Future of gray wolves still up in air
Dave Spratt / Special to the Detroit News
They’re on. They’re off. They’re on again. For now. That’s how things have gone for gray wolves over the past year. After several decades on the federal Endangered Species List, the wolves have gone about their business in the north woods while their oversight has bounced back and forth from the federal government to the states.
As of now, Western Great Lakes gray wolves are listed as a federally endangered species, after a lawsuit was upheld that challenged the delisting because a proper public comment period wasn’t held. But stay tuned: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to try delisting the wolves again, and the public comment process could resume as early as this fall. If and when the wolves come off the list, they’ll be managed by the states where they live: Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
The process has been frustrating for state wildlife managers and biologists who have spent years drawing up exhaustive plans and preparing to take over wolf management.
“In this on-again, off-again saga, the wolves come off as a loser because it doesn’t do anything for public support,” said Brian Roell, a wolf specialist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “Wolves get this stigma that they’re equal to the government.”
Right to protect
Michigan’s wolf management plan includes making sure wolves have ample space to roam and plenty of deer to feed upon, but it also would give residents and the state greater freedom to handle wolves that kill livestock or pets. That has been a sticking point for groups that oppose killing wolves for any reason, but it’s a key part of keeping human-wolf conflicts down and appeasing Upper Peninsula residents who share the landscape with wolves.
In 2007-08, when wolves were briefly delisted, Wisconsin issued 67 depredation permits that allowed landowners to shoot wolves for preying on their livestock or pets. Only two wolves were shot — both by the same landowner — but having the option was invaluable, according to Adrian Wydeven of the Wisconsin DNR.
“It seemed like an amazing psychological lift to those people,” Wydeven said. “Almost nobody exercised those permits, but just having a sense of being able to protect their property made them feel a lot better. There was a sense of frustration when people felt like they couldn’t protect their property.”
Growing population
The gray wolf — canis lupus — stands by all accounts as an ecological success story in the Upper Midwest, thanks largely to the end of wolf bounties and the Endangered Species Act. When wolves went on the Endangered Species List in 1973, there were under a thousand wolves in Minnesota and only a handful if any in Wisconsin and Michigan. With little human interference the wolves have expanded to more than 4,000 animals across northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — about 3,000 in Minnesota and more than 500 each in Wisconsin and Michigan. Federal plans called for states to take over wolf management when Minnesota had 1,250-1,400 wolves, and Michigan and Wisconsin had a combined 100, for five straight years. Minnesota surpassed those numbers in the late 1980s; Michigan and Wisconsin met their goal in the mid-1990s.
But a coalition that included the Humane Society of the United States and the Center for Biological Diversity successfully sued to stop the delisting of wolves. They argue that the Upper Midwest wolf population has not recovered enough to withstand the states’ more aggressive control methods. They say it’s still too small and too isolated from other populations, making it vulnerable to disease or genetic problems, and that state plans to manage wolves don’t guarantee any funding, a situation that could leave wolves with little protection.
So who’s right?
According to Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity, one problem with delisting wolves is that doing so violates the principles of the Endangered Species Act. The act calls for programs to count populations, test the species for disease and genetic issues and other census work. And while the states have set goals for doing that research, they haven’t guaranteed funding for studying wolves.
“We recognize that states in the Upper Midwest are not the same as some of the western states where the agencies are determined to get rid of every wolf,” Robinson said. “But good intentions only go so far. You need funding. All these things can operate together and if nobody is funded the population can unravel before any management agency can take action.”
Robinson also said delisting gray wolves and turning them over to the state plans would effectively draw a line around the Western Great Lakes populations of gray wolves, which would sequester that population into a mere fraction of its original range. With little protection outside the core area, wolves would be unlikely to expand into other areas like the Great Plains, and isolating the small population with few breeding animals could lead to genetic problems or leave it vulnerable to disease or hybridizing, he added.
But Dan Stark of the Minnesota DNR said the wolves in the Upper Midwest are anything but isolated. They’re actually occupying the southern reaches of an enormous Canadian wolf range that doesn’t recognize international borders.
“One of the things that has allowed Minnesota’s wolves to recover is that we’re connected to 50,000 wolves to the north,” he said. “We have genetic exchange with thousands of wolves in the north. Wolves have been documented dispersing to the north and wolves have been documented dispersing from the north to the south.”