ISLE ROYALE NATIONAL PARK
Rolf Peterson held up his arm for silence and pointed through the thick brush.
A hundred yards off the trail, a female moose sporting a shiny new mahogany winter coat was knee-deep in muck, munching on plants. She raised her head nonchalantly, then flicked up her ears and froze as she spotted observers. After a long minute, she plodded up toward firmer ground. A calf popped out of the brush and trotted after her.
Research happens up close in the world's longest continuous study of predators and prey at Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior. Peterson has been watching and counting moose and wolves in this wilderness off Minnesota's North Shore for nearly 40 of the study's 51 years, in summer by foot and in winter by air.
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Now that continuity is at a breaking point. The island's moose population is nearing a 50-year low, and what's bad for the moose is worse for the wolves that depend on them. Peterson can see the day when the wolves die out on Isle Royale, and scientists must confront far-reaching questions: Should we intervene to help the wolves survive, or let them die out and start again? What role should humans play to preserve an ecosystem?
Disrupting the extraordinary research has ramifications far beyond the wolves on Isle Royale.
Through the years, the study has provided unprecedented information about how long wolves live in the wild, and how much prey they kill. For wildlife managers around the world who want to reintroduce wolves into an ecosystem, as they have in the Yellowstone National Park area, the answers emerging from the Isle Royale research have been crucial to their efforts.
Big decisions will have to be made. "The risks for wolves seem to be pretty large and growing," Peterson said.