This story was updated Sept. 17 with additional information after the National Park Service responded to WCMU's request for comment. If you are able, listen to the audio above to hear our interview with a natural resources manager from the NPS Isle Royale.
Gray wolves on Isle Royale are exhibiting unusual behavior and getting a bit too comfortable with people.
Isle Royale is home to 30 gray wolves that were re-introduced in 2019. Their population has been steady, but reports of human-wolf interactions are increasing, according to the National Park Service.
The park has implemented "hazing" measures like shooting wolves with paintballs and installing electric fences around dumpsters to scare wolves away from populated areas. The park has also updated its guidelines on food storage, recommending campers lock up food and hikers keep their packs on them.
Mark Romanski, an NPS natural resources manager on Isle Royale, said the park is still compiling data on wolf sightings, as the summer comes to a close.
He said the a moose-kill on the island during the off-season initially attracted wolves to the Rock Harbor area.
"They often revisit kill sites, so the combination of having a kill and then when we showed up, having our food smells and garbage immediately adjacent to that, was a one-two punch," Romanski said.
Wolves have been spotted on the island before, but Romanski said it's historically been isolated incidents. What's different now, he said, is they have made Rock Harbor "a part of their, for lack of a better word, patrol of their territory."
Sarah Hoy is an assistant professor with Michigan Technological University, who studies wolves on the island. She said wolves typically avoid people, but accessible human food may be attracting some curious individuals.
"What's a bit unusual in this case is: it's not just that people are seeing wolves, but the wolves seem to be investigating human food sources, including trash cans and trash they might find," Hoy said.
Hoy said since the park doesn't have bears, there hasn't been a tradition of locking up food, but she's hopeful the new precautions will deter wolves from campgrounds.
"You definitely don't want wild animals to build a dependence or reliance on human sources of food," Hoy said. "One, human food sources are typically not as nutritious and tend to have a lot of sugar and carbohydrates. If you have animals congregating around human food sources, that can lead to things like higher disease transmission as well."
If you spot a wolf, the park recommends making loud noises and backing away slowly but to avoid running.
"We've been telling folks to be big and loud," Romanski said. "Widen your stance, raise your arms, clap, scream. If the wolf doesn't want to yield the trail, go ahead and yield the trail to the wolf and walk around."
As far as the effort to reintroduce wolves to the island, Romanski said he doesn't foresee potential negative human-wolf interactions affecting wolf populations.
"It's unlikely that if we were to say, remove a couple of wolves, that that would impact the overall population, but we're hoping it doesn't come to that," Romanski said.
