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Isle Royale may be best known as the site of a long-term study on the relationship between wolves and moose. The island offers a unique opportunity for biologists to examine the interplay of this predator/prey relationship in the relatively closed system. In 1959 Durwood Allen began the study of the relationship that has lasted until the present and which is currently under the supervision of Rolf Peterson. The study has seen the populations of moose and wolves ebb and flow through the years. The island is fascinating in other ways as well. The island’s isolation causes it to have only a third of the mammalian species found on the nearby mainland. For example, porcupines, coyotes, white-tailed deer, black bear, bobcats, fishers, red-backed voles, short-tailed shrews, and chipmunks are not represented on the island. Indeed moose only arrived there around 1900 and wolves only in the late 1940 or early 1950s.
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Photo courtesy www.isleroyalewolf.org
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