National Park After Dark - People of the Parks: Rolf Peterson

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

Dr. Rolf Peterson is celebrated as a world authority on wolves and as an internationally recognized wildlife ecologist. We discuss his extensive and impressive career, conducting wolf and moose research in places like Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, Yellowstone National Park, and Isle Royale National Park. Dr. Peterson gives us invaluable insight into the role wolves play in the ecological health and balance of the landscape. He discusses his scientific findings from the longest running predator prey study in the United States and gives us an inside look on what it is like to live and work inside Isle Royale National Park. For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!Rumpl: From now until 5/30, get 25% off and use promo code NPADSALE get a Beer Blanket on us!Apostrophe: Get your first visit for only $5 with code NPADProse: 15% off your first hair care order by using our linkPretty Litter: Get 20% your first order when you use code NPADFor a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Limitless. Now open your eyes. Go to Monday.com. Start for free and finally. Breathe. Girl, winter is so last season. And now spring's got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders.

That perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope? It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. Standing proudly at the north entrance of the world's first national park sits an arch.

Rising 50 feet high and constructed with hundreds of tons of stone, this structure can be spotted from miles away. It serves as a gateway to Yellowstone National Park, but its inscription holds true to all parks for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. People, hundreds of thousands of us pass under this arch and drive through the gates of national parks are. around the globe, eagerly anticipating the natural wonders that lie beyond them. But what about the people behind the scenes? The people who dedicate their lives to the study of the parks and the wildlife that resides there. In this special segment of National Park After Dark, we're speaking to a person who has lent his skills, passion, and career to the National Park Service by studying the effects predators have

on their environment, their necessity, and the devastating effects. when it becomes unbalanced. Welcome to People of the Parks. Hello, everybody. Welcome to our third People of the Parks episode. We are so excited for this one. Yes. We're following up with this one from Danielle's episode, the Wolf episode.

And we really wanted to do this interview so closely to the release of that episode of the Wolves of Yellowstone for a couple reasons. And first, that was because people. seem to have a really powerful response to the episode content. And that material prompted a lot of further discussion and questions. So we wanted some further clarification of several topics that we thought it would be best to turn to an expert for. Yes, because we had responses from all sides, so many questions, and wanting us to elaborate a little further on things that we kind of lightly touched upon within the episode. And that would be lovely to research.

and it would be really fun to get into. But why should we do it? When we can have a discussion with one of the world's leading experts on wolves and wolf ecology. And expert might be like saying it too lightly. I feel like I'm kind of undermining his experience because today on the People of the Parks episode, we are welcoming Dr. Rolf Peterson celebrated as a world authority on wolves and as an internationally recognized wildlife ecologist, Dr. Peterson began leading the Wolf Moose Project on Isle Royal National Park in the early 1970s. After nearly five decades of research in the longest running

predator prey study in the United States, Dr. Peterson's work has given the scientific community and beyond invaluable insight into the role that wolves play in the ecological health and balance of the landscape. And as impressive as all of that is, his work extends far beyond Isle Royal. After completing his Ph.D. at Purdue University, he transferred to Michigan Technical University, where he served as a professor for decades in an array of subjects within sciences, encompassing everything from animal behavior to wildlife habitat management. He also worked under contract with the USFWS to work on wolf and moose research on the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Additionally, he served as a senior advisor for long-term ecological studies of wolves in Yellowstone National.

Park. He has guided hundreds of students and thousands of volunteers whom have gone on to make huge strides and advancements in the field on their own. His work extends further still. He has produced over 150 publications, written two books, and his research and photography have been featured in a plethora of newspapers, magazines, and documentaries. He has been honored and given numerous awards over his lengthy career, and in 2017, he was named alongside Aldo Leopold and Jane Goodall for Discover Magazine, heroes of science. While his work continues to this day, his lifetime worth of achievements, research, and knowledge makes him a well of information that we are so honored to be able to dip into today. So without further ado, please welcome Dr. Rolf Peterson.

Welcome, Dr. Peterson, and thank you so very much for joining us and taking the time to speak with us today. We really couldn't be more excited about the opportunity. Well, thank you, Danielle. So as far as your work, we are number one blown away, and we are also very familiar with your work inside of Isle Royal National Park and beyond. So can you please broadly explain to our audience what the Wolf Moose study is and how you became involved with it? And honestly, where your interest in ecology and wolves truly began. Oh, sure. I'll probably forget all those questions, but the project itself, was started in the late 1950s, 1958 by Dürward Allen, who at Purdue University, who was my

major professor. And I got involved as a graduate student in 1970. But his initial objective is still the same one we have now, and that is to understand the role of wolves in, I mean, in the 50s, it was how important are wolves in regulating a moose population. But really, it was what is the role of the wolf in the Iowa ecosystem. And that is still, our primary interest, our primary goal today. Turns out it's more complicated than we might have initially thought, and it changes over time. Right, right. And a lot of people are very familiar with the Yellowstone reintroduction and, of course, the

findings and the changes that have happened within Yellowstone. And back in the 1950s, when this project began, just based on some back research, It was, I noticed that wolves were absent from the island for quite a number of years. And the first thoughts to reintroduce them started popping up early on, earlier, way earlier than Yellowstone, obviously. So the wolf moose study was that the first attempt to start balancing out this ecosystem. And when was it noticed that the moose population was out of control? Oh, it was now the moose were out of control and noted as. by Adolf Muri in 1929. So he wrote a monograph in 1934 in which he said,

something's got to be done. I mean, hump them, introduce a carnivore, something. And then through the 30s and 40s, there were a number of opinions expressed 1936. Sigurd Olson wrote a report recommending something's got to be done. In 1944, I believe, Aldo Leopold was in communication with the director of the Park Service. And he suggested at that point, put Wolfe's there. And that was, of course, the middle of World War II, and nothing happened. In the summer of 1948, Leopold was scheduled to go to Iowa on a visit, but he died in a brushfire just before that in that spring. But it was slowly gaining steam. And then wolves brought themselves there in probably 1948, 1949. It's confusing because there was a private effort to put wolves there in 1952.

And the person, Lee Smith, had lobbied the National Park Service, the director, and finally got permission to do it. And so he went ahead and did it. And he couldn't find any wild wolves to use. So he brought in some captive-raised wolves. It just didn't work at all. Okay. They were either removed or died or taken back to the Detroit Zoo where one of them was from. So the wild wolves got there on their own in the late 1940s.

And then it was another 10 years before Durrude Allen managed to get. the finances and everything figured out to begin a study. But initially, of course, there was no thought of manipulation. It was just an effort to try to figure out what is going on where people are, in fact, not manipulating anything. Yeah. Can you explain to our audience what was happening with so many moose that were coming into the area with the overpopulation?

Yeah, they just stripped the forest bear of anything edible so that in the late 20s, we don't even know how many moose. there were probably quite a few more than we've ever seen in the 50, 60, 70s, and 80s. So maybe 3,000 or more moose. Everything was eaten up to nine feet. Wow. And it was just a mess, a total mess. And at the same time, Adolf, well, no, it's another, George Wright,

a park service bio, just said exactly the same thing about Yellowstone, which is nothing left to eat. Yeah. Yeah, so you must have seen a lot of other species that were suffering because of that as well. Well, nobody was looking, but presumably snow shoe hairs would have had nothing to eat because they eat pretty much the same thing as moose. In fact, they eat spruce trees, which moose don't eat. So they may have declined quite a bit. At that point, in the 20s, links went extinct and they were being trapped, but it could be that the snowshoe hair also declined to the point where links were at risk.

And the lakes, I guess that would be the main, the lakes were completely trashed. And that is something we have seen and documented in the last 10 years. What moose are capable of doing to a lake is just completely eating every plant underwater. Right. Oh, okay. Throwing up the bottom and just destroying a lake shore. It's pretty remarkable. So, of course, in the beginning of the study, it was kind of a big question mark as far as

what other species were being affected and if so, you know, how significantly. But after this study has been, you know, on its feet, for a number of decades. Obviously, the name of it is wolf moose. So we know that those are the two primary species being studied. But of course, there has been a ripple effect and a cascade happening. So can you name some of the big species that have clearly either rebounded or been affected by the reintroduction of wolves and the different patterns that you're seeing with the moose population now that that has, that has happened? Yeah. Beaver are the other main character because wolves eat them and they eat them in the summer or the entire open water season.

So a beaver is really highly favored prey, but, you know, they don't get to be more than 50, 60 pounds. So it would be a single wolf in the summertime that would benefit greatly from killing a beaver. But in the winter, they're locked in their fortress under frozen mud and sticks. So they're safe. And so moose for most of it, for at least half the year are totally dependent on, I mean, wolves are dependent completely on moose. Snow shoe hairs, they'll eat one if one jumps into its mouth, but they're way too hard to catch. And then there is this secondary food web that involves the red fox and snowshoe hairs that's affected by wolves, primarily because wolves affect moose and moose affects snow shoe hairs, and then wolves also kill foxes directly. And that probably isn't terribly important because we find that when wolves are increasing, foxes are also increasing, and when wolves decline, foxes decline.

So foxes, the fox population gets a lot more out of the benefits of wolves because they scavenge wolf-killed moose. And then in fact, the wolves kill foxes doesn't matter that much from a population standpoint. So those are the two primary food webs, wolf, moose, beaver, and then fox and snow-shoe here. Interesting. Interesting. And then in Yellowstone, we saw a change in not only elk and other ungulate populations, but also behavior patterns. How are you seeing that on the island as well? Yes, we are, but it's not well documented because we haven't radio collared moose, for example, until just three years ago. Okay. As wolves were reintroduced, or as wolves were introduced, I guess, by the National Park Service beginning in 2019.

Then we put some GPS collars on moose too. And what we've learned, I guess we can make some inferences about what was going on when, in the earlier days when there were lots of wolves and then when there were no wolves almost for 10 years. I think it's a really big deal for a moose, especially a cow moose with a calf, whether she sees wolves or not. Right. And now when we've got wolves and moose, both radio collared, we've got several instances where we know that wolves met a radio collared moose with a calf and that cow with calf took off and went 10, 15 miles. For the next two months, they never came back. So it's a really big deal because it's a really big deal. Because there's nothing more important to a cow moose than the survival of her calf.

Exactly. And you did mention Red Fox, but as far as other predators on the island, is it kind of devoid of? What about coyote? I know coyote isn't really a match for a moose, but. There were coyotes present for the first half of the 20th century. In fact, there were quite a lot of coyotes present. And the last record of a coyote was 1957.

So it took wolves about seven years to complete. eliminate all the coyotes. And then since that time, since the coyotes disappeared, foxes seem to have been doing better because wolves kill coyotes, coyotes kill foxes. And they may have some pretty dramatic effects on the next smallest canaan. But yeah, wolves completely eliminated coyotes. Interesting. Very interesting. And we know that you've spent a significant amount of time living and working on the island. I think a lot of our listeners would be curious to know what your day-to-day life looks like researching these animals and these species. Oh, well, there are two periods of field work, one in the winter, and then one in the summertime.

So in the winter, we're relying on a bush pilot and airplane to get around and to sea wolves. So we do all the counting of wolves and moose from fixed-wing aircraft, small two-seat airplane. Okay, so you're not living on the island in the winter or anything. Well, we are, yeah. Oh, okay. We live in a park service bunkhouse with wood heat in the wintertime. That's a seven-week period, which has been pretty much the same since 1959. And so we just fly as much as we possibly can, and that's not nearly as much as we'd like to or nearly as much as we used to.

So we're looking for wolves all the time, and we do a total count of all the wolves on the island, mostly using tracks in the snow to find them. Okay. And then moose, we count at the same, doing that same period. And we actually count about 17% of the island by dividing. We've got 91 permanent plots set up in virtual space, I guess. But we go to those plots and spend about 10 to 15 minutes circling overhead to find all the moose on that plot. And then that's the basis for estimating the moose population on the whole island. And then we also determine a kill rate of wolves, what proportion of the moose population is being killed.

by wolves by finding all the kills during that seven-week period. And we do that by following their tracks as well. Then summertime is completely different. No airplanes for the most part, we're interested in dead moose, bones from dead moose. So we crisscrossed the island on foot, looking for moose that have died. And for the last 35 years or so, we've had help from volunteers who come for that adventure. So we call them Moose Watch volunteers. And they go out for a week at a time with a leader in a group of six, and they just, they walk cross country looking for dead moose or moose bones, animals that died sometimes 20, 30 years before. Wow.

Those allow, those dead moose allow us to reconstruct the population of moose from animals known to be alive at a certain time. But they have to die before we know they're ever present. So our information is always about 10 years old. Right. Eventually, those aerial censuses of moose are really. replaced by what we call a reconstruction estimate. Wow, that is so interesting.

What a volunteer job. Well, it's pretty popular now. Now we fill up within, you know, two or three weeks as soon as we announce the dates. And a lot of people keep coming back. How many volunteers do you accept? Oh, it's about 60 or so in the summer period. Very cool. What a way to see a park, you know, one of the least visited parks in a completely different way.

One person has come back 44 times. Wow. That's medication. Yeah. Another man, he's now about 83 and he's decided, well, we've got a program for graduates of the program that are too old to take the day-to-day backpacking. And we put them out on day trips from an overnight campsite. And because they're so good at it, and they have a strong search image for what a bone looks like from, you know, 50 yards off. off.

Wow, that's so cool. They're still ready. So going back a little bit to you mentioned, you started to mention wolf population and different counts. And of course, on the National Park site for the park, there is a breakdown of, you know, population of wolves compared to a population of moose year by year from, you know, the 80s up until 2019 or so. At this point in time, how many wolves are currently on the island based on your last count?

Oh, in 2022, we estimated 28 wolves and about 1,350 moose. Wolves are roughly twice as abundant as they were two years ago. Right. And we didn't get a count last year because of the pandemic. And moose have declined from almost 2,000 down to under 1,400 now. Because of, well, a lot of it is because of wolf predation. Right. And there is a clear drop in numbers in wolves down to two individuals.

that I believe were related. So obviously that has a lot of implications. And as far as the back and forth about reintroduction, if you were to, if the park service was going to step in and reintroduce more to add some genetic variability or I knew there was kind of some talk about, is this something that we're going to continue or should we just allow them to naturally come back to repopulate the island? Obviously, they were another effort to reintroduce individuals was there. How many were reintroduced at that point?

In 19 or 2019 and 2020, 19 wolves were introduced by the Park Service and cooperators from two states and a Canadian province. So from four different directions wolves came to Iowa oil. And so 19 wolves were brought in and they started reproducing right away. In fact, one female was pregnant when she came in. She raised two dogs at first summer in 2020. And then 2021 and 2022, very quickly, there were two territorial, two territorial packs that developed east and west. And they've had pups for the last two years now.

So a very high population of young wolves currently. That's very cool. Are you already seeing positive impact from having more of a wolf population on the island? Sure, because there's fewer beaver and there's fewer moose. Is it measurable? Not really, not yet. Too soon to tell. Too early to tell.

Yeah. The impact of moose, you have to go species by species of the plant that's of concern. Balsam fur was on a really interesting and spectacular recovery starting in the 2000s when the wolf population was still hammering the moose population heavily. And moose hit their lowest point, just 500 moose. for several years in a row. And then balsam fir trees just blossomed all over the place. But they only grow, you know, 20 centimeters a year. Right.

In 2017, Moose just took over and clobbered them. So those trees, I mean, they didn't kill too many of them. But once the terminal leader is gone from a balsam fir tree, it has a real hard time generating another terminal shoot and continue to grow. So those trees don't look too good. And that's a major portion of the balsop fur population that moose rely on in the wintertime. Now, Aspen, on the other hand, took off the same period in the 2000s, and they grow much faster. I mean, an aspen tree can grow 50, 100 centimeters a year.

And there's much higher proportion of aspen trees that are making it now. But again, in the mid-2013, 2015, 16, 17, moose, hit those aspen trees too, but didn't get them all. In the aquatic area, we really only monitored one lake intensively. And before wolves, we reduced the moose population, the lake was destroyed. It was a beaver impoundment. And the moose ate everything for so many years in a row that the beavers just left or were killed. And their dams went out. The lake drained. About half of the lake's gone. So that lake became a mudflap where it used to be a vibrant body of water. So the effects of moose were long lasting and it hasn't been reversed yet to the point where

we can measure it easily. But the telltale indicator is how many moose, how many beaver lodges, and those are both going down. Gotcha. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime.

So as far as the wolf reintroduction by the park service, one of the main driving factors, other than the number of wolves, it's more. of the lack of genetic diversity in the population? Was that one of the main concerns about adding a new influx of individuals into onto the island? Yeah, the reason why wolves were in trouble, and it was especially obvious about 2010, 2012, was inbreeding. And basically, the population collapsed because they were all so closely inbred, and there were no new wolves coming in because ice connecting Iowa with the mainland is, not something we see very often anymore. So there's been a lot of three, 75% reduction in

ice bridges between the mainland and the island in the last 50 years, last 60 years. And it was those ice bridges that you could almost count on every year that would allow the occasional new wolf to come over and squeeze its way into the population and reproduce. So that kept it to help keep it going. It might have only happened twice in 70 years, but that was enough to keep new genetic viability running until the 2000s. And then very quickly, the population collapsed because ironically, one immigrant from the mainland in 20, in 1997, came in and started reproducing in one pack. And he was so successful that within three years, there were breeding wolves that were his offspring in all the packs. And I think within seven or eight years, every wolf on the island was a direct descendant of that one wolf.

Wow. Okay. With one exception. And anyway, his success was so overwhelming that the population, you know, they went through one generation of inbreeding and two, but by the third generation of inbreeding, it just stopped. And reproduction virtually ceased. And we saw things like increased spinal malformations, one female died giving them. birth to eight young. It's never been recorded in wolves even in captivity. And she had been, the pups were fathered by her own father. And she was a product of an inbred mating. So there's

pretty clear inbreeding doomed to that population. Right. It's exactly what happened. Yeah. It seems to just two individuals. Yeah, that seems like that's also of concern for the, the Mexican gray wolf population in New Mexico and Arizona, obviously, which is another whole thing. So I'll sit my lip on that. But yeah, so it's just interesting that, you know, the lack of genetic diversity that is being noted on the island that, you know, with the climate change effects we're seeing on the ice bridge, do you believe that if the National Park Service doesn't keep aiding wolf recovery there, that that's going to be an ongoing issue? Oh, I'm not worried about it at all. Because it isn't going to happen more than every 20 to 30 years.

So the wolves are doing fine now, and it certainly is a situation worth monitoring carefully. And maybe in 20 years, 30 years, we'll have, again, a similar situation of close-in-breeding. But the history is so idiosyncratic, and that's the way history is. It may not repeat itself at all, ever, you know, and it might not. It might just take one wolf every 20, 30 years to keep it going. Well, that's good news. That's very good news. I don't think any big concern about continually manipulating, no need to.

Awesome. So obviously the study has had a lot of findings both expected and unexpected, I'm sure, every day is different. And the findings are just obviously piling one on top of the other over the years. And in your experience, if you had to choose one of the most significant findings through this study that contributes or should contribute to our understanding of wolf management as a whole, what would that be? Oh, it's way bigger than wolf management. And you were right, it's the unexpected things that have really been strikingly important. So hands down, as far as I'm concerned, the most important finding is that we can't tell the future very well.

well, at all. We're really good at trying to explain the past, but the future is inherently unpredictable because there are major events that happen that are unexpected, unimaginable. And a couple easy ones, a pandemic. Epiziotic, actually, it was the appearance of canine parbovirus in the late 1970s, which swept around the world, killed half the dogs that infected until the vaccine was developed very quickly, but nobody was even thinking about wild canids at that time. And so the wolf population, a parable virus got to Isle Royal in the form of a dog, illegal dog, and three-fourths of the wolves disappeared, died in 1981. So that had huge ramifications for moose, for anything that wolves prey upon. It also probably set the stage for rapid passage

of generations. And each generation there was genetic diversity lost. So we couldn't imagine a mutant cat virus coming from the mainland to wipe out the wolves the way it did. And we still, we're still seeing the footprint of parvo virus after 30, 40 years. And then the second completely unexpected event was that arrival of an immigrant in 1997. On the island for nine years, before we even knew he was present because we eventually documented his presence genetically in SCAT. We've been collecting SCAT every year and just throwing in a freezer. But finally, 2008, I believe, we had a genetic researcher, analyzed all those SCATs, and she put together a pedigree of all the holds that had existed in the last previous 10, 15 years.

And this new guy showed up in 1997. He was already dead before we knew he'd been present and completely restructured the population. population. So those were cases in which we didn't, couldn't predict at all what was going to happen. And these unpredictable events have a long legacy decades. So in our own case, I mean, whoever heard of coronavirus three years ago. Right. So again, the future is, is inherently unpredictable for us as a human society, as well as wolves and wolves. So that seems like a pretty important thing to be aware of. So there's a freight train coming around the corner and it's foggy and you don't know what's going on. But almost certainly it's going to affect the future of all of us.

That's right. That's such a good point is that there's just sometimes things that can come out of nowhere that you're not expecting and isn't something that you can prepare for either. Well, actually, you can't prepare for a pandemic. Yeah. Well, yeah. There's that. Wolves don't be there about they don't put it for that. Yeah. Take it as it comes. Switching gears a little bit.

After our episode on the Wolves of Yellowstone, we have had a lot of comments and questions or have been told somebody's position and their thoughts on wolves in general. And we wanted to, we kind of condensed some of the most asked questions or thoughts. And we wanted to ask you about them and get either further. clarification and hopefully you can bring some greater insight to them. So I think there's only four or five. So we'll run through them. The first one was one of the most commonly brought up. And it says the wolves reintroduced to Isle, Yellowstone and Central Idaho were from Canada and thus genetically different to native wolves in the lower 48.

Can you please explain how significantly different these wolves were to historic populations and why Canadian wolves were chosen versus the few wolves that remained here at the time. Well, as far as the Northern Rockies, prior to the introduction in the early 90s, there was a major reanalysis of wolf genetics on a continent-wide basis. And the wolves that were thought to have existed originally like 100 years ago, and the Northern Rockies came down as a big bubble from the Canadian Rockies. So the wolves that were put in there were pretty much exactly the same. as what had been their century previous.

In case of Idle Royal, the wolves that were in their original population, like in the last part of the 20th century, were derived from the closest genetic source was Northern Ontario. And the wolves that were reintroduced by the Park Service, most of them came from Northern Ontario or Northeastern Minnesota. And there were a couple of males. There were four wolves brought in from Upper Michigan also. two of those males survived for a few months, and one of them actually is still alive now.

And surprisingly, because they're small. So the biggest difference, you know, like at both Yellowstone and Isle Royal, the biggest difference depending on the stock used for introduction is the size of those wolves. With Yellowstone, it was highly desirable to have wolves that initially knew elk for sure, because elk were the target that everybody wanted bulls to prey on. Ben bison, bison are so huge and there was a specific effort to get wolves in the Yellowstone that had been praying on bison. And that was done. And then once they were in the park, most of the wolves in Yellowstone start eating elk as expected.

But some of them were cut out of the elk areas and they were stuck eating bison. And those wolves have, I mean, they've changed. They're the biggest wolves in Yellowstone. some in excess of 130 pounds. So did they change that fast? Possibly. But they started with a genome for large wolves. And the variation in size for wolves brought into Iowa oil is also quite important

because the Minnesota wolves and the Michigan wolves were quite a bit smaller than the wolves brought from Ontario, particularly an island. It's another divergent story. The Mitch Picotan Island in Lake Superior was the source of eight of those 19. wolves because wolves there had been recent arrivals to an island that hadn't had any predators for 30 years. And that was intended to be a refuge for Caribou. Caribou are highly endangered in the Lake Superior region. In fact, there aren't any left except on one island now in 2022. The only place you could go to find Caribou now is Slate Islands because wolves are moose, caribou, pardon me.

The caribou were rescued from Mitch Bacotan Island after wolves got to Mitch Bacotan over the ice of all things. Oh, okay. So those wolves actually were going through the caribou at great speed and basically ate them all. But in the process, it was wonderful for those wolves. They grew big. They had large litters. Physically, they were huge because they had super nutrition. So those super large wolves that were starving now that the caribou were gone by,

2019. Those were animals rescued and stuck on aisle oil. They were severely underweight and they didn't pass the health standards that the Park Service had established, but they were, was a kind of a humanitarian effort to rescue starving wolves and take all the wolves off of Michigan so that it once again could perhaps be a cariboutan sanctuary. So that was a long wind and I don't even remember the question. That's okay. But those roles that came from Mitchie Buchotan are gigantic. Okay. I mean, they were born to well-nourished parents who were in turn very well-nourished by their parents.

And so that the change in size is something that will be very interesting to watch. And one male who was captured this winter, let's see, he was one of the original translocated wolves weighed 132 pounds. And that's almost twice as big as Iowa wolves of 10 years ago. Now, his son only weighed 95 pounds, so maybe IOL isn't quite as easy to make a living as Mitch Picotan was. So it's certainly true. Right. So we'll see if those wolves converge on a common size with mainland wolves from Michigan and Wisconsin and Minnesota getting larger.

And we had seen that 70 years ago. And maybe those in Northern Ontario wolves will get smaller because type food is a bit tight. Again, don't know what to expect. And we just have to wait and see. That's how. Yeah, the precise taxonomic classifications aren't too important. What really counts is how big are those ones? Right.

Well, speaking about predation patterns and all of that, that kind of leads us into our next kind of double-sided question, there is a prevalent thought that as wolf population grows, obviously, ungulate population drops in response. But if wolf presence is not heavily manage the worry, is that the ungulate population will be completely decimated and won't recover. So can you provide some clarification on that thought? Well, it depends on where you are.

Certainly for the caribou on Metro-Picote Island, wolves did wipe them out. I mean, there were eight or ten left. Right. So, yeah, wolves with some prey in some situations can have a dramatic effect. But the defensive strategy of Caribou doesn't work on a tiny little island. I mean, tiny million 100 square miles or so. Because caribou, first of all, they run and tend to hide from wolves. And on an island, wolves know where every caribou is.

And there's no place to run to and there's no place to hide. Moose, on the other hand, carry around in themselves their own defensive package. They're big and they kick. And wolves are typically afraid of moose. So a healthy moose, male or female, can easily protect. itself from wolf perdition. It doesn't matter how many wolves are in the pack. With deer, again, they run. They run and they seek in these northern areas where there's a lot of snow. They seek central deer yards or the deer gather in large numbers and then he can pack down

trails and know all the escape routes so that if wolf was to get into a deer yard, my gosh, there's tracks everywhere. There's deer sent everywhere and there's deer running everywhere. And yet even with that, wolves in the snow belt of Upper Michigan, for example, have probably had a dramatic effect on the number of deer present. And these are deer at the northern extreme of their distribution. And yeah, fewer deer probably. Right, right. Now, elk, I mean, on a statewide basis, the elk in Montana and Idaho and Wyoming are doing fine. And in many cases, certain management units have more elk than they really had as a management goal. But there's no question that wolves are pretty important as predators. And particularly they're important in taking out young of the year,

cabs and the ones. So you don't have the reproductive potential in the population of prey that you might have without wolves. But then bears are involved on the mainland bears are involved in all of these. Right. And they are the major predator for newborn elk, deer, moose, caribou, So, yeah, the world is full of large carnivores that kill prey. Yeah. We just happen to be another hunter joining a large carnivore guild. Kind of going off of that for another concern, people are having, we're seeing more reintroduction efforts that are going on recently.

Colorado is planning to do that. And something that people have become concerned about is that there's going to be significant risk to human safety when they're reintroduced to the areas. What do you think about that? Wolves are not a danger to humans, as far as I'm concerned, which is really hard to explain because large carnivores throughout the world kill people. And wolves just don't do that. And they have a very well-developed understanding of human behavior, and they don't regard

people as prey. Now, have wolves ever killed people? Yeah, a couple times in the last 50 years in North America. And historically in Europe, hundreds of years ago, they may have killed people with more regularity. And it often accompanied great wars when there were dead people laying around, first of all. Yeah. And it may have also had something to do with rabies and wolves.

And the fact that sheep and domestic stock were guarded by little kids, shepherds. Interesting. And side does matter, actually. So, yeah, if a wolf, I mean, if there's a rabid wolf involved, if there's a tiny little shepherd involved trying to guard a bunch of sheep, yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of factors that would have to happen for that to be possible. Yeah, but it's amazing to me that wolves do not regard people as prey. And these new wolves that came in from the mainland, of course, they were all used to thinking of people as something pretty bad. And so the initial wolves that were brought in, I mean, it's really hard to even see them from an airplane.

They are so shy. Now their offspring, born on Isle Royal, well, they don't know all those bad stories from the mainland. In spite of probably being told some of those stories. So at least one case last summer, there was at least one wolf that was regularly seen by people and would follow people down the trail and just kind of curious, trying to find. figure out what these two-legged people are. And, but yeah, even, even at Isle Royal where there's lots of people around during the summertime, they're essentially harmless.

Much, much less of a concern than moose, for example. Moose are scary. They're lethal. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just so interesting because as part of the show, we've covered a couple of different stories that involve predation like the lion isavo night of the grizzlies the chumpah the chupawat tiger in india like we've covered a lot of that and it's clear that there are many moving parts as

to how a quote unquote man eater was you know how that happened so we're really familiar obviously with all of that but it's just so interesting because like you said wolves are different you don't hear of you know, I would be much more afraid of camping in grizzly country than camping somewhere where there's a wolf presence. And that's because the statistics are obviously in favor of the grizzlies. So either way. But yeah. So along with that, the rise in wolf population is concerned for human safety, of course, but especially in the West, it's a concern for domestic livestock and ranching and depredations, of course. And we see that prevalently in the West. because agriculture is just so huge there.

But have you received any similar concerns directly outside of the Isle Royal Study area or up in, you know, northern Michigan, Minnesota, etc.? Oh, sure. Because I've got lots of students that have gone off and they're responsible for wolf management elsewhere. So I hear a lot from them. Certainly if wolves, if their fear of people is broken down for some reason. and they realize that sheep and calves born to cows are relatively easy prey and they're not very well protected.

They may become a problem. It's possible that where wolves are killed by people in some numbers that the social structure of wolves is so affected that the wisdom that comes from adult wolves who have survived and know how to avoid people, that's lost. So we often find that young wolves that have, are dispersing from their packs, they don't know where they are. So they're wandering all over the place and they often go pretty close to people because they're exploring their environment and they want to find a mate and a place to breed themselves. And so those dispersing wolves may be particularly

inclined to sample of a domestic animal. And we don't have enough information yet on the effect wolf, you know, transfer of knowledge that might cause them to prey on domestic stock less. But there was Italian wolf biologist Luigi Boitani, many years ago, decades ago, pointed out that as wolves recover, they have to get used to our culture, and we have to get used to their culture. And where wolves can see a well-tended pasture with guard dogs and electric fences, It's just so new and so different that they tend to avoid those things. In the United States, we don't take particularly good care of domestic animals, not compared to Europe.

Yeah, there is a big push. I'm living in Washington at the moment, Washington State, and there's some proposed changes to wolf management policies right now, actually, as far as incorporating before, you know, you kill a predating, Wolf that you have to show proof that you at least attempted some non-lethal methods of deterrence and things like that. And not to say that we're behind on that. I can't say that with confidence. Maybe you can. But it's just interesting that that hasn't been enforced as kind of a step one before that that final step is taken. But again, who's to say if they're going to respond, not respond, how long that will last? Like you said, you know, it's hard to predict. Now, these non-lethal interventions, they're surprisingly successful initially, but it does, it doesn't wear out.

I mean, the old European custom of hanging rags on a rope was flattery. I mean, whoever thought that would stop a wolf. But it's just too new and it's too different. And it does, in some cases, really protect livestock for a brief time. I mean, if you're just buying time, it might, it might, work. And eventually, we'll figure, hmm, if I just walk under those, those things, nothing happens. But they are pretty reluctant to try new things. So, you know, that can be to our advantage. Right. There's noisemakers, there's donkeys, there's llamas, there's guard dogs. So there's a lot of non-lethal approaches.

And livestock producers, you know, they got enough to do. So they do need some help in doing those things. Right. but it can help. Yeah, and it seems like because wolves are so cunning and so obviously intelligent that it's something that we're going to have to evolve along with them. If they figure something out, then of course we will too. And that's just something that we'll have to figure out as we go as these non-lethal methods evolve, I guess.

Yeah. Okay, so to wrap this up, we have two final questions. I could ask you questions all day, but we'll wrap it down to. too. So the first one is your work has left and continues to leave a legacy on Isle Royal and the world in the world of ecology in general. But if you had a message to leave everyone with today from your work, what would it be? Disease. Okay. Please elaborate. Yeah. For decades, I've been telling students interested in wildlife, you know, where the growth industry is going to be in wildlife disease. Okay. I mean, that's not what draws people into wildlife typically, but

we don't have to look around very far before we realize, yeah, there's disease work is extremely important. And wildlife and humans are all in the same health system, basically. So if, if you're inclined to get into that sort of work, it's extremely significant. So there was, you know, the old Dustin Hoffman movie, the graduate, that's right, long before you were born. Somebody asked Dustin Hoffman in 1968, what field a young person should get into. And he says, plastics. Today, I say, wild of disease. Okay.

What reaction is going to be. Very interesting. I mean, we have a lot of interest, of course, in wildlife and its implications and ecology. It's just so many webs and spiders that goes through just one, you know, you would think, okay, wolf predates on moose. and that's one relationship, but it obviously spiders way beyond that. And disease is something that affects that just as much. And I don't think, like you said, it's not very popular, but it's very important.

And a lot of our listeners do you have significant interest in that. So in Colorado, the major issue that I would tend to concentrate on as the, as the, as wolves go forward and live in Colorado is chronic wasting disease. It's just totally out of control. And we don't know where that's going. whether it's human safety or effect on prey populations. But wolves do have the capacity to alter that prevalence of a major disease. So we'll see what happens. Our next question is kind of towards the everyday person who maybe hasn't gone to school for these kinds of things.

What do you recommend that they can do to be helpful towards just the efforts for advocating for them and for the reintroduction? What are things that everyday people can do to help with? the wolf population. Well, I'd first become informed about wolves. And there's a pretty straightforward way to do that. There's a nonprofit organization in Minnesota called the International Wolf Center. And all I have to do is in your Google search type wolf.org and it pops up and it's full of all kinds of interesting things.

And the Wolf Center tracks recent issues in the news and they have a rich repertoire of information on wolf behavior. And so, yeah, you can sit in front of your computer and study the National Center website a lot. But that would be a good way to become introduced to wolf issues. Awesome. So thank you so much for taking the time to go through all of that with us and provide clarification. And we just are so appreciative of you sitting down with us and answering all of our questions and questions from our audience. And we really look forward to seeing what the years bring from Isle Royal and now knowing, you know, what's going on behind the scenes and just with the increased numbers of wolves on the island, what's to come from that.

And we'll be watching closely. We will. Even if it's a 10-year lag. Yeah. Very good. Thank you now. Thank you. Well, thank you so much.

That was such an interesting interview for us to be able to do. And it was extremely eye-opening. I know that I learned a lot of information from that. I did too. And I think this one was definitely more for our science nerds and ecology nerds because that I could listen to that all day. Same. It's so interesting to hear it straight from an expert.

What is unfolding? What's happening? The real changes. And there's no like, I know our Wolf episode was very emotionally fueled. And there's no emotion in science. It's just this is what we're seeing. and this is what we're learning from it. And of course, it's always evolving, always changing, and we're always learning from it.

And that's why this study is so important and why it's been going on for so long, I mean, since the, for decades. So anyways, we really hope you guys enjoyed it and learned something as well. And as we mentioned in the intro, he has done a lot of writing and he does have two books. One of them, if you're interested in learning more, a deeper dive, more in depth. One of them is called the wolves of Isle Royal, a Broken Balance, and the other one is called Wolf Ecology and Prey Relationships on Isle Royal. Those are two wrecks. Add it to the book club. It's just, when is it ever? We need a library. We do. We literally need to form a book club, I think, at some point. I know. And a lot of people have brought that up too. It's like,

where do we begin? I don't even know. But anyway, so add it to the shelf. We hope that Dr. Rolf Peterson was able to answer a lot of questions that you had after our original Wolf episode and we hope that this was as eye-opening, no matter what your stance on wolves is, we hope this was just as eye-opening for you as it was for us. But in the meantime, we're going to head out of here. We'll see you all on Monday. So in the meantime, enjoy the view, but watch you're back. Bye, everyone. Bye. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale you'd like to share, send us an email at N-P-A-D-Stories at gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at NPAD Podcast.

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