By 6 News Web Staff
(WLNS) – The Department of Natural Resources today is appealing a federal court ruling last year returning wolves in Michigan and Wisconsin to the endangered species list.
Today’s appeal, filed by the Michigan Attorney General’s office, is asking the court to uphold the December 2011 decision that removed the wolves from the federal endangered species list.
“Returning wolf management to wildlife professionals in the state of Michigan is critical to retaining a recovered, healthy, and socially-accepted wolf population in our state,” said DNR Director Keith Creagh. “Michigan residents who live with wolves deserve to have a full range of tools available to sustainably manage that population.”
According to the DNR, wolves in Michigan are 15 years past the federally-set population recovery goals. The state will argue against the December 2014 federal district ruling that the wolves must recover across their entire range, which includes the lower 48 states and Mexico, before Michigan’s wolf population can be removed from the federal endangered species list.
Michigan’s wolf population numbers approximately 636 in the state’s Upper Peninsula. With the return to federal protection in December 2014, the DNR lost the authority to use a variety of wolf management methods, including lethal control, to minimize wolf conflict with humans, livestock and dogs. The change in status also suspended state authority that allowed livestock and dog owners to protect their animals from wolf depredation when wolves are in the act of attacking those animals.
The federal district court’s December 2014 decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Humane Society of the United States, in which the State of Michigan participated as a defendant-intervener arguing against returning the Great Lakes DPS of wolves to the endangered species list.