Grey wolf of the Isle Royale National Park

We know there's great dispute around "climate change";  is it contrived by those who can make money studying and fixing the problem, or is it truly the greatest challenged mankind has faced.

Regardless, and we avoid the dispute, we know over development, too much carbon in the air, pollutants souring our water supply is avoidable in many situations, and offers tremendous economic growth as migrate away from a fossil-fuel based social structure.

Environmental changes impact nature as seen below.  Some of these same ramifications show up in our health care costs and risks.  Balancing nature and commerce and restoring natural resources is good business and protects our lands, water ,wildlife and quality of life. 

Grey wolf of the Isle Royale National Park could drive to extinction due to climate change

Gone have the days, when Michigan’s Isle Royale was known for its huge population of grey wolves in the whole United States of America. But today, these bigger and broader animals of wolf family are about to extinct from the most remote national park, as there remain just three individuals, a mated pair and their pup, on the island in Lake Superior. Illegal hunting, and inbreeding are some of the reasons in the eyes of archaeologists, but they blame a sudden climate change in the region for the rigorous decline of the species.

Although, it might be too late for the wildlife experts and managers of the Isle Royale National Park, but is not impossible to recover the population by bringing more wolves to the park and restore the ecosystem health by keeping the growing moose population in check.

Michigan Technological University department wildlife ecologist, John Vucetich, who worked on the new report, said, “Isle Royale is the last place on the planet where you have a forested ecosystem, a wolf population and moose population where none of them are exploited by humans.”

Due to its isolation from human influence, Isle Royale National Park is an ideal place to study predator-prey dynamics. Keeping the ideal environment of Isle Park in mind, ecologists, since 1950s, have been working and conducting surveys on the populations of wolves and moose to figure out how and why the balance between the predator and prey shifted over time in the island.

According to Vucetich, the moose came to the island from the start of 1900, and used to eat the native plants and trees of the island, such as balsam firs, without the danger of any predator. However, in the early 20^th century, Aldo Leopold presented the idea of introducing grey wolves on the island to put a check on the moose population, he added. However, by the late 1940s, grey wolves started shifting to the island through an ice bridge on their own, which increased the wolf population to 50 individuals over time.

In the late 1980s, the wolf population suddenly decreased due to an outbreak of a type of disease called canine parvovirus, which spread through pet dogs in the area, said Vucetich. The last time an increase was noticed, after the sudden crash, was around by 1990s. But, unfortunately, biologists are observing another frequent drop in the population of the famous wolf in the island.

In the last year’s survey report of the ecologists, there were counted nine grey wolves in total, while from the start of 2015, only three wolves have been seen by the biologists marking a new low.
On the other hand, the population of moose, over the same one year period, grew 19 percent, to 1250 from 1050, according to the survey report.

“With such a small population, the wolves are susceptible to inbreeding, which can lead to serious health and reproductive problems. Bone deformities that occur at a rate of 1 in 100 in the general wolf population have been occurring recently at a rate of 1 in 3 in the wolves on Isle Royale” said Vucetich. The three individual left on the island consisted of a mated pair and their pup that has a deformed tail and hunched posture and is currently with its parents.

Other than inbreeding and hunting, scientists believe that climate change is likely the most important factor in the sudden drop of the wolf population in the island, and the reproduction is unlikely without creative genetic material. Due to in rise in global temperature, it is likely for the wolves to get to the Isle Park from the mainland as ice bridge is longer seems to form in the winter, Vucetich said.