This male wolf was successfully transported to Isle Royale National Park this week. A female captured Thursday died in captivity/USFWS, Courtney Celley
A female wolf captured with intent to be released at Isle Royale National Park died before it could be set free. Officials didn't identify the cause of death, but said they were altering field procedures for handling wolves captured for the park's wolf recovery program.
In a brief release Friday evening, park staff said the animal was captured on Thursday, given a quick exam in the field by wildlife biologists, and "deemed fit for transportation." While the wolf was sedated and taken to a holding facility for a more detailed exam, her condition deteriorated and she died. The wolf was transported to the University of Minnesota Veterinary Diagnostic Lab for necropsy and diagnostic evaluation Friday.
"Per the implementation plan, the team and partners immediately reviewed protocols. Adjustments were made to the protocols including the length of time a captured wolf is kept in the field prior to transport, and the sedation procedures used to lower stress during transportation," the release said.
Isle Royale officials could not immediately be reached Friday evening to say how long the wolf was sedated and kept in the field.
On Tuesday, four wolves were captured from different pack territories on the Grand Portage Indian Reservation in northeastern Minnesota. Two of the wolves were deemed too young to be part of the recovery program and set free, while two others -- a 4-year-old female and 5-year-old male -- were successfully released on the island in northern Lake Superior.
Under a plan adopted earlier this year, up to 30 wolves are to be set free at Isle Royale over the next three years under a plan the National Park Service has settled on in a bid to bring genetic diversity back to the park's few remaining wolves. This fall they hope to move six wolves to the island.
Chronic inbreeding has impacted the health of the island's wolf population. There was hope that "ice bridges" that formed between the Lake Superior island and the Canadian mainland during the winter of 2013-14 would enable wolves to arrive from Canada with new genes. But no new wolves reached the island, while one female left and was killed by a gunshot wound in February 2014 near Grand Portage National Monument.
Isle Royale wolves have been in decline for more than a decade. In recent years, park managers have discussed island and wolf management with wildlife managers and geneticists from across the United States and Canada, and have received input during public meetings and from Native American tribes of the area. Those discussions examined the question of whether wolves should be physically transported to Isle Royale, in large part due to concerns that a loss of the predators would lead to a boom in the moose population that likely would over-browse island vegetation.
Late this spring biologists said just two aging wolves remained at Isle Royale, while the park's moose population had swelled to nearly 1,500. Balsam fir forests on Isle Royale are vanishing in large part due to heavy browsing by moose, according to this year's ecological study of the two species at Isle Royale. Without intervention, the biologists who wrote the study -- Rolf O. Peterson, John A. Vucetich, and Sarah R. Hoy -- predicted the park's wolves would vanish and the island ecosystem will suffer.
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To continue my comment above, I once asked Dr. Vucetich in a public meeting what new conclusions could be drawn from any of his Isle Royale data from the last twenty years. What followed was a word salad of Trumpian proportions (though admittedly without any of the insults we've grown accustomed to from Trump.) The fact is little to no useful product can be gleaned from the study of Isle Royale wolves at this point, what was learned was learned years ago, but this doesn't stop the NPS from contributing a substantial portion of the park's operating budget towards the study. I am a supporter of wolf reintroduction almost anywhere in their historic range but island ecology is a different animal. A preponderance of the evidence shows that moose owe their existence on the island to earlier human intervention. And the only reason that wolves are there now is due to introduced moose.
If the NPS wanted to honor the true ecology of the island, they would be focusing on the reintroduction of lynx and caribou. If one wants to argue that anthropomorphic climate change no longer provides proper habitat for caribou there, then I could say the same about wolves. But my biggest argument is that this effort is doomed to fail, and we will find ourselves back to square one in less than two decades.
By the way, the reason both lynx and caribou are now missing from that system is - you guessed it -extirpation due to hunting and trapping. So we are going to focus on managing one species due to a "downstream" human cause, but ignore species that were on the island for thousands of years but were extirpated due to direct human action.