Area residents should be informed that Isle Royale, our closest national park, is in danger of changing its unique environmental character and perhaps degrading the reason visitors come to the park.

The natural beauty of Isle Royal is maintained by a balance of wolves and moose, which has been viewed, studied and appreciated since the park was established.

The National Park Service has decided, through default, to allow the wolves of the Isle Royale National Park to become extinct. The NPS says they want to conduct an environmental impact study EIS, and this will take years. Much of the data already exists and there may be no wolves left at the end of the EIS process.

Because ice bridges to the mainland allowing genetic renewal are largely a thing of the past, and the legacy of canine parvovirus (human-introduced disease), the normal population of 25-30 wolves has diminished to just 9. This small population has produced only three pups in two years. This is not enough births to replenish the wolf community. The packs have become severely inbred. It is the inbreeding which may cause wolf extinction.

Extinction of this wolf population will allow a runaway moose population to devastate the vegetation of the island in a manner that is essentially irreversible (see 2014 Annual Report, Ecological Studies of Wolves on Isle Royale at isleroyalwolf.org), according to scientists from Michigan Technological University who are continuing a long-term study of wolves and moose that began in 1958 (the worlds longest predator-prey study).

Without the ice bridges which in the past allowed genetic exchange between wolves on Isle Royale and the mainland, the only way for genetic renewal would be through “assisted migration” — drop off a couple of wolves from the mainland and the wolves will be able to take it from there.

This is feasible, positive results are virtually assured and it is by far the most cost-effective approach to resource management on this wilderness island.

But the National Park Service seems to be holding tightly to a “hands-off” tradition, perhaps intimidated by hard-core wilderness lobbyists. I believe the NPS is misinterpreting the Wilderness Act, erroneously giving it priority over the NPS Organic Act, risking long-term impairment of a fine national park.

As a 72-year-old backpacker who has been to Isle Royale six times in the last 10 years, I do not want to see the beauty and balance of the park destroyed in my lifetime. The time is now to put political pressure on the National Park Service to bring in new wolves, with new blood (genes) to revitalize the wolves of Isle Royale. The attitude of the park managers is “Let’s see what happens.”

This is not good stewardship.

G. Thomas Wrasse

Buchanan