By Anita Zimmerman, Regional Editor
DULUTH, Minn. — A Minnesota symposium on protecting wolves and the start of Wisconsin’s second annual wolf hunting season are conflicting events that characterize a discordant view of the species.
On one hand, Jamie Rappaport Clark told her audience Oct. 11 at the International Wolf Symposium in Duluth, Minn., ranchers in Southwestern states despise the predators that kill their livestock.
On the other hand, they are beginning to tolerate wolves and accept their place in the ecosystem.
Wolf experts from around the U.S. and the world came together for the symposium, which took place Oct. 10-13 at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center. Topics included wolf/human and wolf/livestock interaction, management strategies, ecology issues and recovery.
Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under President Bill Clinton, Clark is now the president and chief executive officer of Defenders of Wildlife, a wildlife conservation and advocacy organization headquartered in Washington, D.C.
In her presentation on the Endangered Species Act and wolf recovery, Clark talked about how conservationists are appealing to ranchers to protect a species that is no longer endangered, in the legal sense, but which conservationists believe is not necessarily sustainable either.
They make their case the old-fashioned way — by going door-to-door and standing face-to-face.
“This is wolf conservation at the ground level, one rancher at a time,” Clark said.
“The Aldo Leopold-type hunters” understand balance and the benefit of predators in the natural landscape, Clark said, and she hopes all will “recognize that wolves are indeed a part of our wildlife heritage.”
“The debate is not about hunting,” she said. “It’s about wolf sustainability.”
But in Wisconsin, at least in the last couple of years, the debate has been about hunting.
Representing Wisconsin at the symposium was Adrian Wydeven, a Department of Natural Resources ecologist who was once in charge of protecting the state’s gray wolf population. His Oct. 13 talk was titled, “Gray Wolves in Wisconsin: From Extirpation to Game Species.”
Wydeven’s responsibilities changed a couple of years ago when gray wolves were delisted as endangered species and given into the charge of wildlife managers.
At that point, carnivore specialist David MacFarland took over the wolf program, and Brad Koele was tasked with handling depredation.
Wisconsin’s inaugural wolf hunting season of 2012 stirred up hunters and conservationists alike but survived the clash. The state’s second annual wolf hunting season began Oct. 15 and runs through February.
A total of 275 permits were issued this year, 251 to state hunters and the rest in the ceded territories.
Koele is in his second year of overseeing wolf depredation cases and other livestock/wildlife conflicts. He works out of the DNR’s Woodruff office in Oneida County.
He said more than 70 wolves were trapped last year following unpleasant interactions with livestock.
“We do have lethal control ability this year again, and so far we’ve had 46 wolves removed by trappers,” he said. Eleven more have been removed by landowners.
Despite last year’s losses, the wolf population was stable last winter, he said. For farmers, the outcome has been positive.
“This year, I don’t have the final numbers, but it looks like livestock depredation is down, which is good,” Koele said.
Wolves prefer large blocks of contiguous forest, which is why they are so prevalent in the northern part of the state. However, they are adaptable, and the animals have been spotted in more populous southern counties, including Dane and Jefferson, this year.
Koele said wolves prey on livestock — sheep, cattle, horses, goats, fowl, etc. — and hunting and pet dogs. They also harass herds. He is currently working on an Adams County case where a harassed herd of cattle ran into a cranberry bog and caused an estimated $80,000 in crop damage.
Although the state compensates farmers who lose animals, there is no system for secondary losses in crops, milk production, fencing and the like. Koele figures in the Adams County case, the insurance companies for both the farmer and the grower will have to work it out.
Wolves are not the only wildlife that kill domestic animals. Coyotes, bears and bobcats are responsible for a number of deaths each year, but they don’t get nearly the publicity — or cause nearly the stir — that wolves do.
Koele believes the protection of wolves is part of the reason. When gray wolves were federally listed as endangered species, farmers had no reliable way to rid themselves of aggressive individuals or packs.
Then, there’s Little Red Riding Hood.
“I think it’s just kind of the history of the animal,” he said. “Wolves, for a lot of people, have kind of a negative connotation.”
When wolves were listed, federal law prohibited killing them, so in the early 1990s, problem animals were trapped and moved around the state, or “translocated” in official terminology, to reduce harassment and depredation of livestock.
Twenty years later, there are state residents who believe wolves are being “stocked” by the DNR, or moved from neighboring states. Koele said those claims have no factual basis.
He advises landowners with livestock to use guard animals; fladry (tying ribbon-like flagging around perimeter fences); move stock closer to the barn; or, for a more temporary fix, turn on strobe lights to scare off predators.
A few pet dogs have been killed by wolves in 2013, but Koele said the number of hunting dog deaths — 23 this year alone — is a more telling statistic. Dogs will be allowed during this year’s wolf hunt, so that number is expected to rise.
DNR officials will not know the cost of depredation until year’s end. The state has spent nearly $1.6 million on wolf depredation claims since 1985, according to a chart on the DNR website.
Effective in 2012, funding for compensation is sourced from the sales of wolf trapping and hunting licenses. Farmers whose animals were killed or injured can expect to wait for months before receiving compensation this year, and they can also legally kill a wolf attacking their stock.
The death of a single hunting dog can still net $2,500 in compensation, although hunters who use dogs for wolf hunting will not be compensated for those deaths. As with cattle and other stock, the amount given for each animal is decided on a case-by-case basis.
Online, skeptics argue farmers could be gaming the system — failing to take adequate measures to protect their stock, for example — to get more money from the state.
Given that wolf harassment or attack can cost a farmer far more than a single animal — the cranberry bog, for example — Koele doesn’t believe anyone would be motivated by compensation.
“A lot more problems can come up, not just the depredation,” he said.
While farmers concern themselves with their livestock, Koele thinks most landowners also respect natural predators.
“My feeling is statewide, there is support for wolves here,” he said. “I think most people support wolves in this state. Our goal in the department is obviously to have a sustainable population.”