ISLE ROYALE NATIONAL PARK, MI — Moose are dying in a mud pit left behind by falling water levels on an Isle Royale lake.
A researcher working on the 61-year-old wolf/moose study on the Lake Superior island recently discovered a bull moose struggling in deep mud on the shoreline of Lake Ojibway.
He was unable to help the animal but took some pictures.
"Unfortunately, that moose was not able to free itself and it died shortly after these photographs were taken (it had probably been stuck in the mud for several days)," a post on the project's Facebook page said Sunday.
Later, team members who returned to the site to check on the animal found that other moose have also fallen victim to the quagmire.
They discovered the remains of three animals that succumbed over the preceding 12 months.
"Their leg bones were still stuck in the mud," the post said.
Moose visit the lake to feed on aquatic plants.
It became a death trap, however, after the November 2017 failure of a beaver dam that kept the water in the lake since the 1950s.
Since beavers did not repair the dam, the lake continued to drain.
"It has exposed an increasingly large area of deep mud along the former shoreline," the study team said.
The Isle Royale research project is the world's longest-running study of a predator/prey relationship.
This past winter, Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry arranged to trap four northern Ontario wolves for transfer to Isle Royale as part of an effort to control the expanding moose population.
