Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Michigan: Exploring the Magic of Michigan with Sharon McMahon

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

In this episode, Sharon explores the rich ecosystem of the state of Michigan. Known as the “Great Lakes State” Michigan is comprised of two peninsulas that are separated by the Straits of Mackinac, called the Lower Peninsula, and the Upper Peninsula (UP). Known for its fresh water and natural beauty, the state of Michigan is home to many of the nation’s most beautiful parks, animals, coastlines, and lakes. Join Sharon to learn more about how Moose and Wolves cohabitate in Northern Michigan, why the UP belongs to Michigan despite sharing no border, how many ships have sunk in Lake Superior, and more. For more information on this episode including all resources and links discussed go to https://www.sharonmcmahon.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, hello there. Thank you so much for joining me today. I have some super interesting stuff to share with you about the Great Lakes State, the beautiful state of Michigan. I think I got some good stuff for you. This is not going to be about Henry Ford. This is not going to be about any kind of auto manufacturing, although that's fantastic. I have some other really good stuff. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. The state of Michigan touches four of the five Great Lakes. I'm sure that is obvious, according to the map. And you know, sometimes people refer to Michigan as the mitten state because it looks like it has a thumb and it's like somebody wearing a mitten. And then you have this little piece at the top that is actually 29% of the landmass of the state

of Michigan, but it only has 3% of the population. This little piece at the top that is not actually connected to the bottom. So Michigan is actually made up of two different peninsulas that are not touching each other. So the lower peninsula is where all the people live and the upper peninsula is attached to Wisconsin. That's interesting. A lot of people want to know why is the upper peninsula attached to Wisconsin, not attached to the Lower Peninsula, and why is it part of Michigan? Additionally, why is Isle Royale, the huge island in Lake Superior, why does that belong to Michigan when it is twice as far away from Michigan as it is from Minnesota or even Canada? So let's get into a little bit of that, but then I have some

very interesting animal stuff to share with you, because if you've been following me for a while, you know that I love animals. So where to begin? Michigan has a lot of copper deposits and indigenous groups have lived in this region for many thousands of years. In fact, there is archaeological evidence of indigenous groups on Isle Royale, in particular, that go back 4,500 years. Do you know where Isle Royale is? It looks like on a map, it looks like Isle Royale. Nobody says it that way around here. Maybe they say it that way in Canada. In fact, Canadians, let me know. Do you say Isle Royale? It looks like Casino Royale. Looks like it should be Royale, but locals do not say it that way. They say Isle Royale. If you look at a picture of Lake Superior, looks like a wolf head, and there's an eye of the wolf head, and that is Isle Royale.

And it's about 20 miles-ish off the coast of northern Minnesota, about 55 miles off the coast of Michigan, and about 15 miles off the coast of Ontario. Rumor had it that Benjamin Franklin got tipped off about the vast copper deposits on the island and wanted to make sure that the boundary between Canada and the United States was north of the island of Isle Royale. So that's rumor, but yet it is very interesting that the boundary line between the United States and Canada is set just north of Isle Royale. So the French fur traders have been exploring this region since the 1600s. So I'm going to spare you the many hundreds of years of detailed history of the region of Michigan. I'm just going to hit a couple of highlights.

1700s, Michigan belongs to France. It is part of the Quebec province. It is part of the Quebec province. France lost New France. France lost New France to Britain during the French and Indian War. Britain lost the Revolutionary War to the United States. And the territory of Michigan, or what would later become the territory of Michigan, was ceded to the United States, and it became part of the Northwest Territory, and then it became part of the Indiana Territory, and then it became part of the Michigan Territory as things began to get honed, carved up,

as people moved in, as they needed different governance. So Northwest Territory shrinks down to become the Indiana Territory, shrinks down to become the Michigan Territory. And the actual final border between Michigan and Canada was not decided until after the War of 1812. So the Erie Canal is very much a part of Michigan's story, even though the Erie Canal is not in Michigan. The Erie Canal, if you're not familiar, was opened in 1825. It is a 363 mile long canal that connects Lake Erie with the Hudson River and therefore the Atlantic Ocean. So once the Atlantic Ocean was connected with the Great Lakes, you really saw an explosion of immigration, an explosion of development, and of people moving to the region as it became

connected to the rest of the world. And Michigan is absolutely a hallmark of that. By the turn of the 20th century, 75% of Michigan's residents were not born in the United States. So Michigan saw tremendous amount of immigration over that period of 70 or so years. The Erie Canal, by the way, was originally four feet deep and 40 feet wide, and it took people eight years to build, cutting through rocks, cutting down trees, building all of these lift locks that would move a boat from one place to another as you were trying to go up a hill. Obviously, a large boat cannot go up a hill. And so they built this system of locks that helped connect

the Atlantic to the Great Lakes. I would imagine you're not super familiar with the Toledo War. Am I right? Why does the Upper Peninsula of Michigan belong to Michigan and not Wisconsin when it is clearly attached with a long land border to Wisconsin? with Andrew Jackson. If you've been following me for a while, you know that I have a little bit of beef with Andrew Jackson. I find him fascinating in a car wreck kind of way. You know what I mean? There are so many things that he did that are just so interesting to me, and not all of them are bad. One of the things that he did was he helped settle a border dispute between what was the territory of Michigan and the state of Ohio. So initially, y'all cartographers didn't have things like satellite imaging to determine the boundaries of things. And they were like, well, I think that's what it is. Pretty sure that's the shape. And so there were many errors in early maps. So there was an error

in establishing where a river that was supposed to serve as the boundary between Michigan and Ohio was. Initially, it was stated in all of these laws that the boundary of Michigan and Ohio was going to be X. And then it turns out that that river was not where we thought it was. And the entire region that was under dispute now encompasses the city of Toledo, Ohio. And it was just like this little teeny strip of land that was sort of down at the very bottom of the border between Michigan and Ohio. Ohio was like, heck to the no, this belongs to us. And Michigan was like, hello, the treaty, the map, the law says that the boundary is this river. And the river is not where you thought it was.

And that's not our problem. River is not where you thought it was, and that's not our problem. And there actually became a conflict called sometimes the Michigan-Ohio War, sometimes the Toledo War. It was regarding this strip of land and whether or not it would eventually become Michigan's or Ohio's. Initially, there were a bunch of militia members who came to the border of Michigan and the border of Ohio, and they're there with guns, and they are allegedly going to have some kind of conflict over this border dispute. You know, we're going to have the bigger army. We're going to show you that this strip belongs to us. And initially, it seemed like it was going to be some kind of armed conflict. And then both militias got there and they just kind of stared at each other and yelled

mean things at each other. And then some shots were fired in the air and then nobody died. Which is really, that's kind of the best war, right? Like we show up and we yell and nobody dies. But this conflict was a problem because they wanted to try to get Michigan, you know, admitted as a state. They couldn't do that until this border dispute was settled. And so Andrew Jackson asked Congress to intervene. Andrew Jackson was like, listen, if you will just give this piece of land, saying this to Michigan, if you'll just give it to Ohio, drop your claim to this strip of land, then I will give you the Upper Peninsula. And Michigan was like, um, pardon me. No, we don't want the Upper Peninsula.

I thought this was so funny. This made me laugh. This is the president of the Michigan Historical Society. And he says that the Michigan residents said, no, we want the Toledo Strip. The Upper Peninsula doesn't have anything but ice and rocks and trees, and we don't want that. Of course, the city of Toledo was an important place for trade on the Great Lakes. And so Michigan was like, nope, we don't want the Upper Peninsula. That is not interesting. We want the Toledo Strip. But here's the thing. Michigan was not a state yet, but Ohio was. And Andrew Jackson did not want to risk the ire of the residents of Ohio because they could vote in presidential elections and the residents of Michigan could not yet. So he had to side with Ohio and hopefully get their

electoral votes. Initially, Michigan was like, nope, we're not taking the deal. And then Congress started handing out money and it took a lot of money to like have this fake yelling war with the Michigan, Ohio border. And Michigan wanted to recoup some of its money. And so Congress, when it was giving out these grants, they were finally like, you know, we'll give you this money if you'll drop this dispute and you'll get your money back for this militia. And they were like, fine, fine. You can have Toledo and we will take your upper peninsula. And so Isle Royale was not necessarily attached to this deal of having the upper peninsula, but Michigan was formed 20 years before Minnesota was. And so of course,

again, going back to that Benjamin Franklin rumor, of course they wanted that island and they wanted the border with Canada to be established above the island in case there was a lot of copper on it. All right, here is part of what I wanted to get to, which is about Isle Royale National Park. Isle Royale National Park was formed in 1940 and it is one of the least visited national parks in the country. And that is because it is extraordinarily remote. It is literally an island in the middle of Lake Superior. It's a 45 mile long island and it's about nine miles wide. And you can either get there by float plane, or you can take a ferry from a couple of different places in Michigan, which takes about three and a half hours. Or you can take a ferry from Northern Minnesota,

which takes about an hour and a half to go across Lake Superior to Isle Royale. There are currently no permanent residents of Isle Royale. There are, however, a bunch of lakes on the island, and inside the lakes are more islands. I find that fascinating that it's like an island in a lake on an island in a lake. That is the size of things we're discussing. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office

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and wherever you get your podcasts. Originally, there were a number of Scandinavian immigrant families who did commercial fishing on Isle Royale. And after the establishment of the national park, they allowed 12 families that still have lifetime leases for their cabins on Isle Royale. They are still allowed to commercially fish the waters of Isle Royale, but nobody lives there year round. Isle Royale National Park consists of this large main island and 400 smaller islands. Many people don't realize that the Great Lakes are actually full of islands. In fact, if I remember correctly, the Great Lakes have over 35,000 islands in them. And I just love the idea that on one of the islands is a lake with islands. So no roads on the island of Isle Royale.

In 2019, Isle Royale was also added to the National Register of Historic Places. So in addition to being a national park, it is on the National Register of Historic Places, and it is on the register because of its cultural significance to the indigenous population of the region. Isle Royale has seven lakes. It cracks me up. One of them, its name is Chickenbone Lake. I was like, that is the name we decided on. We decided on Chickenbone Lake for one of the seven lakes on an island in the middle of a lake, in the island in the middle of a lake.

of Lake. In 1958, Michigan Tech, the university, began what is still the longest running predator prey animal study that has ever existed in the world. There are many studies where people study things like the relationship between the lions of the Serengeti and the other animals that they hunt, et cetera. There are other studies that have existed and continue to exist, but no study of this nature of one island has ever existed. So since 1958, they have been studying the predator-prey relationship between timber wolves or gray wolves and moose. And prior to the formation of Isle Royale as a national park, there were no moose and wolves on the island. There were caribou and there were Canada lynx, but there were no moose and wolves. And when I begin to dive into this, because I've been hearing about Isle Royale wolves and moose for my entire life, I was always told growing up that the moose had walked across the ice from Minnesota to Isle Royale, or they had

swam across the water from Minnesota to Isle Royale. And that's 20 miles in Lake Superior, by the way, which is freezing cold, cold, cold, cold water. Not friendly water. And I always remember being like, dang, 20 miles of swimming? What? That is crazy. And also it seems like, wow, walking across 20 miles of ice, that also seems crazy. So that was part of what made it interesting is like, how did these

moose get here? How did the wolves get here? And now we know. This kind of blew my bite because this blows open so much of what I learned growing up about this region of the world. They have now done genetic testing on the moose population that lives on Isle Royale, and they found that the moose did not come from moose populations that were genetically near the border of Minnesota and Lake Superior. They found that the moose came from up near Manitoba, which is not close. If you're not familiar with Canadian geography, it's not close. And it has now been hypothesized that they were transported there on purpose as part of a private hunting group of like, you know, we should do is put a bunch of moose on this island and they'll breed and there will be nothing to kill them but us. And we'll be able to shoot our trophy moose, bring the moose home, etc. Moose are elusive, generally speaking. They're also not that intelligent. And so if they're on an island, thinking was that the

gentlemen of the Washington Harbor Club, which was a group of rich businessmen, that they'd be able to travel to Isle Royale and have this like haunting paradise. So we now know that the moose arrived on Isle Royale sometime in the very early 20th century, like 1905, 1910. And the wolves arrived sometime after that. And what has been so fascinating is this interplay between the wolf populations and the moose populations. For a period of time, there were dozens, like maybe 50 plus wolves on Isle Royale. And they did an incredible amount of good to the ecosystem because they kept the moose population in check. By the way, all scientists now have consensus on the fact that wolves crossed an ice bridge from either Ontario or northern Minnesota across the ice to Isle Royale. They were not introduced there by humans. They traveled there on their own initially.

And they did an incredible amount of good to the ecosystem because moose as massive land mammals, when there are too many of them in one small area, they can be very destructive to the natural environment. They love to eat spruce tips. They love to eat baby trees. And then guess what happens? They destroy the future of the forest if there are too many of them. They eat all the baby trees and the baby trees can't grow. So the wolves kept the moose from destroying this island, essentially. In the early 1980s, a hiker brought their dog to Isle Royale, and this dog introduced a virus that began to kill off the wolf population. And the wolf population plummeted from about 50 wolves to about 14 wolves. Additionally, the wolf population was further harmed by the fact that we had a series of warmish winters that prevented an ice bridge from forming

between Isle Royale and the mainland. And so the wolves could not come and go. And then you started having issues with inbreeding. Ice bridges just became less and less consistent. And eventually the wolf pack shrunk from about 50 animals to about 14 animals. And it rebounded somewhere in that range, you know, 14 animals, 20 animals, you know, 12 animals, 20 animals, obviously they would have litters, and then the wolf population would temporarily increase. With a decrease in the wolf population, the moose population correspondingly exploded. So due to all of these external factors, genetic inbreeding, warm weather, and a virus, by 2016, there were only two wolves left on Isle Royale. And they knew that it was not long until there were no wolves left on Isle Royale. As the wolf population decreased, the moose population exploded to be about 1,600 moose on this one island. And y'all, an adult moose can weigh a thousand pounds. These are not rabbits. These are very large animals on an island in Lake Superior.

So the National Park Service, along with other scientific organizations, began to formulate a plan. And the plan was, rather than just going out there and shooting all of the moose so that they would stop destroying the landscape, that they would reintroduce 20 to 30 wolves onto Isle Royale. And they will hopefully form new packs, and they will keep the moose population in check. And they realized that they could not just get a bunch of wolves from one region and just move them to Isle Royale, that they would need to obtain genetically diverse wolves so that they would not have this problem with inbreeding. So they identified wolf populations from Minnesota, Michigan, and Ontario. And they worked with the governments of each of these three regions.

And they said, we want to introduce 20 to 30 new wolves. So we are going to humanely catch them, not entire packs, just like individual wolves, entire packs, just like individual wolves, anesthetize them and fly them across the water and onto Isle Royale and we'll let them go and nature will take its course. So in Minnesota and Michigan, they pre-baited these humane traps with beaver and white-tailed deer, both of which wolves like to eat. In Ontario, they used net guns. They don't shoot the wolf. They just shoot a net at it and trap it that way, and then they anesthetize it. And then a vet would give each one of the wolves a careful check over to make sure that they were not going to be introducing disease on Tile Royal.

And then if an animal was deemed worthy, then they could make their journey to the national park. And all of these animals were given GPS collars, ear tags, transponders, and they were either flown or boated across the water to Isle Royale. One wolf died as a result of a bad reaction to the anesthesia. Several others from northern Minnesota survived and made it onto Isle Royale. Then 11 wolves were captured in Ontario and relocated to Isle Royale. Four more wolves were captured in the upper peninsula of Michigan, the part that Michigan initially didn't want. And Andrew Jackson was like, well, tough noogies. It's yours now. I'm just teasing.

And they captured them and brought them out to Isle Royale. It has been absolutely fascinating to see what has happened as a result. First of all, some of the wolves have not gotten along. A couple of the wolves have killed each other just because of territorial disputes. And apparently wildlife biologists say that is normal, that wolves sometimes do kill each other in territorial disputes. And that's just part of the natural order of things. And they have gotten better at establishing packs. There have been three litters of wolf pups that have been born on Isle Royale, and there are currently roughly 20-ish wolves on Isle Royale. The exact number is unknown because COVID made it so that they were not able to visit Isle Royale to do their in-person studies in 2021.

And so they hope to resume those this winter. Let me tell you just a couple more things, and then I'll give you a few more really interesting facts about the state of Michigan. One of the things that they have discovered as a result of this wolf and moose study is that wolves are putting themselves at a significant amount of risk by hunting moose. Wolves are essentially killing a 900 pound animal with their two inch teeth. And they very much risk their own lives by hunting a healthy adult moose. And so that is one of the reasons wolves prefer to hunt the elderly who are slower and weaker and the young who are smaller and easier to catch. They would rather not eat than put themselves at too significant a risk by hunting healthy adults. And so that has been one of the very interesting things that this

predator prey study has uncovered is the timber wolves lack of flexibility when it comes to prey relationships. They would rather starve themselves than risk their lives being like kicked or trampled to death by an adult moose. Or they will try to live on less desirable prey like beavers or rabbits. So I found that super, super interesting. This is what one of the professors of ecology at Michigan Tech said about that. We've long known that wolf and moose abundances on Isle Royale exhibit pronounced fluctuations over time. Now we know that an important contributor to those fluctuations are these dynamic foraging preferences for weaker prey. So when the moose herd is flourishing, it doesn't automatically mean that the wolves are feasting. No, when the

moose are doing well and there are few young and sick moose to catch, the wolves sometimes don't do as well because they're unwilling to risk their own lives. and Michigan Tech, this relationship between them, is that they have now created the world's largest catalog of moose bones. The moose population, especially in the lower 48 states, is perilous. The moose population in mainland Minnesota has absolutely plummeted. There's only about 200 left in the entire state. And so understanding more about moose, apparently preserving moose bones for future study, someday scientists are going to want that. Someday scientists are going to be like, you know what we need to do is we need to study moose bones from 2018. And that is going to be incredibly valuable information. And they had the foresight to begin the world's largest catalog of moose bones. Here is one of the other things that is super interesting about Isle Royale

is that the underwater geography is super tricky. There are a lot of reefs and large rocks. I don't mean coral reefs, but like rocky reefs in which it is very easy for ships, boats, as they say on the Great Lakes. It's so easy for boats when they get too close to shore, if they don't know what they're doing, it can cause the boats to sink. And there are actually 10 intact shipwrecks off the coast of Isle Royale. A couple of them are very deep and they specifically recommend against trying to dive to them. But a few of them are in very shallow water. And the fact that it is fresh, cold water preserves the shipwrecks much more than, say, an ocean, which has significant wave action and the salt water kind of wears away at the structures

of the ship. Great lakes shipwrecks are sometimes better preserved than other types of shipwrecks. And so you can, from a boat on the surface on a calm day, look down and see multiple shipwrecks, just from the surface without even diving, and see several shipwrecks that have occurred around Isle Royale. One of them was very well known. which transported people kind of almost like a sightseeing excursion boat and it carried mail and it carried goods to and from Isle Royale, Grand Portage, Minnesota, Houghton, Michigan, etc. And that boat was leaving Isle Royale and the captain gave the opportunity to his assistant captain to like, okay, we left the port, go ahead and steer it and he crashed it. captain to like, okay, we left the port, go ahead and steer it. And he crashed it. And the residents at the time of Isle Royale talked about how the boat had a large cargo of fruit on it. And when the America sank, first of all, everybody was saved because it sank

on a clear day, close to shore. They were like, well, get the lifeboats, y'all. This boat is going down. And they took pictures of it as it was sinking. And the residents of Isle Royale talked about how for weeks, crates of fruit would just wash ashore. A crate of bananas would show up on the shore. Unexpected. And that was all from the America. In fact, there are somewhere between 500 and 600 shipwrecks in Lake Superior, and over 200 of them lie along the Michigan coast in what is often referred to as the shipwreck coast. really, really treacherous underwater topography. And also the fact that the Great Lakes are far more dangerous to sail than the ocean. You think that the ocean is vast and it's thousands and thousands and thousands of feet deep. And of course, many hundreds of thousands of people, if not more, have died in ocean-going shipwrecks. But the Great Lakes require significantly more

skill to sail than the ocean does. In part because they're smaller than the ocean, the wave action is much more pronounced when a storm kicks up. You do not have very much space in between the swells. The swells are much closer together. The water is so frighteningly cold. There's a variety of reasons, but the Great Lakes, especially Lake Superior along the shipwreck coast, very, very dangerous. In fact, of course, where is one of the most famous shipwrecks? But off the coast of Lake Michigan on the shipwreck coast, the Edmund Fitzgerald. That was a cargo ship that sank off the coast of Lake Michigan in the 1970s. Gordon Lightfoot sang a very famous song called The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald. I will not go into that whole story today, but it was shocking to

see in the 1970s, shocking to see a large cargo vessel just break in half and sink off the coast of Michigan. I want to give you a couple of other little tidbits about Michigan and Great Lakes. Just to round this story out, 20% of all of the fresh water on earth is in the Great Lakes and Michigan touches four out of those five Great Lakes. In fact, Lake Michigan is the only one of the Great Lakes. And Michigan touches four out of those five Great Lakes. In fact, Lake Michigan is the only one of the Great Lakes that is fully inside the United States. And Lake Michigan has over 275,000 acres of sand dunes. The state of Michigan has more freshwater coastline than any other entity on earth. There's not another country, not another state that has more freshwater coastline than the state of Michigan. I have so much more that I

could tell you about Michigan. So much. Michigan is a fascinating and beautiful state. And I'm running out of time for today. I have to tell you one more thing before I sign off. I have to tell you one more thing. I have to go back to the wolves because they're like, no more, no more wolves, Jared. One of the wolves that was brought to Isle Royale decided, you know what? Decided, you know what? I'm out of here. On January 31st, 2019, she was like, I am done with your predator prey study. Thank you, Michigan Tech. I'm not interested in being on Isle Rail anymore. From January 2019 to March of 2020, that lone wolf walked thousands of miles. She bounced around between Minnesota and Ontario so many times. When you look at the map of the places that her radio caller was picked up, there's little green dots on the map. It looks like you took a bag of frozen garden peas and just like, just threw that down on the map. That is like how many little dots it is.

And scientists were like, dang, what is this girl up to? What is she doing? Why is she walking thousands of miles? Just like Minnesota, Canada, Minnesota, Canada. I hated being in Michigan. Michigan sucks. No, I'm just teasing her name. By the way, they just give them numbers. 003F. Her journey has absolutely fascinated scientists. You can Google for Wolf 003F and her journey from Isle Royale and onto the mainland again. And then in around March of 2020, her collar fell off. She is just out there. Hopefully she found a mate. Hopefully she found a pack. Hopefully she's happier than she was on an island in Lake Superior, even though that island in Lake Superior has a lake with an island. Hopefully she's found love.

Oh my gosh, I've eaten up so much time today talking about wolves, but I actually really love wolves. If I had to choose a top level predator, it would have to be like a wolf or an orca. They're important. Crocodiles, goodbye. I don't care about you. Alligators, no.

I don't want you. Wolves, yes. I appreciate you. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with

a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind-blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.