Four Canadian wolves airdropped into Isle Royale National Park, Michigan to hunt moose and reproduce
March 2019 - A crack team of Canadian wolves were airdropped in Michigan last week
to carry out two important missions—hunting moose and making babies.
The
four wolves were captured by specialists at the Ontario Ministry of
Natural Resources and Forestry (OMNRF) and transferred to Isle Royale
National Park, a wildlife preserve on an archipelago in Lake Superior.
The relocation is part of an ongoing joint project
with the US National Park Service to restore a healthy population of
the iconic predators to the island chain after years of decline. If all
goes to plan, the wolves will also cull the booming moose population,
which is damaging the island’s ecology due to the herd’s overconsumption
of plantlife.
The Canadian quartet joins an existing group of four wolves in the
park. Two of those wolves are the last surviving descendents of the
island’s original pack, while the other pair were captured in Minnesota
and introduced to the park in 2018. The new total population of eight
wolves is equally split between males and females.
The Isle Royale wolf population has experienced dramatic booms and busts since scientists first started studying it in 1958.
Since the study began 60 years ago, fluctuations in populations of wolves and moose on the island were studied because of how direct the predator-prey relationship is between the two species. Wolves were the island moose’s only natural predator and moose were the wolves’ main prey. So when one species’ numbers grew because of good food availability, limited disease or good weather; the other proportionally declined; and vice versa. Wolves helped stabilize moose herd numbers by preying on the old, young and sick, while strong moose numbers ensured that the wolves had enough to eat during the long, brutal winters. Both helped keep the ecosystem of the island in balance.
But by 2011, the wolf population had taken a sharp nosedive and by just five years later, only two wolves remained because of inbreeding on the islands after the wolves living there became largely stranded from the mainland
Historically, the wolves had come to the island via an ice bridge
between the island and the Canadian mainland. For decades, they would
continue to use similar ice bridges, which would usually form for about
50 days a year during the winter, to move to and from the mainland. New
wolves would come, old wolves would leave; regular, seasonal migrations
were common.
However, over the last 20 years, warming temperatures
made these ice bridges less and less common, and when they did form,
they were not consistent. This limited the wolves ability to leave the
island and prevented new mainland wolves from joining the pack. With no
new wolves, the genetic diversity of the pack declined through inbreeding, the wolves stopped thriving, and their numbers dwindled.
The
newcomers were captured by OMNRF teams that fired net guns from
aircraft. The animals were sedated and examined by veterinarians before
and after their helicopter trip to ensure they were healthy enough for
release. They were also deliberately selected to be over two or three
years old, when wolves become sexually mature enough to breed,
but not too old, so that they have a shot of surviving multiple
breeding seasons. All of them are collared so that researchers can track
their movements.
The elite Canadian crew includes a female and male from a pack based on
the mainland near Wawa, Ontario, and two males from Michipicoten Island
Provincial Park. The female was released on Isle Royale last Tuesday,
while her pack mate was set loose a day later. The Michipicoten males
were introduced separately to the island on Thursday and Friday.
One of the wolves in its transport crate. (Photo Credit: A. McLaren / OMNRF)
The wolves are probably a bit weirded out by the week’s turn of
events, according to John Vucetich, an ecologist at Michigan
Technological University and leader of the Wolves and Moose of Isle
Royale project.
“They live in families, so imagine what happens to a dog when they’re plunked into a foreign place,” Vucetich told The Guardian.
“They are being introduced to each other. It’s tense and nervous, and
it’s tough to find food in a new place. It’s stressful.”
That
said, the wolves are apparently adjusting to their new homes and pack
mates without major issues. Mark Romanski, who is the project manager
for the park’s wolf reintroduction as well as Division Chief of Natural
Resources for Isle Royale National Park said he was “blown away by the
resilience of these wolves,” in a statement.
“Within
hours after undergoing capture and handling and arriving on Isle
Royale, [the wolves] immediately got on the trail of their pack mates,”
Romanski said. “These large males, all around 90 pounds, will almost
certainly know what to do when they encounter a moose.”
Moose are the main food source for the Isle Royale wolves, and their unique predator-prey relationship has fascinated scientists for decades. As the wolf population dwindled, the moose population exploded
from 975 individuals in 2013 to about 1,500 in 2018. This ecological
disruption may sound like a good deal for moose at first, but a similar
population boom during the 1990s led to thousands of moose dying of starvation in the winter.
Isle Royale National Park officials and their collaborators hope to avoid similar calamities by introducing 20 to 30 wolves to the park over the coming years.
As Phyllis Green, superintendent of Isle Royale National Park, said in a statement,
“To see these wolves disappear into the forests of Isle Royale and to
have an opportunity to start a new generation of wolves on the island
fulfilled a major objective in the first year of reestablishing the
population.”
Photo: A white wolf is airlifted and released at Isle Royale National Park.
(Photo Credit: OMNRF, National Park Service, and National Parks of Lake
Superior Foundation)
On this day, 21 March 1927, the Shanghai insurrection took place as 800,000 workers walked out on general strike and a 5,000-strong workers’ militia seized arms and attacked police stations and army barracks. By the next morning the whole city, apart from the foreign concessions, was in the hands of the working class. They held the city until the arrival of the nationalist Kuomintang army, who were supported by the Chinese Communist Party and Soviet Union, who proceeded to massacre the communists and militant workers. This is a short history of the uprising: https://ift.tt/2l3gyGE
Pictured: Shanghai workers, 1927 https://ift.tt/2TOoxgo
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