In the Dogdays of Summer the Wolves Attack

There have been big doings this week on the island, in fact unprecedented. There was a wolf kill of a moose in Moskey Basin Campground on Monday night, according to reports flying about the whole island. Apparently, the wolves pursued a wounded moose into the campground, near one of the shoreline shelters there. That's never happened in my memory or in my reading. The moose went into the water, but was too far gone to save itself. After the moose died, the wolves dragged it ashore. Other wolves of the Chippewa Harbor pack then came into the camp. This was discovered by a ranger. The camp was then evacuated in order to protect both the wolves and backpackers, though I don't believe there was any immediate danger. Lots of rumors about what happened have been zooming all around the island, but it seems the situation was not quite so dramatic as the rumor-embellished stories had it. All is back to normal now, and the NPS has reopened the Moskey Basin camp as of Sunday. The photo has nothing to do with any of this, except that the wolf kill occured in good weather, the kind of July conditions that are just plain perfect, the halcyon days of summer. This photo was actually taken last year when I was canoeing along the outer islands of Rock Harbor south of Scoville Point. We've had more than a week of similar perfect days lately. I'll try to get more information on the moose attack and deliver it on to you soon.

A Wild Story Arises in Winter on Isle Royale

I have finished Nevada Barr’s new murder mystery set on Isle Royale, entitled Winter Study. Now, what can I tell you about it that you might not get from the reviews at amazon.com? First, if you love Isle Royale, it’s worth reading. Barr brings the island in winter to life reasonably well, at least as winter happens on the west end, the areas around Washington Harbor and the Feldman Ridge. Her descriptions of place and setting are often not all they could be, but she has never been all that good at description anyway. Her first mystery set on the island, Superior Death, lacked in its descriptions of the island, too. Barr also makes a variety of geographic mistakes and exaggerations, though they are not so important as to be ruinous. (The photo is a satellite image of Isle Royale in later winter, 2008.) Nor does the famed scientific study of moose and wolves itself get much attention from her. Barr does a quick sketch of the moose-wolf research effort and quickly leaves its nature and purpose behind for her far-fetched plot of rape and murder. That plot is a dark, wild one, even darker and more outlandish than her first mystery set on Isle Royale. A number of readers at amazon.com have noted how violent and disturbing some of the scenes and plot elements are. Yet, though I might be getting callous, I found them standard fare for the modern murder mystery.

The story concerns the deaths of two people out of six involved in one of the recent annual winter studies of the moose and wolf populations, a research effort which has become famous worldwide. Is it as famous as Barr excitedly proclaims several times in the book? Probably not. But it’s somehow nice to delude ourselves that everyone knows about and loves Isle Royale as we who know her do, which is far from true, even in Michigan. The plot turns on the premise that the Department of Homeland Security is considering opening the park in winter for reasons of state security. The consideration of this question brings a couple of newcomers to the winter study, in addition to the wildlife biologists who conduct it annually, and puts in motion the elements of the weird and elaborate revenge-murder story.

As usual, Barr writes with her finger-snapping jauntiness. But she tries to be so witty, so hip, so knowing, that she can become tedious -- and even confusing. As typical with her work, she delves deeply into the psychology of her main character, Anna Pigeon, but, strangely, she does not portray her evil-doers or her secondary characters to any great depth. A boatload of highly implausible events take place on the island during the few days that our heroine is present. They could happen, I suppose, but you know they wouldn’t -- and the chances of all of them occurring within the space of a week are nil. But readers of murder mysteries accept outlandish events as a matter of course. Nonetheless, the book begins to read like a soap opera and actually starts to lurch headlong toward the ridiculous. Yet Barr manages to keep most of it entertaining and keep it from falling off the cliff into complete absurdity. The idea of Isle Royale being the subject of security concerns is not something I am well versed in. So I don’t know how plausible it might be that the island and the wolf-moose study could face the sort of problems that Barr imagines they might.

In sum, if you like Nevada Barr’s jaunty style and psycho-probing, you’ll surely like Winter Study, assuming you can take the dark nature of the crimes committed on and off the island. If you don’t know her work, get ready for a wild ride with a lot of intent study of Anna’s mind and moods, and of small words and gestures among the six characters. But don’t look for some sort of engaging overview of the natural world of Isle Royale in winter. Barr seems little interested in that.

Encouraging Results from the Annual Study of Moose and Wolves

The Wolves and Moose of Isle Royale annual winter study has finished, and the preliminary results have been published in the press. It was a good winter for wolves and moose, according to the Associated Press story, which I have attached as a comment to this post. Moose were up substantially, by about 40%. Wolves were up slightly. There are very few old moose left on the island nowadays, which means that the wolf population should decline -- it perhaps should have declined this past winter. But not so. You can read the blog of the research study at isleroyalewolf.org. The magazine cover on display here shows that Lake Superior featured the 50th anniversary of the study in a recent issue. There have been a number of other magazine articles published about the anniversary lately, many of which can be found on the web by using a search engine.

Audubon Looks at Isle Royale

I just heard about Audubon magazine's article about the Isle Royale moose-wolf research study, "The Long View." The occasion is the 50th anniversary of the moose-wolf study, which some have called the longest continuing study of prey and predator in the world. The article came out in the March issue and is available online. It was a good read. The article can be found at:

http://audubonmagazine.org/features0803/wildlife.html

The photo is a thumbnail of the first two pages of the article. Les Line is the author. Audubon has covered Isle Royale very well over the past 30 years or so. Line has written about moose and wolves and Isle Royale for a number of publications and knew several of the famous researchers who have led the study in its first five decades. His overview of the study during its first 50 years is brisk and enlightening. Rolf Peterson, who has retired as head of the project, gives a rather bleak outlook for moose and wolves on the island at the end of the article. I might offer another post on this article once I've had a chance to digest it. There are a number of shorter articles that commemorate the anniversary of the study on the web, by the way. You can find many of them through a search engine.

The Future of Moose and Wolves on Isle Royale

Did you notice that there was a major article in the Detroit Free Press in August about how global warming might hurt the moose population on Isle Royale, and thus hurt the wolf population in turn? The article is available at this link, if you missed it:

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070827/NEWS06/708270367/1048/COL08

Much the same information, in briefer, also appeared in a Backpacker magazine article that came out this summer about the biggest coming changes in America's national parks. This article might have prompted the Free Press to give John Vucetich, the leader of the moose-wolf research study nowadays, a call. Isle Royale made Backpacker's list of their Top Ten for the possibility that moose might die out on the island. The island has without question been much warmer overall, and year round, over the past few years, though there have been a couple hard, cold winters as well over the past 15-20 years. This year I saw more sign than ever before of the decline in the moose over the past decade. There were wide stands of young balsam, which moose have browsed heavily, in many areas. I even found several small American yew bushes on the main island and the outer islands of Rock Harbor in places where they would be easily acccessible to moose. The yew was long ago eradicated on the main island because of moose, which favor the yew over just about anything else. Well, the yew is starting to come back. I have a couple photos of the yews I found, but I don't have them immediately available as I write this post.

Isle Royale's Moose and Wolf Populations Drop in 2007

The report on this year's winter study of Isle Royale's famed moose and wolf populations has been released. Things continue to go badly for the moose, and now the wolves, as would be predicated, have declined as well. The MTU news release on the report is attached as a comment to this post.