notes from the field

Counting Moose

Wed, 1 Feb 2012 22:37:12 -0500

30 Jan – Snow and the threat of freezing rain kept us from flying today.

CONFRONTATION

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:38:38 -0500

26 Jan – Low clouds lingered. Moisture dripped from the air. No flying today. But our ground-based crew was productive. Dieter and Beth snowshoed all day –
through spruce, over creeks, and beneath cedars – to find the tracks of five different moose. They followed the tracks to where they led, pellet piles and yellow snow. The samples will tell us, with the encouragement of some chemical analyses, about the pregnancy and nutritional status of those moose. Rob snowshoed the Hugginin Loop, recording which balsam fir trees – an important food supply for moose – survived the past year. Each sample is like a fragment of papyrus belonging to some ancient text – worth little by itself, but full of insight when put together in just the right way.
We took a sauna, not so much because we needed it, but because we had time.

After the storm

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:44:16 -0500

23 Jan – Shortly before midnight, Don shook my sleeping bag. What fell from the sky was something halfway between snow and rain. It was freezing to the wings of the Flagship. We all headed to the harbor and wrestled with a northeast wind to put nylon covers over the wings. Slush had also begun to pour up through a nearby crack in the ice. To prevent the Flagship’s skis from freezing into the slush, we propped them up on 4x4s. Then we went to bed for the second time.

The first days

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:42:07 -0500

20 Jan – Low clouds, snow, then high winds. For three days, each took its turn to keep us from Isle Royale. But this morning was clear, calm, and cold (–18oF). “Dispatch, Beaver 1, departing Shagawa Lake, eastbound for Washington Harbor, Isle Royale, two aboard, four hours fuel.” Dispatch copied, and with those words Pat Lowe, a U. S. Forest Service pilot, gave full throttle and we lifted from Shagawa. Rolf and Don were 30 minutes ahead in the Flagship. An hour later we were all on Isle Royale.

It’s time to get focused

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 21:17:12 -0500

13 Jan - In a few days, we head to Isle Royale for Winter Study 2012, the 54th annual Winter Study. For seven weeks we’ll live on Isle Royale, following the lives of wolves and moose in the wilderness. I’m not quite ready, and I need to get focused.

We are anxious to arrive, to try and figure out what’s going on. Over the past decade, the moose population has sagged to the lowest levels ever observed. They’ve suffered winter ticks and hot summers. Wolves have taken advantage of struggling moose, which fueled high rates of predation in recent years. The wolves had been doing pretty well, until 2009. Then one wolf pack failed after another.