JESSICA VANEGEREN | The Capital Times
Despite Wisconsin’s second wolf hunting season getting underway Tuesday, the controversy surrounding the removal of wolves from the endangered species list in 2011 and the contentious debate over how to manage the wolf population continues to play out between sportsmen, scientists and the state Department of Natural Resources.
On Tuesday, roughly two dozen members of Friends of the Wisconsin Wolf gathered outside the state Capitol, hoisting “real hunters don’t kill wolves” signs and calling for an end to wolf hunting in Wisconsin. The wolf hunt lasts through the end of February.
“We don’t believe in the spirit killing or thrill killing of wolves,” said Madison resident Melissa Smith, a member of the group. “There is no legitimate reason to be hunting wolves in Wisconsin.”
Smith said Friends of the Wisconsin Wolf is opposed to the state’s wolf management plan. She said the plan is not based on science, which shows the wolf population as threatened. The DNR estimates there are roughly 800 wolves in Wisconsin.
The demonstration by Friends of the Wisconsin Wolf also comes the same day that DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp released an op-ed defending the state’s wolf management plan after a Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism article cited sharp criticism of the plan from numerous scientists.
The article focused on the DNR’s decision to allow hunters to harvest 275 wolves this season. According to the DNR, that would reduce the state’s wolf population by 13 percent and move it closer to its goal of a wolf population of 350.
“My opinion is the 350 number is the one people who simply don’t like wolves have seized upon,” Timothy Van Deelen, a wildlife ecologist and associate professor at UW-Madison, told the Investigative Center. “You have a lot of the stakeholders who don’t know the science or feel any obligation to the science.”
The state wolf committee, which Van Deelen is not a member of, is one of 16 wildlife advisory committees that were revamped this spring to exclude university researchers and reduce DNR staff, a move that internal DNR records show was controversial among some of the agency’s scientists.
The committees now have more representation by interest groups, including sportsmen.
“If wildlife management was simply about doing research and then implementing what a study suggests, our wildlife managers would have a pretty straightforward and relatively easy job,” wrote Stepp in the op-ed. “However, wildlife management in Wisconsin and across the country is as much an art as it is a science. To ignore public sentiment and turn a blind eye to what society will accept will result in the failure of any policy, no matter how sound it may be from a scientist’s point of view.”
Stepp adds the article asserts a false premise that only hunters, trappers and ranchers want fewer wolves. She said what is not mentioned in the article are the votes by 18 Wisconsin County Boards that have passed advisory resolutions on wolf management, with 14 voting for 350 or less wolves and 4 voting for a goal of 350 wolves.
Those counties include Ashland, Burnett, Clark, Douglas, Florence, Forest, Iron, Jackson, Langlade, Lincoln, Marinette, Oconto, Oneida, Price, Rusk, Sawyer, Taylor, and Vilas.
“This is a taste of the social side of wolf management,” Stepp said. “The DNR strives to balance many of the social aspects of wolf management with the need, and the department’s responsibility, to manage the state’s wolf population.”
The start of the 2012 inaugural wolf hunt drew similar criticism over the validity of the wolf harvest number and strong opposition from the state’s tribes. The wolf is part of the tribal creation story and is highly regarded by tribal members.
“The wolf hunt is not something supported by the public,” Smith said. “This has become a politically-based, not a science-based, issue.”