Bull Moose at Grace Creek Overlook
Photo Credit: Amanda Griggs | |
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| Isle Royale Beaver
Photo Credit: Wolf-Moose Project |
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Letter from the President |
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Jeffrey Holden has been coming to Isle Royale for nearly half-a-century. He's been working with and supporting the Wolf-Moose Project since 2002. For the last 20 years he has been leading groups searching for moose bones with Moosewatch. Jeff is the author of the recently published Dead Moose on Isle Royale: Off Trail with the Citizen Scientists of the Wolf-Moose Project from Michigan State University Press. Jeff loves the Island and meeting all of the people associated with the Project. In real life, Jeff used to be a mild-mannered data guy in healthcare in southeast Michigan ... Apparently that didn’t work out so he is concentrating on the Wolf-Moose Project these days.
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Home for Now—But Not for Long |
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It is June. I just returned from Isle Royale last week, unpacked my dirty backpacking gear, cleaned it, and quickly settled back into life with showers, flush toilets, electricity, and near-constant connectivity.
Every summer, the Wolf-Moose Project coordinates four successive waves of volunteers—citizen scientists—who come to Isle Royale for a week at a time to search for dead moose. By the end of summer 2025, roughly 75 volunteers—called Moosewatchers—will have scoured hundreds of miles of the island and performed necropsies on between 75 to 100 moose carcasses for the Project’s scientists.
Over nearly 40 years, roughly 1,000 volunteers have supported the Wolf-Moose Project. The Project is unusual in both the length of time it has run and the level of assistance provided by volunteers. With the help of Moosewatchers, the Project is able to reconstruct the moose population over time—something that would not be possible without their participation. If you’ve been a Moosewatcher, or have thought about it, know that volunteering—while a tough week—is worthwhile, fulfilling, and supports a world-class scientific study. This quarter’s newsletter includes several articles all about the volunteer Moosewatch program—enjoy! So, even though I just got back from Isle Royale, my home office is still cluttered with gear and backpacking food—because I’ll be back on the island in just over four weeks. Once again, Moosewatching my way across the island, looking for dead moose. By Jeffrey Holden |
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Interested in Joining a Future Moosewatch Expedition? |
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While this year’s Moosewatch teams are full (and nearly all have completed their weeks on the island), planning for next year is already underway. Dates for the four main Moosewatch teams, as well as the Moosewatch for Educators group, will be released shortly after the first of the year. At that time, applications will open for the upcoming season—offering another chance to experience Isle Royale in a way unlike any other, while contributing directly to the Wolf-Moose Project, the world’s longest-running predator-prey study. For more information, visit the links below.
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Moosewatch expedition not really your thing?
That’s okay—there are many ways to support the Wolf-Moose Project. If trekking across Isle Royale with a heavy pack isn’t in your future, consider lending a hand from afar. A donation helps keep this extraordinary research going strong, fueling everything from data collection to gear replacement. Every contribution, large or small, helps protect the legacy of the world’s longest-running predator-prey study—and ensures we can keep following the bones for years to come.
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The Science of Isle Royale |
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Ken Lemieux first visited Isle Royale in 2009. Despite a 36-hour storm, he was smitten and has returned several times. He began participating in Moosewatch in 2022. He’s a husband, father of three, tech writer, and lover of the outdoors. |
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Does the age of a moose have an impact on where it dies? Habitat usage is known to be impacted by abiotic (climate, population density, predation risks, etc.) and biotic (predation risk) factors. What was less well understood is the influence of aging on an individual land-based mammal's habitat use. It is also known that senescent moose (above age 10) are more vulnerable to wolf predation than prime-age moose (ages 1–10). A 2012 study focused on how aging in moose on Isle Royale and the severity of the winter impact their habitat usage.
This study analyzed the life history stage of 732 moose killed by wolves in winter on Isle Royale between 1959 and 2008. Regression models were created to assess how the location of death was associated with the moose’s life history stage (senescent or prime-age), the presence or absence of age-related disease (osteoarthritis and jaw necrosis), and annual variation in winter severity, moose density, and the ratio of moose to wolves, which is an index of predation risk. |
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Winter Ticks on a Moose Photo Credit: Wolf-Moose Project |
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Necropsies from the winter study included inferring the cause of death from field signs (e.g., blood on trees, signs of a chase, and signs of struggle, including broken branches). For carcasses discovered during the summer, the season of death was also inferred from field signs (e.g., degree of decomposition, presence of adult ticks that exist only in winter or early spring). From the necropsies, the sex was identified, and the estimated age of death was determined by counting annual cementum lines in the teeth. Osteoarthritis and periodontal disease were classified as absent, mild, moderate, or severe.
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The shoreline habitat on Isle Royale consists primarily of conifer-dominated forests (balsam firs, white spruce, and white cedars). As the distance from the Lake Superior shore increases, the forest becomes deciduous (poplars, maples, and birches/aspens). Because moose prefer firs and cedars during winter, habitats closer to the shoreline represent the best available foraging opportunities. Conifer-dominated forests typically have lower snow depth, which favors moose mobility and escapability from wolves. Because of these factors, moose density by the shore is greater in winter. However, wolves also travel and forage more along the shoreline. The result is that moose find more forage by the shoreline, but it is a riskier habitat.
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The location of Isle Royale National Park within Lake Superior (upper panel) and the distribution of moose killed by wolves during the winter (N = 732) in Isle Royale National Park, USA, 1959–2008. Figure Credit: Wolf-Moose Project |
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The study found that, compared to senescent moose, prime-aged moose tend to make greater use of habitat farther from the shore of Isle Royale. This result is ecologically relevant because the shoreline of Isle Royale tends to provide better foraging opportunities for moose but is also associated with greater predation risk. During severe winters, prime-aged moose tend to make greater use of habitat closer to the shore than senescent-aged moose. Moose of both age classes were more likely to die in riskier shoreline habitats during years when predation risk was lower in the preceding year.
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The Middle Pack Patrols the Shoreline of Siskiwit Bay, Winter 1999 Photo Credit: Rolf Peterson |
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How Moosewatch Got Started |
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Dick Murray started visiting Isle Royale with his wife and children in the early 1980s. After retiring, he volunteered with Earthwatch and then Moosewatch. Now, his grandchildren hike there, and Dick cleans moose bones for a week at Bangsund Cabin each September. |
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In 1988, Rolf was looking for a better way to gather data from moose, wolves, and other animals on Isle Royale. At the time, he relied on a pair of paid students to perform tasks on the island. However, the summer vacation calendar was a poor match for the work on Isle Royale because greenery covered the ground by the time the students arrived.
Rolf knew of Earthwatch’s recruitment experience, and he asked them about getting two volunteers for 6–8 weeks. Earthwatch replied, “How about a lot of people all at once?” The result was an 8-day trip by teams of six volunteers who were from foreign countries as well as the U.S. They went on what Earthwatch said was “the cheapest and toughest” of the Earthwatch trips and returned, on average, with double the data of the two paid students.
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An Earthwatch Team Examines a Moose Skeleton, 1992 Photo Credit: Rolf Peterson |
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Eventually, the number of volunteers dwindled as the participation price rose, and when the financial crisis of 2008 came, Earthwatch canceled the offering. Jeff Holden’s suggestion to continue the trips with help from MTU was adopted. A big reduction in price brought in many new volunteers, especially from the Midwest. However, with the change came new responsibilities, such as deciding who was physically qualified for the arduous off-trail hiking on Isle Royale. Enthusiastic applicants sometimes glossed over the warnings about the risks of off-trail backpacking and variable weather, including hypothermia in the spring and heat exhaustion in the summer. |
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Some changes improved matters. When COVID hit, the responsibility for bringing food was shifted to each hiker. Previously, Candy Peterson handled all the food preparation. Moosewatch provided gas and stick stoves to be shared, and some hikers brought their own. New gravity filtration equipment for water replaced hand pumps. GPS simplified navigation and finding kill sites. Eventually, an “alumni” group was organized that allows repeat volunteers who have “aged out” to search using daypacks on out-and-back trips from campgrounds.
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| Erin Parker Uses a Stick Stove Photo Credit: Amanda Griggs |
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Other changes provide new challenges. A recent project of the National Park Service to catalog collected items and standardize their storage at Park Service facilities has been applied to moose bones. This set different standards of preparation for being archived, which in turn meant that bones from fresh kills (except for incisors) are no longer retrieved immediately but instead have their GPS coordinates recorded and are left to be cleaned by nature. A number of undergraduates at MTU are now hired to clean the bones brought to the mainland each year. The bones of each individual moose are now stored in NPS archives together in one acid-free box instead of being grouped by type.
Since the administration of these research expeditions moved to MTU from Earthwatch, the program has been entirely supported by donations.
Despite these many hurdles, the Moosewatch program has proved invaluable in many ways. One is that when there is a sufficiently large sample of dead moose for which both the year of death and age (from tooth cementum lines) are determined, the data can be used to estimate the size and age structure of the moose population. Age structure, which importantly influences the potential rate of increase for moose, cannot be estimated by other methods. Second, changes in the skull size of moose in recent years show that they are getting smaller for reasons that may relate to fluctuations in wolf predation and climate. Third, the length of metatarsus bones, which reflect early nutrition, was found to correlate with the prevalence of osteoarthritis when the moose reached old age. Finally, the collection of wolf vertebrae showed that inbreeding was producing genetic anomalies and helped build a strong case for human intervention to maintain population and genetic viability.
By Dick Murray |
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Bangsund Cabin Skull Inventory, 1995 Photo Credit: Rolf Peterson |
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With recent changes to Project funding, support from members like you has become more vital than ever. We are deeply grateful for the many ways you sustain this work — through your donations, thoughtful messages, social media shares, volunteer hours, word-of-mouth encouragement, attendance at events, and genuine enthusiasm for the mission. Your continued involvement truly keeps us going.
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| 24 hours in the life of a Moosewatcher |
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12 AM / Midnight – It is midnight. Very dark, stars are out, and the Milky Way is easily seen. Loons are on the nearby lake making noise. Some loon calls can almost be confused for wolf howls; some are maniacal cackling, and some are long wails. There is a little movement in one or two tents in the campsite.
1 AM – The loons are still making noise but settling down. There is little to no noise from tents except for some soft snoring. Clouds are moving in.
2 AM – A light mist has just turned to rain. There is activity in tents as Moosewatchers check to make sure no water leaks into tents, dribbles down seams, or into tent vestibules. Several people wonder if they’ve got their backpack covers on tightly enough, but nobody gets up to check.
3 AM – The rain has let up a little. Mother Nature cannot decide between a drizzle or mist. A wolf investigates the camp, padding around several tents, sniffing. The camp is very clean, with no food left out. The wolf leaves.
4 AM – The rain has stopped. Somebody needs to pee. They think it is almost morning and wonder if they can wait. But it isn’t raining… so, pee. If they wait, they think that later they might not be able to hold it and it could be raining again. They get up to pee.
5 AM – First light creeping up the eastern sky. Everyone is dozing. Clouds are moving across the sky; it will be a clear day. The night’s rain is dripping off the leaves, and the morning air is chilly. |
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Sunrise at Feldtmann Lake Photo Credit: Amanda Griggs |
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6 AM – First person up, chilly and wet. They are quiet so they don’t wake anyone. But most of the gear has zippers which, of course, make a zipping noise. People in sleeping bags do hear, but they do not get up. The first person is off into the woods to do their morning business.
7 AM – Everyone is up, shuffling about in puffy jackets and drinking their first cup of coffee. Still chilly and damp, but the sky is clear and it promises to be a good day for bushwhacking. Several Moosewatchers are standing around a boot print in the mud by one tent. Smack in the middle of the boot print is a wolf print. There was a nighttime visitor.
8 AM – Breakfast is done, and people are reluctantly breaking camp. Everything is wet. No matter how much the tent flies are shaken, they are going to be put away wet. Last onto the packs are moose bones, secured with pack straps or lashed on with paracord.
9 AM – Hiking, full pack, bushwhacking. Everyone’s legs are wet from sweeping through the bushes, grass, and ground cover that the overnight rain clings to. |
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10 AM – Someone finds a teaser bone—a broken, chewed-on humerus from a young moose. Packs down and search the area. Ten minutes later, another teaser bone turns up—a scapula. Ten more unproductive minutes. Punt. No dead moose here. Keep hiking.
11 AM – Crossing a beaver dam, full pack. Carefully. Everyone has a stick or branch for balance. Nobody falls in, but there are close calls and some whooping and yelling. |
| Crossing a Beaver Dam Photo Credit: Amanda Griggs |
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12 PM / Noon – Lunch on a ridgeline. The rain from the night is long gone, and the sun is actually warm, radiating from the rocks. Great views across Lake Superior to Canada.
1 PM – A flat spot, fairly open, near water but tucked away and hidden… a great spot for camp. But early in the day. Doesn’t matter—this will be camp for the night. Out come all the wet tents, wet gear is hung all around, and everyone gets a daypack together. 2 PM – Day hike, lighter packs, and gorgeous weather. Too many aspen branches looking like bones. 3 PM – Still no dead moose for the day and almost time to turn around and head back to camp. Someone is out of water. Stop and pump water for everyone at the shoreline.
4 PM – Heading back to camp, the picket line stretches out, becomes attenuated, and somebody wanders left while the group goes right. Lost. Lots of yelling, and eventually everyone is back together. No more picket line; now single file.
5 PM – The person at the head of the line yells, “Bones!” A skull. It is a wolf kill with scattered bones. Everyone spreads out. Bones are found haphazardly—pelvis (any arthritis?), front leg, mandible with incisors, and finally the metatarsus. It takes a long time to find most of the bones, gather data, take photos, but the work progresses. Eventually the searching stops, and everyone watches as the group leader takes notes. |
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Isle Royale Skull
Photo Credit: Amanda Griggs | |
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6 PM – Finishing up the dead moose—notes and gear put away, bones on packs, last drink of water and a snack. Long hike back to camp. Tired and hungry.
7 PM – Back at camp late. Boiling water, starting dinner. Everyone is moving slowly. Wanting dinner and no more. 8 PM – Dinner is nearly done. Somebody has a “special” dessert for everyone—chocolate something, of course. It is handed all around. Clean up from dinner, pump water, repack items, pack cover in case of rain in the night. 9 PM – One person suggests a quick swim. Cannot convince anyone else to go. Nobody swims.
10 PM – Those that are not already in their tent for the night see a beautiful sunset. The sun dips below the horizon, and everyone quickly goes to bed. The nighttime chill is coming.
11 PM – The last light from the day lingers in the west. Loons are starting their calls from the nearby lake. But the Moosewatchers found a dead moose—they have a count. It’s been a good day. By Jeffrey Holden |
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Light Fades at McCargoe Cove, 2022
Photo Credit: Amanda Griggs |
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Sensing Place on Isle Royale: |
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A Wilderness Ramble in Search of Moose |
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Joshua Hunter is an Associate Professor at the University of North Dakota. These days, he spends much of his time building learning gardens on campus and teaching classes on nature-based learning, sense of place and immersive experiences right out the back door and in the back of beyond. |
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Her bones lay where she died. She sat sun-bleached and stark white in a sunshine meadow nestled among a copse of balsam fir, a cedar bog downslope. But for one flank of her ribs buried in rumen, she lies as if a collector has mounted her skeleton; she is barely scavenged, a couple of leg bones dragged just a few feet away atop an immense anthill. Sinew and tendons still connect her. If wolves had brought her down, she would have been scattered far and wide. Wolves tend to roam a bit when they have bones to gnaw. She is a young female, her bones avowing her age and general health.
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Because she is so put together, she answers a lot of questions we’d been curious about, such as, “What are these weird, two-inch triangular bones we’d been finding here and there, scattered across the island?” She tells us they’re toes; hers just happen to still be encased in the sheath of hooves. Often the incisors go missing, seeming to melt into the earth, becoming devilishly hard to locate. Yet here we find a toothy mouthful. She has much to share with us. |
| Skull with Mandibles Photo Credit: Amanda Griggs |
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We spend time counting bones, checking for scavenger gnaws and arthritis and then gather her skull and mandible, metatarsus and pelvis. We package her bones into a tight bundle wrapped in paracord and lash this parcel onto a pack to carry out. Her bones are burly and robust, but we treat them with care. |
Packing Out, Moosewatch 2022 Photo Credit: Garrett Craig |
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No matter how many times we do this, there’s always a moment of quiet towards the end of our work. With the breeze sighing among evergreens, I begin to imagine what those last fleeting moments were like. With a wolf kill, I wonder about the noise and chaos, the lunging and gnawing, the anticipation of the wolves, their hunger, the fight or flight instinct of the moose, the final acceptance as they go down among the writhing bodies of the pack. But, with this scene, in this sunny meadow, there is a soft, golden serenity. She found a protected patch, a bit of sunshine, secluded on three sides by firs. Perhaps she died from starvation or wounds or infection. But I imagine it must have been quiet at the end, her slowing breath mingling with the breeze.
And here we are now, recovering just a little of her story. Which in turn is part of the larger history of this wilderness and the dynamics between an apex predator and the largest mammal in this neck of the woods. Our little crew, deep in the boreal forest work to uncover each little story that together make up the longest running predator prey study on Earth. These stories certainly tell of population dynamics, but they also speak to us at a deeper, more primordial level; one that gets at our relationship to place and resonates with how we sense the larger world. This awareness, often conceived as a sense of place, explores the interdependence of humans and particular places; how place animates people and how people animate place with meaning. |
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Isle Royale From Above - Edisen Fishery and Bangsund Cabin Photo Credit: Rolf Peterson |
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The concept helps explain how humans inscribe meaning upon these places and likewise how these places foster shared meanings and significance for people. Places become the essential setting for people to socialize, interact and become aware. They arrest our attention to things larger than ourselves. Within these immersive experiences you come to contend with forces larger than yourself. It’s difficult to be self-focused when you travel through a landscape of immensity and deep time. |
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Sensing place urges us to experience directly and intimately landscapes and its stories through all kinds of weather and seasons. Dwelling within the wilderness in places few others see, we are gifted with a brief glimpse of this little cosmos, with its own peculiar mix of histories. The comings and goings of fox and snowshoe hare, raven and wandering warblers, fiddleheads unfurling and wildflowers blooming. We experience the first storm clouds of mosquitoes, all the while tracking the veiled lives of moose and wolf.
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| Black-throated Green Warbler Photo Credit: Garrett Craig |
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Research speaks to the importance of disconnecting from the world of small screens and online relationships, the essentialness of direct experiences in nature. This growing body of evidence suggests how just a scant 3 to 5 days disconnected lead to overwhelming benefits to our health and wellbeing; physical health obviously, but also cognitive functions, reduction in anxiety and stress and increased focus and attention. Simply put, nature is good for you. And it’s good for our relationships. Perhaps the most important benefit I’ve come to realize is how time spent traversing the land beyond the reach of mobile phones and the internet kindles an abiding sense of awe and wonder.
For days we track skeleton after skeleton, using all manner of dogging. Ravens are good sources of information here, particularly concerning large, dead and decomposing creatures. Surrounded by so much moose death though, it is heartening to see them in the flesh; massive, living, comical, breathing beings. They are cartoonish, with a strange architecture. At sunrise and sundown, they can be found in the inland lakes eating aquatic vegetation, slurping, wading up to their necks to plunge their massive heads below, becoming brown rocks in water. Within these mercurial twilights, the lakes are dark and still as a midnight mirror, the backs of the moose are silver mercury. In the morning with first light the lakes often have a scummy veneer of golden green pollen on the surface. With each morning, my awareness grows of these creatures and their rambling lives. Beyond that, I am introduced to the full landscape of magic and wonder.
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Two Bulls Browse at Sunrise, 2022 Photo Credit: Amanda Griggs |
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Having escaped into the wilderness, by day 5 we’ve shaken loose of our day jobs and the city’s kinks have rubbed off. Our little band has only to contend with the work at hand, finding a place to lay our heads, filling our tummies with hot food and sharing stories of what we’ve experienced and of our other lives. The dynamics of our group, interlaced within the bogs and shoreline, starlight and sunrise, wolf and moose grow tighter as we traverse the island. As our awareness grows, so too our sense of awe and wonder. Despite the hardship of backcountry travel, rain and storm, bugs and cold, in the end it’s just our little band leaning in, learning together, learning from each other and learning from intimately connecting to the land. There is a stirring connection among us, a deepening relational way of being together and dwelling with the land that offers solace in a world that we all must return; back to our homes and jobs and routines, yet always connected by this shared place, these shared stories and our shared adventure in search of moose.
By Joshua Hunter |
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A rare summer sighting of a wolf on Isle Royale, this image shows an East Pack individual captured by a remote camera trap in 1999. Summer photos of wolves are uncommon due to dense vegetation and elusive behavior during this season. |
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East Pack Wolf, 1999
Photo Credit: Rolf Peterson |
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Welcome to “In the News,” where we highlight the latest stories on wolves, moose, Isle Royale, and beyond. From scientific discoveries to global conservation efforts, stay informed and inspired by the world of wildlife and research. |
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Common Loon on Isle Royale Photo Credit: Garrett Craig |
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| The Wolf-Moose Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable nonprofit organization.
Our Federal Tax Identification Number is 93-4654981. |
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