Lake Superior Podcast
We are made stronger by story and there’s no better source than the continent's largest body of freshwater, Lake Superior. Join hosts Walt Lindala and Frida Waara as they highlight the five National Parks that ring this Greatest of the Great Lakes - meeting the people, touring the places and learning about the projects that make these parks and body of water so remarkable.
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Brought to you by The National Parks of Lake Superior Foundation (www.nplsf.org).
Theme song: King Whirl by David Huckfelt (www.davidhuckfelt.com).
Photo Credit: David Guttenfelder.
Podcast sponsored by Café Imports, a Minneapolis-based importers of fine, specialty green coffees.
Lake Superior Podcast
S6 E5: Isle Royale in Winter: Survival, Science, and Secrets in the Snow – An Interview with Jonathan Pauli
Winter Study at Isle Royale National Park has a decades long history, but just a few scientists ever get the chance to spend time on this isolated archipelago in Lake Superior. In this episode of the Lake Superior Podcast, Walt Lindala and Frida Waara talk with one of those fortunate ones, Johnathan Pauli, Professor in the Department of Forest & Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin Madison. From tracking foxes and martens to unraveling a centuries-old survival story, Johnathan shares how studying this wilderness in winter reveals secrets a summer visitor would never experience. Join us for a conversation about science, survival, and what makes Isle Royale National Park a critical refuge for wildlife.
Key Takeaways:
- Winter Study at Isle Royale has been going on for over 60 years, originally launched to monitor moose and wolf populations and now expanded to include other animals such as martens, foxes, and snowshoe hares.
- Winter presents extreme challenges and rich insights, including long days in deep snow, cold exposure, and tracking animals over miles of off-trail terrain.
- Snowshoe hares follow a 10-year boom-and-bust cycle, which helped explain the survival story of Angelique Mott in 1845, when she struggled to trap hares during a population crash.
- Isle Royale functions as a modern-day “refugium,” because it is more buffered from human development and invasive species, making it an ideal site for long-term conservation and research.
Notable Quotes:
- “Winter is a period of nutritional and resource deficits. It’s a really important time to study these winter-adapted organisms.”
- “I love to say that there’s no anonymity in winter.”
- “Refugia is something near and dear to my heart. These islands, Isle Royale and the Apostle Islands, really represent these interesting test beds for the concept of refugia.”
- “It’s really important work. It’s really hard work. But it’s also really exciting. There’s a lot of complexity of emotions you have while you’re skiing these trails.”
- “Sometimes what you see in the tracks can be almost as exciting as seeing some of these critters in person.”
Resources:
- Jonathan Pauli’s Research Group – Learn more about his work at UW–Madison:
https://pauli.russell.wisc.edu/ - Isle Royale National Park – Explore the park and its natural history:
https://www.nps.gov/isro/index.htm - Apostle Islands National Lakeshore – Discover another key research site:
https://www.nps.gov/apis/index.htm
Connect With Us:
- Website: https://nplsf.org/podcast
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NationalParksOfLakeSuperiorFoundation
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/national-parks-of-lake-superior-foundation
Sponsors:
- Cafe Imports – Supporting environmental sustainability in coffee-growing regions since 1993. Learn more at https://cafeimports.com.
- National Parks of Lake Superior Foundation – Support vital projects by donating at:
https://nplsf.org/donate
Be sure to tune in to this episode of the Lake Superior Podcast to hear Jonathan Pauli’s firsthand stories of survival, science, and what Isle Royale reveals in the silence of winter.