Tracking the U.P. Wolf

Love it or hate it, the Upper Peninsula’s gray wolf has become a Michigan celebrity

By Ren Brabenec | May 18, 2024

The term “unforgettable” has lost some of its significance due to overuse in a modern-day culture where corporate advertising labels everything from a new automobile to body wash as “unforgettable.” But unforgettable moments in life do still happen. For Denise Amo, a retired 32-year resident of Brimley who lives on the shores of Lake Superior in the eastern Upper Peninsula, one such moment involved a wolf.

“I wish I could’ve filmed it, but we didn’t all have smartphones in our pockets back then,” says Amo. “It was in the depths of winter shortly after we moved here. The ice was at its thickest, and it was an unusually clear, calm day. I happened to look out over Whitefish Bay towards Ontario and there it was, a wolf crossing the ice, migrating from Ontario to Michigan.”

Years later, the memory is still fresh for Amo. “The wolf trotted confidently across the frozen bay like a large dog, but far more elegant, alert, graceful, and wild,” she says. “I knew right away I was in the proximate company of a truly regal creature, and while the days before and after that moment are lost to me like the infinite grains of sand Lake Superior gives and takes each season, that particular moment is one I will never forget.”

We have wolves to thank for the domesticated four-legged friends who share our homes, yet today’s wolves are shrouded in mystery, partially because of how rare sightings are.

“People value them,” says Kristie Sitar, a 22-year veteran wildlife biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) based in Newberry, Michigan. “Even if they never see them, they know they’re out there, and that has value.”

Rebuilding the Population

While gray wolves have long called Michigan home, eradication efforts in the 1800s and 1900s led to them being essentially wiped out in the state. (Wolves are currently protected under the federal Endangered Species Act.) It wasn’t until 1991 that a pack was confirmed to be reproducing in the Upper Peninsula once more.

Since then, the wolf population has grown substantially. According to current data, the DNR estimates the U.P. is home to 631 wolves, give or take 49, divided among 136 packs. (Each pack has four to five wolves.) The population has been statistically stable for more than a decade, and the wolves live almost exclusively above the bridge.

(A gray wolf was killed in Calhoun County this spring after being mistaken for a coyote, one of the farthest-south sightings recorded in decades. The DNR has since opened an investigation into the wolf’s death and to determine how it got to southern Michigan.)

Wolves are a well-documented boon to the natural environments in which they live, one of the reasons they’ve been intentionally reintroduced to national parks like Yellowstone and Isle Royale, as well as Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and several other states.

“Wolves are a top predator, which means their only predators are humans,” says Sitar. “They prey on whitetail deer, beaver, and hare just to name a few, and while most of their hunts are unsuccessful, their successful hunts usually involve taking down the elderly, sick, infirm, weak, and malnourished. Their hunting patterns are a picture perfect story in natural selection, which then improves the overall health of every prey population they hunt.”

Apex Predators

Despite their usefulness in the ecosystem, some residents are not thrilled with their presence in the U.P.

“Livestock and pet conflicts, mostly wolf-dog encounters, are legitimate concerns we hear from residents,” says Brian Roell, a Marquette-based DNR wildlife biologist who specializes in wolves and other large animals. “Incidents are extremely rare, especially when you consider how vast the U.P landscape is and how many pets there are up here, but such incidents do happen due to the wolf’s naturally territorial behavior.”

The DNR has published four guidelines to reduce wolf-dog conflicts. They include reporting conflicts to the DNR, becoming familiar with coyote and dog tracks to distinguish them from wolf tracks, adding bells and beepers to hunting dog collars, and remaining up to date on wolf-dog conflicts in one’s area.

In relation to that last point, the DNR created an online map that updates with geographic locations where wolf-dog interactions occurred. The map can be found at michigan.gov/dnr/education/michigan-species/mammals/wolves-in-michigan/wolf-dog-conflicts.

Since 2009, when recording began, 80 dogs have been killed by wolves in the U.P., 51 of which occurred between 2009 and 2014, and 67 of which involved hunting dogs.

The Decline of U.P. Deer

The list of controversies does not end with pet and livestock conflicts. Some U.P. residents worry the return of wolves in 1991 is to blame for the declining U.P. deer population. (The Lower Peninsula deer population, meanwhile, is surging, with officials seeking options to curb further growth.)

However, deer populations in the U.P. are well studied, and of the factors limiting deer abundance, severe winter weather is the most significant, not predation (lethal predator-prey encounters).

A severe winter is defined as a winter with more than 90 days of more than one foot of snow on the ground. “Since 1996, the Upper Peninsula experienced more than three times as many severe winters as compared to the 1980 to 1996 recording period, along with two instances of back-to-back and two instances of three consecutive severe winters,” says Sitar.

Climate change’s effects on the Great Lakes have led to less ice coverage and more lake-effect snow. More snowpack means more deer predation by bears, coyotes, bobcats, and wolves, as deer are less able to flee predators in heavy snow.

Sitar says numerous factors—winter weather, predation by other species, habitat quality, changes to deer harvest regulations, declining hunter numbers, and changes in timber harvest—all play a role in changes to the deer population in the Upper Peninsula alongside wolf predation.

A Numbers Game

Another bone of contention surrounding the U.P. wolf is its population size. Sportsmen with deer camps set up throughout the U.P. use trail cameras to track deer movement, and they say the sheer number of wolf images they collect must mean there are more wolves in the Upper Peninsula than the DNR’s estimated 631.

That assumption isn’t necessarily true. “Five wolves you see on a trail cam photo don’t move like the five fingers on your hand,” says Roell, holding up his hand. “They branch off and go out on their own for days before returning to the pack. Wolves are nature’s best long-distance jogger. A wolf runs across terrain for 10-12 hours per day, every day of its life, and each pack’s territory is huge.”

Also, there’s the matter of where wolves are being photographed. “They stick to trails, roads, and two-tracks because they’re easier to move through, but those are also the same places hunters place trail cams, leading to a higher incidence of wolf images than if cams were placed in the middle of thick forest and heavy undergrowth,” says Roell. “A couple landowners living in the same area who capture 40 images of wolves throughout their properties are likely spotting the same pack of four to five wolves, not 40 individual wolves.”

In addition to the DNR’s methods of assessing the wolf population (their decades-long winter track survey and a new grid-patterned trail camera approach), DNR biologists also use a combination of math and science to check their fieldwork. “You can estimate the wolf population if you know a few data points,” says Sitar, reaching for pen and paper.

“Two studies from 2005 and 2017 arrived at the same conclusion as to what percentage of the U.P.’s 16,378 square miles of land is suitable wolf habitat,” Sitar says. “The studies found 63 percent of the U.P., or 10,395 square miles, is suitable habitat for wolves and is also currently occupied by wolves, meaning the available habitat has reached its saturation point, or biological capacity. Take 10,395, divide it by 82, which is the average square mile territory size of a wolf pack. Multiply that by 4.8, which is the average gray wolf pack size in this part of the country.”

Sitar finishes her calculation. “What’s the result? 608 wolves in the U.P. Just about dead-on with what our population surveys are showing us. Even if we exaggerate and suggest Potvin et. al in 2005 and O’Neil in 2017 were wrong in their studies and wolves are in 100 percent of the U.P.”—which means they’d be in places they could never biologically survive in, like cities—“we’d still be at just 958 wolves, a far cry less than the thousands of wolves some think we have up here.”

Sitar and Roell closed by saying wolves remain controversial because humans have competed with them for resources for thousands of years. Today’s challenge lies in humankind’s ability to live alongside other predators.

Until then, the U.P.’s wolves will continue to pad across the forested terrain of our favorite northern sanctuary, oblivious to the heated debates ranging from within the communities of its only natural predator.

Photo courtesy of the Michigan DNR.