A WOLF IN Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)
HOUGHTON — A warning for campers at Isle Royale National Park on Lake Superior: Wolves are venturing into campground trash cans in search of an easy meal. The park is reminding visitors to store and monitor food and trash securely to keep people and wolves separate and safe.
“Wolves are very opportunistic and use practically anything as a source of food. It is obviously easy for them to get into the garbage,” said Brian Roell, large carnivore expert for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
Liz Valencia, the national park’s cultural resources officer, said a few wolves had begun knocking over trash cans at the Rock Harbor campground, one of the park’s busiest areas.
Rangers’ efforts to secure garbage cans and scare away the wolves have been unsuccessful, and the wolves keep coming back, she said.
That’s why the park is asking visitors for help.
Hikers must carry their backpacks at all times and visitors must store food and garbage in secure, odor-proof containers, such as bear boxes or hanging them in trees at least 10 feet above the ground, according to new regulations that took effect this summer.
“We simply do not want wolves to get used to being close to humans,” Valencia said, which could result in visitors being injured by a wolf or vice versa.
Isle Royale National Park consists of one large island and hundreds of smaller islands covering 850 square miles. Wolves are essential to Isle Royale, and they are “a valued part of the wilderness experience” for visitors, Valencia said.
The possibility of seeing wolves and moose draws visitors from all over the country to the park every year, but as long as the sightings are from a distance, that’s not a problem, says Valencia.
“Seeing a wolf digging through garbage in Rock Harbor is not exactly the kind of wolf sighting you want,” she said.
The gray wolves on Isle Royale are not only an exciting sight for visitors, they also play an important role as the park’s top predator. Other large predators such as bears, coyotes and mountain lions are absent, says the National Park Service.
Wolves keep the population of moose, another prominent species on Isle Royale, stable. Biologists have been studying the relationship between the two animals since wolves crossed an ice bridge from Canada in 1948, making it the longest predator-prey study in the world, said DNR biologist Roell.
Efforts to maintain wolf and moose populations have long been a top priority for conservationists and scientists.
In 2012, the wolf population dropped dramatically, partly due to inbreeding, which is becoming more common as rising temperatures prevent the lake from freezing over. Annual freezes allowed wolves from Canada to come over. Without new wolves moving to Isle Royale, closely related wolves are less likely to produce offspring, and inbred wolves may be born with crooked spines or other health problems.
To prevent the species from becoming extinct, the Park Service relocated wolves from mainland Michigan, Ontario and Minnesota in 2018 and 2019.
The “was not an easy decision”, said Roell, who was consulted on the issue.
Normally, biologists prefer to let nature take its course, but without wolves, he said, there would be no predator to keep the moose population in check. The entire ecosystem was in danger of collapsing. The relocation of 19 wolves therefore strengthened the genetic diversity of the wolf population and stabilized the park’s ecosystem.
According to the Park Service, the population recovered from a low of two wolves in 2018 to 14 in 2020.
Valencia said there are now 30 wolves living in the national park.
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Gabrielle Nelson is completing an environmental reporting internship as part of the MSU Knight Center for Environmental Journalism’s Diversity Reporting Partnership with the Mott News Collaborative in collaboration with CNS.
