Isle Royale: it’s wolf vs moose - July 28, 2008
Continuing with our recent lupine theme, The Great Beyond is bringing you a special post on Isle Royale.
For fifty-years the wolves on this island in Lake Superior have been one side in what the Washington Post calls “the world’s longest-running ‘single predator-single prey’ study”.
“I’ve worked as a resource professional for many agencies and very seldom do we have 50 years of sustained study,” says Lyle Laverty, the assistant Secretary of the Interior (WLUCTV6). “So it’s really incredible to have that kind of information and value in understanding what's happening with ecosystems.”
“It’s a fascinating place,” says Jennifer Donovan, Michigan Tech’s public relations director (The Grand Rapids Press). “The ecosystem is a closed one; moose aren't going anywhere and neither are the wolves. It makes a perfect living laboratory for studying how they interact.”
Celebrations of this long-running study area are slightly gloomy though. Warmer temperatures are driving down moose numbers, and as the moose are the ‘single-prey’ what’s bad for the moose is bad for the wolf.
The Washington Post says:
No one thinks the moose, which arrived on Isle Royale about 100 years ago by swimming from the mainland, will disappear. But with fewer moose, the wolves could be doomed. Desperate wolves have been seen chomping on old moose bones and even eating green apples from trees.
Check out Scientific American’s Isle Royale slide show.
Images: NPS
Comments
The picture looks to be a fox, not a wolf.
[Operating under the mistaken belief that the wolf was the only large predator on Isle Royale, I did indeed use the wrong photo. This is now fixed. Apologies. DC.]
Posted by: Don Monroe | July 28, 2008 07:49 PM
If there are fewer moose due to global warming, and both wolves and foxes prey on them, it sounds pretty dire to me. The predators could indeed bring the moose numbers to below viable levels, which would finish off the moose, which in turn would extinguish the wolves -- which cannot survive on old bones and apples. Unless there are mice or some other prey, wolves and foxes are both doomed, too, it seems.
Posted by: Diana Gainer | August 6, 2008 09:26 PM
From the quoted WaPo article:
Hm. My well-fed big dogs (70 pound mixes) eat green apples by preference. There are three apple trees in their run, and they compete successfully with the groundhogs and deer for the apples starting when the apples are too tart for my own taste.
Posted by: RBH | August 7, 2008 03:50 AM