seen here following a female wolf in 2010. His eagerness to mate earned him his nickname.

[Boar]

interesting read.

[dew2]

Here's the instance I refered to.I always wondered why Minnesota is 15 miles fromThe isle and so far from Michigan, why its michigan territory,Heck the wolves and moose come from Mn??
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/apnewsbreak-isle-royale-wolf-dies-after-escaping