A great long drive to get here through Chicago, with strange time changes, but Murray managed it. Although it was further to travel we really wanted to go on Ranger III, the National Park boat, so we had to go to Houghton in Michigan.The island has the longest running prey/predator study between moose and wolves. One of the advantages of using Ranger III is getting to meet & chat with the wolf specialist and a fellow professor, a geneticist specialising in wolf and coyote genetics. The wolves on the island were smaller but successful. Sadly, one winter the main male and 2 of the females fell through ice on top of a mine shaft and unable to get out they starved to death. Since then the original pack has mainly died out. The top male and female were siblings and mated once, but even from the air you could see the pups were deformed and not going to survive. The wolf population was going to die out, as there was too little genetic variation, so a new pack was brought in from Minnesota. Every ten years an ice bridge forms between Isle Royale and Minnesota. Now the island was left with too many moose and not enough predators. Another island had the opposite problem, starving wolf pack, as they had eaten all the moose. This pack is now on the island along with some new Minnesota ones and 2 much bigger Canadian wolves. So now only time will tell if the island can come to a successful prey/predator balance again.
Sadly, ironically, we were at a noisy campground and we saw no wildlife; at least the wildflowers were beautiful. The staff were all great and Caroline got her first junior ranger badge. We are both sad that our trip was too short and want to go back.