State wolves deserve protection
- A federal district court ruled the wolves are to be protected in Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota.
- The 2½-year-old wolf hunt in the state greatly reduced the wolf population.
Wisconsin's third wolf hunt recently ended with a body count of 154 wolves — down from 250 the year before. Since federal protections for this species were rescinded in 2012, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has overreached and allowed an inhumane and reckless trapping and trophy hunting program to be implemented.
Thankfully, a federal district court has recently ruled that state management is flawed and hindering wolf recovery, and sport hunting and trapping of wolves in the Great Lakes region must end. Wolves in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin again are federally protected — restoring protections that wolves and people lived with for nearly four decades.
In the short 2½ years since wolves were stripped of their protections under the Endangered Species Act, trophy hunters and trappers killed more than 1,500 Great Lakes wolves — principally in Wisconsin and Minnesota — under hostile state management programs that encouraged dramatic population reductions. Last month's federal court decision recognized that state wildlife managers have not been responsibly handling their authority and their "unregulated killing" plans have impeded the recovery of wolf populations.
Among the Great Lakes states, Wisconsin stands apart in managing its wolf population with exceptionally unsporting and barbaric methods, including leghold traps, cable snares, baiting, electronic calls, and packs of dogs — with hounding of wolves so out of the realm of responsible action that it's drawn condemnation around the nation.
Since the state took over management, authorities have intentionally driven down the size of the population, by allowing the killing of so many wolves that packs have been crippled or even wiped out in some cases. During the last three hunting seasons, more than 520 wolves were killed — and nearly 70 percent of them were taken with cruel and indiscriminate leghold traps.
At the start of the first wolf hunt in 2012, our state counted its wolf population at 770; since that time, the population has suffered a 15 percent decline. The DNR's plan was to drive the population to 350 wolves, a drastic and mind-boggling reduction that could have only been achieved through an even more intense killing plan.
For several years now, state wolf management has been based entirely on fear and rhetoric, rather than science and conservation. The plain truth is that wolves pose no legitimate danger to people. In the exceptionally rare instance that a wolf threatens human safety, lethal control of wolves is already allowed, just as it has been for the past 40 years.
Wolf-caused mortality of livestock in our state is minimal, and can be managed through non-lethal measures — which we now know is the most effective mitigation path. In fact, a recent peer-reviewed study out of Washington State University, which used more than 25 years of data, demonstrated that lethal control of depredating wolves does not work; in fact, such measure may result in a greater loss of livestock by disrupting pack social relationships and allowing more surviving wolves to breed. Random killing of wolves may result in more problems for farmers and ranchers.
Weather and respiratory infections are the leading causes of cattle mortality in the U.S., and those few ranchers that lose a cow or two to wolves are compensated by state reimbursement programs that have existed for decades to insure them against such losses.
Our DNR's 2014 survey of nearly 9,000 residents revealed that a vast majority believe that wolves "balance nature" and should not be "harvested" for their fur by trappers. It's time now to heed the wishes of Wisconsinites, and this latest federal court ruling, by protecting wolves from further trophy hunts and finding the right balance on the issue of wolf management.
— Melissa Tedrowe is the Wisconsin state director for the Humane Society of the United States. She can be reached at email@example.com