Isle Royale sees fewer visitors every year than Yellowstone gets in a day. The park is a three-hour ferry ride from the Upper Peninsula. But humans aren’t the only visitors having trouble reaching the island
There were only two wolves recorded on the island last year. In the next four or five months, park officials will begin an effort to bring that number up. The goal is to transport 20 or 30 new wolves to the island within the next five years.
Phyllis Green is the Park Superintendent with Isle Royale National Park. She says the wolves are needed to restore the predator-prey relationship between wolves and moose on the island.
“By restoring the apex predator, what you do is you kind of soften a little bit of the curve between boom and bust. And you essentially maintain a healthier herd as the wolves will find the weak or injured or sick and cull those out.”
According to an environmental impact study, the relocation could cost six-hundred-sixty-thousand dollars.