HOUGHTON — Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, no winter research will be conducted at Isle Royale National Park this year.
Researchers from Michigan Technological University, State University of New York College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Minnesota, Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and the NPS had planned to come to the island this year. This is the first winter without research for the long-running wolf-moose study since its inception in 1959. Researchers also planned to come to the island to study the ecological impacts of the ongoing efforts to replenish the wolf population.
It’s too early to say what the impact will be of the pause, said John Vucetich, co-director of the wolf-moose study and professor at the College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science at Michigan Tech.
“There’s liable to be some things we can interpolate, some things we can figure out after the fact,” he said. “I think it’ll take a little time to tell, exactly, what things we can never get back again, and which we can get after the fact.”
The park had been talking with researchers and partners since last fall about postponing the research trips to 2022, said Liz Valencia, Isle Royale’s manager of interpretation and cultural resources.
The stress COVID-19 has put on local resources was a reason, along with continued closure of the U.S.-Canada border, the park said in a statement. Past years have included helicopter operations based in Thunder Bay, Valencia said.
That left inadequate aviation resources to transport personnel and cargo, or for an emergency evacuation if necessary, the park said.
“While this will be the first time since 1959 that the winter research has not occurred, the NPS and our partners are confident in the decision to prioritize personnel health and safety,” Isle Royale Superintendent Denice Swanke said in a statement. Isle Royale National Park is annually closed to visitors from November 1 to April 15.
During the upcoming summer field season, the NPS will work with researchers to give them opportunities to track the wolf population through indirect observation, such as collecting genetic material from feces and remote cameras. Isle Royale and SUNY documented wolf reproduction and pack format using similar methods last year.
“They’ll be doing all they can this summer to do the research they can do to make those decisions,” Valencia said.
As for the moose population, there are no efficient and feasible methods for creating an estimate during the summer, the park said. In the winter, researchers estimate moose through aerial survey, which would be impossible n the summer because of tree cover, Vucetich said.
Last winter’s study put the number of wolves at 12 and estimated the number of moose at 1,876. The park is in the middle of a project to translocate wolves from elsewhere in the Great Lakes. Several pups are believed to have been born over the past year.
The population from this winter will be unknowable. But many of the big questions researchers are studying at Isle Royale depend more on trends over years or decades, Vucetich said.
“If there’s 20 wolves next year, or a couple dozen wolves, we’d have good reason to think this year was something in between, that they’re going on an upward trend … in the big picture, it’s best thought of as a detail that we’re going to miss out on, but we’re still going to capture the big picture.”
