Great Lakes area shares wolf management issues
By MIKE STARK
Gazette Wyoming Bureau
If you’re feeling lost and lonely in the wilderness of wolf recovery in
the Northern Rockies, don’t despair.
Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan feel our pain.
Like Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, the Great Lakes states are grappling with
some of the same issues: whether threatened and endangered wolves should
be reclassified before they’re removed from federal protection, who will
pay for wolf management and how many wolves are an acceptable number.
Thousands of wolves once roamed the western Great Lakes states but by the
1960s, only a few hundred remained in northeastern Minnesota and on
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Federal protection in the 1970s allowed the wolf population to recover.
There are now about 3,000 wolves in the three states.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may propose delisting the wolves in
those states this fall. It could have happened earlier but, there as well
as here, wolves draw controversy.
Michigan and Wisconsin had their state management plans in final form by
1999 but couldn’t move forward with delisting because Minnesota, paralyzed
by disagreements, hadn’t budged.
“There were, uh, political differences,” said Adrian Wydeven, mammal
ecologist for Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources.
Minnesota finally approved its plan last year, setting the stage for a
proposal to delist the wolves this year.
Wolves are listed as threatened in Minnesota, so managers are allowed to
use lethal methods to control populations. Wydeven said Wisconsin and
Michigan are eager to get the same classification – their wolves are
currently listed as endangered – so troublesome wolves can be trapped or
euthanized.
The problem in Wisconsin isn’t that the wolves are feasting on livestock,
Wydeven said.
“We allow hound hunting for bears out here,” he said. “Last year, 17 dogs
were killed by wolves, and that’s gotten to be rather controversial among
houndsmen out here.”
He said the great number of deer in the three states helps keep the wolves
fed and away from livestock operations.
Wisconsin already plays a role in managing wolves to the tune of about
$250,000 annually. That doesn’t include money paid out when wolves kill
livestock.
“That can range from less than $10,000 a year to more than $70,000,” said
Wydeven. One year the state had to pay out around $40,000 when a wolf pack
invaded a private deer farm. “So my advice for what’s happening out West
is, don’t include deer farms on any payment plans.”