Wolves have been a hot topic in recent years, as some remain concerned about the number of wolves in the Northland. Public interest has spurred research on a variety of wolf-related topics, such as the population size and location.

Mike Schrage has been the Wildlife Program Manager for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa for 30 years. More recently, he’s been working with wolves.

Studying Wolves

“I have been running a program now for about eight years to keep track of how many different wolves and wolf packs are using the Fond du Lac reservation, and you know, monitoring any changes in those numbers over the years, and then causes rates of mortality, and also following up with things like den selection, pup numbers, things like that,” said Schrage. “My study area is essentially between Cloquet, Floodwood, and Cromwell.” 

Schrage primarily focuses on adult wolves, catching and putting tracking collars on them. Then, in the spring, adult members of the pack guide Schrage to wolf dens.

“We’ve had a real good collaboration in recent years with the 1854 Treaty Authority that’s doing a pup survival study,” said Schrage. “We go in, locate the den, and take some measurements on the pups, how many boys, how many girls, how big they are. We microchip all of them, and then we put little tracking collars on the pups that stretch and expand as the pups grow, and that helps us keep track of what happens to the pups, and if they die, what the causes of mortality are.” 

Student Research

Schrage also collaborates with Cynthia Welsh, a Cloquet Science Teacher who is also the NE MN and American Indian Regional Science Fair Director. The two have been working together for over 20 years, helping students do projects on wildlife biology. With help from Welsh, Schrage works with students who use his wolf data in science fair projects. 

Cloquet High School 9th Grader Finley Holz has been working with Schrage since 7th grade. He enjoys working with wolves and coming up with different project ideas.

“For the first one that we did, which was looking at the seasons, we found that they moved the most in the spring, which was really surprising because that’s when they’re in their dens. So we think there was something to do with the pipeline and COVID because that was like the main years of our research,” recalled Holz. 

Holz’s second project was to see how wolves move compared to the hunting season.

“We found that they moved the most during the first weekend and the last week of hunting season, which makes sense because the first weekend, there are more hunters, and then the last weekend is the deer rut or mating season,” explained Holz. “So then the deer are moving more, so the wolves have to move more.”

While most of the students who work with Schrage go to Cloquet Middle/High School, there were a couple of participating students this year from Hermantown Middle School. Gabriel Bradley, an 8th grader, is Welch’s grandson. Bradley recruited his friend, Easton Mathews, to be his science fair partner.

“Last year, we looked at the overall movement of wolves pre-season, but this year we looked at den locations and how they moved due to the size of a litter and how many pups there were, and human interaction,” said Mathews. “It’s helped me know that I most likely want to do something in biology on those lines.” 

The participating students work on projects in the fall and winter. Then, in the spring, the students get the opportunity to go with Shrage and members of the 1854 Treaty Authority to help with their pup survival study.

“Oh, it’s a hoot. I mean, they’re having fun. They’re happy to be out of school and into the field, and it’s pretty cool when you hand an eighth or ninth grader their first wolf pup, and they think it’s pretty neat,” said Schrage. “I think the best way to teach kids science is, you know, after they’ve done the lab stuff, is get them out in the field and let them do some field research, actually get their hands on an animal.”

Searching for a Wolf Den

Early one Tuesday morning in May, Schrage, members of the 1854 Treaty Authority, and a group of students hiked about half a mile into the woods by the Cloquet Forestry Center to search for a wolf den. Schrage led the way, guided by the mother wolf’s tracking device. 

“We had gone through a trail that looked like it was used by cars at one point, but then had just kind of been overgrown, and then we went off the trail and traversed through bog swamp and made it’s like an open area where there were two holes for the den,” said Bradley. 

The group was not expecting there to be a second hole in the ground for the wolf den.

“When we showed up at the front entrance, all the pups ran out the back entrance. That was a first for me. And we had a, you know, a little bit of excitement, you know, chasing four-week-old pups through the woods and rounding everybody up,” said Schrage. 

There were seven healthy pups in the den. The group weighed, measured, and microchipped each pup before putting tracking collars on them.

“I learned that it takes a team to put something together because just one person probably couldn’t do that just because there are so many pups and there’s so much stuff that has to be done,” said Mathews. “I just like being out in the woods and getting to be out in the field and handle wolf pups because not many people get to do that.”

Although the pups were smelly and pooped on several people, the students enjoyed getting to partake in hands-on research.

“It definitely has made me think more about how this would be a career that I would be very interested in, just because of how fun it is to go out and work with people who are very passionate about what they do, and then learn from them,” said Holz.

The wolf pups were returned to the den, and Schrage set up trail cameras nearby. By the next morning, the pups’ mother brought them to a new den, where all of the tracking signals show up for Schrage.

Science Fair Success

There have been four different science fair events from February to May. The first was the NE MN Regional Science Fair at UMD on February 8th. Students who advanced from there went to the Minnesota Academy of Science State Science Fair in St. Paul on March 28. 

The third event was a Minnesota Story Map Competition that started on April 15. Four of the students collaring wolves won at this contest. Holz and his partner, J.R. Bents, were awarded the second-best Story Map in the State. Bradley and Mathews were selected as the third-best story map in the state. 

Lastly, the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair was held the week of May 9-16 in Ohio. 

There is an upcoming international science fair, “The Genius Olympiad,” that will be held in Rochester, New York, from June 9-13. Parker Sickmann, an 11th grader at Cloquet High School, will be presenting his project titled, “Wildlife Watch: Using Machine Learning to Analyze Wildlife Patterns?” 

The full list of achievements from the students involved in the wolf den study is below.

Gabriel Bradley and Easton Mathews, Grade 8, Hermantown Middle School

Project Title: The effect of human interaction with wolf pups in a den on wolf den movement on the Fond du Lac Reservation

• NE MN Regional Science Fair
  • First Place Environmental Science
  • First Place project- Blue ribbon
  • Best of Fair Middle School- 2nd place overall
  • Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovator Challenge (JIC) nominee
  • NRRI Award for Innovation and Scientific Excellence
  • Western Lake Superior District Awards
• MN Academy of Science-State Science Fair Participant
• 2024 ArcGIS National Middle School Competition: 1st  Place in the State of Minnesota Middle School Story Map
• 2025 ArcGIS National Middle School Competition: 3rd  Place in the State of Minnesota Middle School Story Map
• Presented at the Fond du Lac College Earth Day Symposium with the ArcGIS Certificate program in April 2025
• Presented at the Lions Club Meeting, April 2025

Jerimiah Bents and Finley Holtz, Grade 9, Cloquet High School

Project title: Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) Movement and the Effect of Deer Hunting Practices  On The Fond Du Lac Reservation

• NE MN Regional Science Fair
  • First Place Environmental Science
  • Top 10 High School Projects – Best of Fair — 6th Place Project
  • First Place Project: blue ribbon
  • Duluth Rotary #25
  • NASA Earth Systems Award
• MN Academy of Science-State Science Fair Participant
• 2024 ArcGIS National Middle School Competition: 4th Place in the State of Minnesota Middle School Story Map
• 2025 ArcGIS National High School Competition: 2nd Place in the State of Minnesota High School Story Map

Parker Sickmann, Grade 11, Cloquet High School

Project title: Wildlife Watch: Using Machine Learning to Analyze Wildlife Patterns?

• NE MN Regional Science Fair
  • Best of Fair-9th Place overall 
  • First Place Computer Science-blue ribbon
  • Air Force Award
  • NOAA
• MN Academy of Science State Science Fair Participant
• 2025 Genius Olympiad-International Fair Finalist, Rochester, New York

Another one of Welsh and Schrage’s mentees, Grace Lavan, was recently featured on the Minnesota Academy of Science website for her story about her research journey. Lavan recently completed her first year as an undergrad at UMD.