John Weiss
LA CRESCENT — Lisa Radtke loves and admires wolves, how they live so well in packs, how they are an iconic animal for wilderness.
They are “very intelligent, social, family members,” said the rural La Crescent woman. “They teach us how to live in the world. They teach us how to please; they are very loving of their family.” In fact, “they are not unlike we are,” she said.
Because of that passion, she opposed Minnesota’s first hunting/trapping season that ended in early January and opposes having another season beginning this fall.
“I see them as majestic beings in our world that, for me, are a symbol of the wild,” she said. Being wild is “an invitation to one’s true nature; the wolf represents that invitation to honor my own true nature … to stand tall, to claim my own voice, to protect what I love and to live in harmony with the world around me. I guess, in a way, there is a spiritual connection with the wolf and all of nature … it is about connection in the end.”
She said she grew up around Appleton, Wis., and “I always had this appreciation for nature,” she said. She loved to feed squirrels and birds. “I always felt I was connected to the land; I felt very one with the spirit, one with God when I’m out on the land.”
In 1992, Radtke took part in trying to find wolves in Idaho through Wolf Haven International. She and others would go out and howl as the lowest member of the park to try to locate wolves that were naturally coming into the area.
That love of the animal continues today.
Radtke acknowledges some wolves might have to be killed if they are killing livestock. They are like people — they don’t pass up an easy meal. “I empathize with farmers who lose livestock,” she said. But there can be other ways to protect livestock such as specially-trained dogs. “If we could do more of that and live in harmony, that would be my preference,” said the human resources director at Mayo Clinic Health System – Franciscan Health Care in La Crosse, Wis.
The other part of her reason for calling for an end of the hunting/trapping season is she doesn’t think there are as many wolves as the state says. The population is only an estimate, she said.
Even if it’s right, “they are maintaining their own number naturally,” she said. “We don’t eat wolves as food. We don’t take them for a purpose like we do for the deer population, so I struggle with the need to hunt them.”
If there are too many, maybe some will starve, she said. “If that’s nature, that’s nature,” she said.
Trapping them puts them in a situation when they are in fear. “That brings me to tears to think about it,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like that’s far to me like fair hunting.”
She’s not anti-hunter but “I am for wildlife living wildly in their own way,” she said.
If she had a chance to talk with those who wants to hunt or trap wolves, she said she would note they see things differently and doesn’t see them as bad people. But she said she struggles with what this does to the animal and the fear it brings moments or hours before death. She would ask them why they do it
“Perhaps through the dialogue, we come to a place of mutual understanding and respect,” she said. “Perhaps then we can work toward mutual benefit for all, including our resident wolves.”