Isle Royale wolves down to 2

In the end, there can be only one.

Some of the principles we've learned or seen at work on Isle Royale:

[/b] The original wolf population on the island was descended from a single female and two males. After several decades, the wolf population suffered from inbreeding. In 1997, another male wolf crossed to the island. From that wolf's genetics, the wolf population became more robust.

While predators (wolves) may get blamed for ungulate (moose) population declines, other forces often have much greater consequences. For moose on Isle Royale, heat stress, ticks, winter-kill, and quality of nutrition sometimes precipitated large swings in population numbers. For wolves, parvovirus had devastating effects.

Even without hunting, humans can inadvertently cause drastic effects on a population: Around 1980, humans caused the wolf population to decline by over two-thirds in two years when someone's domestic dog brought parvovirus to Isle Royale.

Simple predator-prey systems can be complex after all. The moose had one predator, the wolf. The wolf had one primary prey, the moose. No mountain lions or bears, elk or deer were present to confuse the equation. Yet climate fluctuations and change, parasites, disease, age, and quality of nutrition made population numbers unpredictable.[/ul]
Those principles are just a minute fraction of what we've learned from Isle Royale. Predator-prey research in other ecosystems, such as Yellowstone, has benefited immensely. But it appears that a chapter of the island ecosystem may be drawing to a close with the likely disappearance of wolves. Who would have thought that prey would outlast predator and in the process promote its own eventual decline?

Aren't apex predators generally the most threatened in terms of survival? Individually, they are formidable, but as a population, they are susceptible to so many factors...