Board takes steps to allow landowners to kill wolves
By LEE BERGQUIST
lbergquist@journalsentinel.com
Stevens Point – Calling them a nuisance in the north, akin to “rats in the city,” the chairman of the Natural Resources Board on Wednesday said he wants Wisconsin to start taking steps to let landowners and others kill problem wolves.
With no objections from other members of the board, Trygve A. Solberg of Minoqua asked the state Department of Natural Resources to report back to the board next month about ways to let people kill wolves that prey on livestock and other animals.
Solberg’s comments came after federal officials on April 1 removed the wolf from its list of endangered species in Wisconsin, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and North and South Dakota, and downgraded its protective status to “threatened.”
The new classification allows government agencies – the DNR, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture – to kill problem wolves, but citizens do not have the authority to kill wolves on their own.
Solberg thinks it’s time for Wisconsin to begin the process of having the gray wolf removed from the state’s and the federal government’s list of threatened species, so landowners and others could kill problem wolves on their own.
Echoing sentiments of leaders of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, a group that advises the DNR, Solberg also said he believes that wolf numbers are underreported in Wisconsin.
“I have nothing against wolves,” he said. “But I think we already have too many of them. There aren’t supposed to be any wolves in my area, but I have pictures of them.”
The DNR reported Wednesday that the late winter wolf count in Wisconsin outside Indian reservations was between 335 and 354 – up from 327 at the same time last year. Adrian Wydeven, the DNR’s wolf biologist, said he was comfortable with the estimate.
Wydeven said the state has begun the process of taking the wolf off Wisconsin’s threatened species list. That will take about a year, and he said the federal process could take even longer.
Once nearly extirpated in Wisconsin, wolves have made a comeback. People are more accepting of wolves than 50 years ago, and, Wydeven said, a booming deer population means they have plenty to eat.
The change in protected status this spring has allowed DNR wardens to trap and kill four wolves that have destroyed livestock on four farms in Barron and Burnett counties.
Wisconsin has to find a way to deal with problem wolves, said Pam Troxell of the Timber Wolf Alliance at Northland College in Ashland.
“But let’s take this new reclassification and give it some time,” Troxell said. “Let’s not jump the gun.”
Troxell said that Solberg’s comments “were steeped in emotion” that reflect undue fear of the animals.
“We have to figure out a way to live with wolves,” she said.