When I started this blog, my Uncle Mike wrote to me and said: I don’t know a lot about the Great Lakes but I have read about the famous wolf and moose study on Isle Royale.  

I had never heard about this study and frankly was only peripherally aware of Isle Royale National Park. Lo and behold, about six weeks later, I’m at the library with my girls, and on the shelf in the young adult nonfiction section is a book titled The Wolves and Moose of Isle Royale: Restoring an Island Ecosystem with text by Nancy Castaldo and photographs by Morgan Heim.  

I’m sharing the book cover text because it’s a great layperson overview and I couldn’t do a better job summarizing – all credit to Nancy Castaldo and Clarion Books:

“On Isle Royale, a remote island national park surrounded by Lake Superior, a thrilling drama is unfolding between wolves and moose, the island’s ultimate predator and prey. For over sixty years, in what has been known as the longest study of a predator-prey relationship in the world, scientists have observed the importance of wolves to Isle Royale’s unique ecology. But due to illness and underlying factors, the population of wolves on the island has dropped while the number of moose has increased, putting the Isle Royale ecosystem in jeopardy. 

In order to restore the island’s ecological balance, scientists are stepping in… If scientists are successful in growing the island’s wolf population, they can potentially restore the island’s balance and explore ways to repair other damaged ecosystems.”

A couple takeaways from the book:

Isle Royale is the real deal when talking about a remote island wilderness ripe for a living ecologic laboratory. 278 miles from Ontario, 61 miles from Houghton, Michigan and 40 miles from Grand Portage, Minnesota, it is the least visited of all the United States’ 63 national parks. There is little human presence on the island (one lodge, one food establishment, no cell service and close to no Wi-Fi) and it closes for over six months in the wintertime due to inaccessability. 

As always, the facts of the story illustrate the interconnectedness of the natural world, of which we are a part. On the island, the wolves eat the moose.  If there are not enough wolves, the moose overpopulate. The overpopulated moose overeat the trees and bushes on the island, eventually causing the moose to start suffering from starvation and destroying food and habitat for other animals. The ecosystem becomes imbalanced and unhealthy. 

The predictable debate that occurred on whether to reintroduce wolves to the island is really part of bigger questions around environmental ethics. What is wilderness? What are the reasons that humans should intervene in ecological management of wilderness?

In the end, the argument that resulted in the wolf reintroduction project that started in 2018 and that continues at this time rested on the words of the famous naturalist Aldo Leopold: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

The book itself feels very accessible in its design – a photojournalistic structure with gorgeous pictures supporting text that is broken up well with headings and boxes. The book left me hopeful that our young generations might still see benefits of a physical book versus just online content. It was such a joy to find the book sitting on the library shelf that day. It felt a bit like it was there waiting for me. 

This post is dedicated to my Uncle Mike and his enduring love of the natural world.