At the January 15, 2011 meeting of the Isle Royale Families and Friends Association at Barkers Island in Superior, Professor Phillip V. Scarpino of Purdue University gave a presentation on the report entitled Cultural Resources on Isle Royale National Park: An Historic Context that he had prepared for the National Park Service.
Scarpino said, “I didn’t know much about Isle Royale when I started. I headed to Isle Royale and all I knew was that it was a wilderness and that there were wolves and moose there.”
However, Scarpino said the bottom line of his study is this: “Having abandoned buildings standing empty or used out of context does not equate the cultural resources of the island any more than having a stuffed wolf in a park visitor center would represent, or substitute for, living wolves in a functioning, healthy ecosystem.
“Managing Isle Royale as an ‘actual’ wilderness denies, or greatly diminishes, the long and essential role of human history on the Island.”
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