Original subtitles

(atmospheric music)

Deep winter grips the upper Great Lakes,

A harsh place to be in winter ...

unless you're trying to find wolves.

We did it!

That was good.

Then, it's the best time to go looking.

Capture teams from the U.S. National Park Service

and Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry

are out scouting for wolves,

not to kill them, but to capture them.

It's part of a three to five year effort

to capture and move 20 to 30 wolves to a new home

or an Isle Royale National Park in Michigan.

Big male.

They captured this wolf

in a net fired from the chopper.

Good work, Scott.

Good team effort.

Once the Wolf is entangled,

they run up and sedate it immediately

to decrease stress on the animal.

(wolf snoring)

He's snoring. He's out.

(wolf snoring)

And he's black, a rare color in wolves,

an indication that offers genetic diversity,

a perfect candidate for relocation.

(radio chatter)

(dramatic music)

Yeah, it looks like there's lots there.

The capture team has a second wolf in sight.

He tries to escape across the frozen lake,

but it's hopeless.

This is a big adult male.

He's very thin, but he's got a big head on him, big teeth.

And ...

And my guess is it's one that we had collared earlier

that dropped its collar.

He's been living on Ontario's

Michipicoten Island,

where wolves have wiped out all of the caribou.

Not enough food to go around.

Those are big paws. This is a big dog,

Yep.

And even though he's thin.

When this guy puts some beef back on,

he'll be quite the moose killer.

It's been a good day:

three wolves: a black and two grays.

(helicopter whirring)

The wolves are on their way to a veterinary check station

in Wawa, Ontario.

Here, the captive wolves go in for a wolf checkup

to make sure they're healthy

before being taken to the wilderness island.

Kevin, can you grab the blanket?

Yep.

Heart and lungs. Vital statistics.

upper left and lower left.

They get their teeth checked too.

Not bad, just not great.

Right upper canine, 25.

25?

Yup.

14. 14.

And they get tested for dog diseases:

heartworm, parvo, distemper;

canine diseases that wolfs get to.

That's it. And now we wait for eight minutes.

So what we're saying here on this test

is that blue dot there is the positive control,

which just means the test has worked,

and we're seeing no other positive dots

to suggest that he's been in contact

or been infected by any of these particular diseases.

It's good to go.

The tests are negative.

No infections from the past.

Now the vets want to protect the wolves

against the future too.

We're giving the wolf vaccinations

for common canine diseases like distemper and parvo.

Michelle, can you drop that for a sec?

Yep.

They get a green ear tag for ID.

And a GPS collar to help researchers keep track of them

in their new home,

because these two wolves, and a couple dozen more,

are on their way to a new life in a new world,

a world called Isle Royale.

Isle Royale is an island.

It sits 20 miles off the northwest coastline

of Lake Superior, opposite Thunder Bay, Ontario.

(drumming and chanting)

Native Americans visited here

after the great ice sheets retreated

several thousand years ago

and still celebrate their deep connection to the island.

They came for what the island had to offer:

rich fisheries, rare plants,

and some of the purest copper deposits anywhere on Earth.

The Chippewa Nation has always thought of Isle Royale

as a sacred place.

(intriguing music)

Today, it's a U.S. National Park,

which the Park Service rigorously maintains as a wilderness.

45 miles long, nine miles wide,

it's difficult to find a wilder, more isolated place.

It's also the site of the oldest

predator-prey study in the world.

For 60 years, researchers have observed and learned

from the relationship between wolves and moose

on Isle Royale.

An ecosystem is like a large puzzle with many pieces.

Without a healthy wolf-moose relationship,

a big piece of that puzzle is missing,

and the picture is incomplete.

The park service had a decision to make:

hands off the wilderness of Isle Royale

or act to restore the ecosystem.

After looking at, then weighing, all the options,

ultimately, introducing wolves was the best option.

The decision was made for the good

of the entire ecosystem on Isle Royale.

The landscape was a focal point.

What's going on and how it interacts

with these predator and prey.

We decided on this course because we felt

it would help keep resiliency in the system,

and the moose that are major forest mowers, if you will;

they eat a lot of forage every day.

And by putting the predator back on the landscape,

'cause we were down to just two of them,

it makes a huge difference

in the type of tree species that will survive

as well as the effects on our streams and lakes.

There was a healthy population of wolves here

for almost 60 years,

but now only two wolves remain on the island.

So the moose population has ballooned to 2,000.

Beaver lodge numbers are over 540.

Both species are changing the landscape and the ecosystem.

The reason we're bringing wolves out

is to be that apex predator.

And the reason we want an apex predator in the ecosystem

is that we want to have all the pieces.

And the apex predator is just one piece.

The herbivore, although it chews on the planet community

and can, in high numbers, damage it,

they also serve their purpose.

And so when, we think about the whole,

it's important to have every piece

contributing in its own way,

and so, apex predator being one of them.

The park is here to protect all its resources,

not just wolves, not just moose.

We're here for everything,

and so we want to make sure the forest

can continue on as it should.

(soft percussive music)

The plan is to restore the presence of wolves

on Isle Royale and thereby restore the ecosystem.

Boy or a girl?

It's a boy.

Good.

Over the next few years,

the U.S. National Park Service and its collaborators

intend to capture males and females

and move them out to Isle Royal

to grow the population and refresh the gene pool.

He's this.

He's thin, yeah, but I thought he'd be really thin.

So far, 19 of 30 wolves

have been relocated to the island.

Cushion his head.

Nah, it should be fine. It should be fine.

There you go. We gotta go.

Right now, and for the last several decades,

we've been trying to understand the significance

of wolves in this ecosystem.

How do they affect most populations, beaver populations,

and indirectly the effect of on the forest itself?

And that's still our major overall goal.

Grab the back.

The scientific challenge now,

when the wolf population has been restarted,

is whether you can restart the system

and see the same thing unfold

that we have been looking at for 50 years.

Rolf Peterson is a wildlife biologist

who, for the past 50 years of his career,

has made Isle Royale his central focus.

For him, the relationship between wolf and moose

on the Island is the important one to watch.

We have about 20,000 bones collected

from moose over the last 60 years.

So we've got a record of Isle Royale-produced mousse

that stretches back to World War II.

We collect these moose bones to keep track

of the moose population, health and body size over decades.

And wolves provide most of these bones for us.

We have special teams of volunteers

that go through the woods for a week at a time

in the summertime, looking for bones,

in addition to the ones we find in the winter time.

And then we also collect the metatarsal bone,

which is the lowest leg bone in a moose's rear leg,

because this is sensitive to early nutrition.

It's about half grown when a moose is born,

and it's a reflection of the health of the mother.

The mother of the calf really determines

how well off her calf is nutritionally

and how big it is when it's born.

And that turns out to have a lifelong effect

on the lifespan of that moose

and susceptibility to arthritis.

A lot of the health challenges of moose, old moose,

are similar to those people.

The park has also reached out to universities

to expand the ecosystem studies.

Park Service and student crews from the state university

of New York's College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry

review collar data for clusters of Wolf activity,

and then hit the field to search for and evaluate

what drew the wolf to the site.

We got a moose bed.

Was it a predation event,

a wolf resting site, or scavenging?

Little pieces of wolf hair in this bed.

Probably some from the undercoat.

Oh wow.

Yeah.

As we all know, over longterm,

wolves it's typically form what we refer to as packs;

yet, here we have an introduction effort

where wolves have come from a number of different locations,

have been put on this landscape

that they're unfamiliar with.

So one thing we're very interested in

is social organization of the wolves in this introduction:

Who will they interact with? Who will they avoid?

Who will they actually join together with

to form associations and ultimately packs?

And where would those packs occur on the landscape?

The wolves may be the stars of Isle Royale,

but the moose play a strong supporting role,

so they're getting collars, too,

so scientists can keep track of the moose

as well as the wolves.

Seth Moore, biologist for the Grand Portage Band

of Lake Superior Chippewa,

assists with moose capture and collaring

as part of a longterm study to compare moose populations

and health between Isle Royale and the mainland.

We're just looking at her age.

She's a middle-aged animal.

On mainland Minnesota,

moose are struggling to survive.

(light percussive music)

There are perhaps 2,000 moose on the island today,

and that might be too many for the available food.

Lynette Potvin is an ecologist at Isle Royale National Park.

Her specialty: the connection between the plant community

on the island and the moose.

The moose population is basically gonna eat themselves

out of house and home.

And they won't have any sort of forage availability.

That's bad for the moose

and other island creatures.

So we have martin

that use large deciduous trees for habitat.

Snowshoe hare also browse on a lot

of the same species that the moose do,

but in lower densities.

We have beavers, which are dependent on aspen

for building their dams.

And so, when we have these high populations

of different herbivores,

it basically changes the entire way

that the ecosystem functions.

What we're expecting to see is a cascading effect

of wolves regulating the population of moose,

and in turn the moose will be more limited

in their browse across the island.

So we'll see more balsam fir on the west end,

and on the east end we'll see more recruitment of aspen.

One of the important species on the other side

of the island, and sugar maples.

In short, more biodiversity.

Biodiversity gives you ecosystems their strength

and resilience in the face of change.

And things are changing on Isle Royale.

The island is 20 miles off shore.

The question often gets asked,

how did wolves and moose get here in the first place?

No one is sure about the moose.

Moose are excellent swimmers,

but 20 miles is a long way, even for them.

Maybe a hunt club introduced them early in the 20th century.

The truth is we don't know how the moose got to Isle Royale.

How the wolfs got here is easier to understand.

It's now clear they came over in the winter

on the ice bridge.

Wolves are very comfortable on the ice, even thin ice.

That's been their major way to get back and forth.

The isolation of the island,

the island effect, began to take a toll

on the health of the remaining wolves.

Then came a warming climate.

Eventually the island effect was accentuated

by the disappearing ice between the island and the mainland,

which had allowed wolves to come over periodically

and bring in new genes.

We think that is the reason why,

and the population kept going for 70 years.

Winter ice bridges are important

to the genetic refreshment of the wolf population,

but as winters warm, the ice bridges become less reliable.

(grim music)

So, today, the new bridge to Isle Royale is by air and boat,

and these mainland wolves are the founders

of a whole new population on Isle Royale.

The island is a unique place to study wolves and moose

because of one other important thing:

there's no hunting of any kind, no direct death by human.

Hunting changes their behavior.

On the island, they're left to themselves

to figure it out without human harassment,

except the occasional plane overhead

tracking their whereabouts.

And being immobilized on occasion.

And wearing satellite collars.

This is not Yellowstone.

This is not where you can sit on the side of a road

and use a telescopic lens

and watch the animals do what animals do.

Here, our cover is so thick and it's so dense

that we're using the most modern technology, if you can,

to track how well our guesses are.

The latest colors let researchers track

where the wolves go, which ones stay together,

the territory they establish,

and how well they're doing as predators.

What the teams are looking for now

is the formation of at least one wolf pack,

which will indicate a meeting pair,

and any possible sign of newborn pups.

But the collars can only reveal so much.

To truly understand what's happening,

researchers must gather more tangible evidence

from the field.

We've had some issues with some of the GPS collars

that have been put on these wolves.

Some of them have been failing prematurely.

And so we have a camera array

currently deployed across the island,

and we're reviewing those images

to look at wolves that triggered the cameras,

and we're looking for evidence of pups.

We're also going to potential den sites, rendezvous sites,

and looking for evidence, particularly scats,

that may be there to determine, first of all,

if they are wolves, and then, if the quality is high enough,

individual identification of those scats,

so we can get a minimum number of wolves,

pups in this case, that may have been born

to a particular female.

The park has deployed over 150 cameras,

hoping to capture images of any pups born on the island.

Their first success emerged earlier this year,

when researchers returned to recover footage

captured during the fall and winter months.

When we came back this spring,

we picked up an image showing definitely two pups

from last September that would have been born

to the female translocated to Isle Royale,

so she was translocated pregnant.

She successfully found a place to den and reared pups,

and they survive through to the winter.

Oh, it's great news, because it's important

that the population contain individuals of all ages

so that, when these yearlings grow up,

they'll hopefully disperse from their territory

and intermingle with other wolves.

And that's not all the team found this spring.

GPS collar data indicated that another female denned up

on the southwest side of the island in April,

most likely to give birth to pups

that were actually conceived here.

Once she left the den site,

the team recovered 18 pup-sized scats,

a great indication new pups may have been born.

And then, as they combed through more remote camera clips,

they uncovered these grainy images taken at night

of what appears to be another new pup

on the northeastern side of the island.

That was a little bit of a surprise,

because we ended up running through our camera array

and picking up the photo of that pup,

and we don't know who that pump belongs to yet.

We'll need to get some genetic evidence

or further pictures of this pop with an adult,

but it definitely confirms that we've had reproduction

at both ends of the island,

which means we have roughly two packs.

We just can't assign that pup to parents yet.

It'll take more field research

to confirm exactly how many pups have been born

and how many have survived.

But these initial discoveries

are a major step in the right direction.

Having reproduction at two different ends of the islands,

suggesting there at least two packs,

we're well on our way to meeting the goals of the project,

which is three to four packs,

having reproduction on an annual basis,

killing moose killing beavers,

doing everything that wolves do.

That's what we want, and we want to see it,

and we're super pleased about having this information.

It'd be great if we had more, but we'll take it.

The hesitancy of this yearling wolf

approaching the cold waters of Isle Royale

on the trail of a moose is a reflection

of the tenacity and the needs of wolves.

A single experienced wolf can take down an adult moose,

but not without serious risk of injury.

The future of any pups will depend

on whether they can find a mate

and a social structure that allows them to flourish

in this isolated ecosystem.

So it's mainly, for wolves,

the challenge of finding a vulnerable moose,

and that may take them days of hunting.

Right now, with the moose population real high,

lots of calves, lots of yearlings,

and an aging bunch of adults,

it should be fairly easy for the next few years.

Studying the impacts of these wolves

on an ecosystem under stress from climate change

gives humans insight into changes

we can only imagine at this time.

(wolf howling)

(upbeat music)

Isle Royale is a very unique environment to work in,

and it's really tough to fully understand

some of the stories that are here.

We still don't know how this story is gonna end.

(upbeat music)