A Scientist’s Niche Lies in an Island Wilderness

Rolf Peterson has watched a bleeding female wolf struggle to survive, helped by a turncoat male from the rival pack that had mauled her and left her for dead.

He and his wife have spent their summers over three decades in an old fishing cabin without electricity or running water so he could do field work such as gathering moose bones and scouting wolf dens.

He has chronicled with endless fascination the not-so-peaceful coexistence between wolves and moose on Isle Royale, a wilderness national park in Lake Superior whose isolation provides a rare setting for predator and prey to interact with minimal human contact.

“I’ve seen a lot of amazing things,” Peterson said, summing up his life’s work as a wildlife biologist in one understated sentence.

Like the time he came face to face with a wolf while lying on a forest path shooting video: The animal casually detoured around him.

Peterson has no intention of stopping, although he officially retired as a Michigan Technological University professor at the end of May. His “second career” is already lined up: continuing to study moose and wolves on Isle Royale as a faculty researcher.

Peterson, 56, a native of Minneapolis, is sometimes likened to the legendary primatologist Jane Goodall, although he notes that -- for obvious reasons -- he can’t develop close-up, affectionate relationships with wolves and moose as Goodall does with chimpanzees.

But in one respect they’re definitely alike: both try to demystify animals that are often misunderstood.

“The wolf is a hot-button species,” Peterson says. “It never fails to ignite passions, either for or against.”

Feared and vilified by European settlers and Western ranchers, the wolf was driven almost to extinction in the 20th century until rescued by the Endangered Species Act. Nowadays, most people recognize the crucial role played by wolves and other predators in the balance of nature, Peterson says.

Wolves are not the efficient killing machines portrayed in myths -- at least when going after moose.

“They have a very poor success rate,” he says.

With powerful kicks, young moose can fight off a pack of hungry wolves -- or simply outrun them in winter. Wolves have better luck with old, sick moose or calves.

“Moose can trot through two feet of snow at 20 miles per hour,” Peterson says. “That’s faster than the world champion cross-country skiers. Wolves cannot keep up if the snow is soft.”

The “selective nature” of wolf predation is among the discoveries Peterson and his research associates have made, he says.

Another is that Isle Royale moose are uniquely susceptible to arthritis, which he learned by examining their bones. Malnutrition in infancy is known to be one cause, but Peterson suspects there’s a genetic link -- and that his moose research may eventually have crossover benefits for humans.

“We know things about arthritis in moose that we don’t even know for people,” he says. “It’s time we try to bridge that gap.”

Peterson’s fascination with wolves and moose was triggered in part by a high school graduation present: a book by Durwood Allen, a Purdue University scientist who in 1958 began studying the two species on Isle Royale.

Peterson enrolled at Purdue as a graduate student after earning a biology degree at the University of Minnesota at Duluth and began working with Allen on Isle Royale. When Allen retired in 1975, Peterson took over the program and moved it to Michigan Tech in Houghton, a town 73 miles southeast of Isle Royale.

He has spent summers on the island ever since, doing field work such as gathering moose bones and scouting wolf dens. For seven weeks each winter, he returns for aerial observations. The National Science Foundation is the research program’s primary sponsor.

The wolves on the island currently number a healthy 30, while moose are at an all-time low: 450. But Peterson says wolves are sure to decline in the next few years as the scarcity of vulnerable moose reduces their food supply.

Despite the moose’s slump, Peterson says the wolf is more vulnerable to extinction. Should that happen, he hopes the National Park Service will transplant more wolves to Isle Royale.

“Their best chance for recovery is to keep them in the wild.”