Lessons from 65 years of observing wolves and moose on a wilderness island

Isle Royale National Park is a wilderness island in Lake Superior and inhabited by wolves and moose.  They are the subject of the longest study of any predator-prey system in the world.  The most distinctive and important lesson from 65+ years of observation is a quantifiable impression that their dynamics are driven as much by historical contingencies as by any set of rules that might govern nature.  That impression explains, among other things, why ecologists are conspicuously poor at forecasting future dynamics. It also offers new reason to be humble in our relationships with nature.