![](media/image1.png){width="0.55in" height="0.7027777777777777in"}

Contacts:

Jennifer Donovan, Michigan Technological University

\(906\) 487-4521; jdonovan@mtu.edu

[www.wolfmoose.mtu.edu](http://www.wolfmoose.mtu.edu/)

Liz Valencia, National Park Service

\(906\) 487-7153; liz_valencia@nps.gov

[www.wolfmoose.mtu.edu](http://www.wolfmoose.mtu.edu/)

**Celebrating 50 Years of Wolf-Moose Research**

HOUGHTON, Michigan, October 10, 2007---Scientists have been studying the
interactions and interdependence of wolves and moose at Michigan's Isle
Royale National Park for nearly half a century. As Wolf Awareness Week
approaches, a consortium of educational, governmental and natural
resources organizations has banded together to celebrate the 50^th^
anniversary of the longest continuous predator-prey study ever
conducted.

The Isle Royale wolf-moose study, conducted by researchers from Michigan
Technological University, began in 1958. Throughout 2008, the National
Park Service, Michigan Tech and partners in three states will host a
series of events and programs and produce anniversary posters, books,
lesson plans, and other special materials commemorating the study's
50^th^ anniversary.

Anniversary activities will focus on education. "The anniversary is a
fantastic opportunity to get kids excited about science and to inform
the public about wolves, moose, conservation of natural resources and
the conduct of scientific research, " said Phyllis Green, superintendent
of Isle Royale National Park. Teachers and students will find lesson
plans and information about the wolf-moose study at the Isle Royale
Institute website: [http://iri.mtu.edu](http://iri.mtu.edu/).

In the late 1940s, a pack of wolves made the treacherous trip across 15
to 20 miles of frozen waters of Lake Superior to Isle Royale, located
not far from the Canadian border. There they found a wilderness island
safe from hunters and traffic and home to an abundant moose herd. The
wolves settled in to a self-contained ecosystem where they were
virtually the only predators and the moose were their primary prey.

Conditions on the island made an ideal laboratory for scientific study
of the predator-prey relationship free from outside influences. In 1958,
biologist Durward Allen launched the Isle Royale wolf-moose study,
chronicling population fluctuations of both kinds of animals and
observing wolf-moose interaction and environmental changes to help
explain these fluctuations.

The study continues today under the leadership of Rolf Peterson and John
Vucetich, population biologists at Michigan Tech's School of Forest
Resources and Environmental Science. They do aerial and ground
observations in summer and winter, collect moose and wolf bones to
analyze, and study vegetation, climate, air and water contaminants, and
other environmental factors.

"Although wolves and moose are in the spotlight, this study has
implications for understanding the broader components of an ecosystem,"
said Peterson, who has headed the Isle Royale wolf-moose study since
1976.

The primary lesson learned from this long-running study is that wildlife
systems are complex, unpredictable and dynamic by nature, and they are
influenced by a large number of environmental factors, added Vucetich.
"The data collected in the Isle Royale study provide a historical
perspective that is very different from isolated snapshots of 5- or
10-year periods," he explained. Collection of thousands of moose bones
over decades, for example, enabled scientists to assess the levels of
mercury and lead accumulation in bones prior to and after changes in
clean air regulations.

Partners with the National Park Service and Michigan Tech in the
celebration of the 50^th^ anniversary of the Isle Royale wolf-moose
study include the Isle Royale Institute, the Isle Royale Natural History
Association, the International Wolf Center, the Michigan Department of
Natural Resources, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service,
the University of Minnesota-Duluth, Northland College, the Timber Wolf
Alliance, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the Great Lakes
Research and Education Center and Discovery World in Milwaukee.

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