LANSING – Perhaps nothing captures the sense and mystique of the Michigan wilderness better than wolves.

Consider remote Isle Royale, 48 miles northwest of the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula. People have used it over the past 4,000 years for hunting, fishing, logging, mining copper and recreation, and it’s now entirely a national park.

In a newly released edition of his classic “Wolves of Isle Royale: a Broken Balance” (University of Michigan Press, $29.95), retired Michigan Technological University wildlife biologist Rolf Peterson explores the complex interactions, habitats, behavior, lives -- and deaths -- of the island’s best-known animals: wolves and moose.

Now both species are under threat, with the moose population — fewer than 400 -- at its lowest level since the ecological study of the island’s mammal predators and their prey began 49 years ago, said John Vucetich, another Michigan Tech wildlife biologist. There were an estimated 1,000 moose in 2002.

Future visitors who expect to see moose are likely to be disappointed, predicted Clarkston writer Jim DuFresne, author of “Isle Royale National Park: Foot Trails and Water Routes” (Mountaineers Books, $15.95).

“Most visitors are backcountry users. One of the reasons they go up there is to see moose,” DuFresne said.

He recalled a fall trip about 15 years ago when the moose were rutting and he was camped in a two-person tent by Feldtmann Lake. “A bull chasing a cow was going right past the tent. I was praying it wouldn’t run over my tent.”

But now, DuFresne said, “you could hike the island for a week and not see a moose.”

And scientists counted only 21 wolves last winter, a decline from the year before, but they note that numbers have fluctuated and peaked a few years ago at about 30.

Liz Valencia, chief of interpretation at Isle Royale National Park, said scientists “are concerned about global warming affecting the moose population, and that does directly affect the wolves because they’re the primary food source.”

The declining numbers of both species coincide with rising temperatures, with five of the last six summers the hottest on record.

“Moose are very much a cold-weather species, and they’re warm when it’s in the 50s,” Valencia said. “The island has been warm the last few years, even the falls and winters,” putting stress on the animals.

Vucetich said, “Hot summers are bad for moose,” which are herbivores- -- or plant-eaters. “They stop feeding as much and then are not well prepared for winter.” Hot summers also encourage ticks that weaken them and make them more vulnerable to wolves.

He and Valencia said that a drop in Lake Superior’s water level, which is 19 inches below normal, hasn’t directly affected either species but is caused by drought and the same climate change that puts them in peril.

At an average of 1,200 to 1,500 pounds, an adult moose provides a lot of meat.

As Peterson wrote, “In nature, death is merely an act in life’s drama, and wolves of Isle Royale perform their appointed role as agents of death for moose, beaver, fox 9sometimes) and other wolves (rarely). The wolf itself, as top predator, most often dances alone with death.”

Researchers have found that all the island’s wolves descended from a single female that arrived in the late 1940s, probably crossing from the Minnesota mainland over an ice bridge.

As for moose, the first proof of their presence was found 1904, according to Peterson. Until the wolves arrived, the island provided moose with a “haven from predators and a virgin food supply.”

The National Park Service cites genetic information suggesting that the island’s moose are most closely related to animals in northwestern Minnesota rather than the much-closer northeastern part of the state.

According to one unverified theory, some moose were trapped in northwestern Minnesota, shipped by train and then boat to the island, and released for hunting.

Vucetich said biologists are fascinated with the scientific question of how some species get to islands:

“It’s implausible that moose swam over here” from Minnesota,” but it’s also implausible that someone brought them over here,” he said.

And he noted that moose weren’t the first large mammals on the island.

Bones in refuse pits indicate that Native Americans hunted caribou, and the National Park Service says they survived there until at least 1927, although the cause of their disappearance remains unknown.