HOUGHTON, MI-- A study of the predator-prey relationship between moose and wolves on Isle Royale has been inducted into the Michigan Environmental Hall of Fame.
John Vucetich is director of the 56-year-old study and an associate professor at Michigan Technological University. He says the study was begun to answer questions about how predators affect prey at a time when the public viewed wolves in a negative light.
“Durward Allen, the person who started the project, just wanted to better understand the truth of how it is that wolves affect their prey, because it’s (the) hateful myths that people had about what wolves did to their prey that caused so much of their persecution,” he says.
Vucetich says the most surprising thing researchers have learned over the years is that the more they watched the moose-wolf relationship, the more complex it became.
“And that’s relevant because so many studies in ecology last for only a few years and you get kind of a, ‘Well, it looks like it works like this,’ and well, it only looks like that maybe because you watched for a short while,” he says.
An induction ceremony was held Thursday night at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids.