Residents offer gray wolf plans
Conservation Congress hears ideas on controlling population
By Mike Hoeft
A Taylor County man says Wisconsin property owners should be allowed to kill gray wolves that prey on livestock or pets.
“It is high time that something different be done in Wisconsin in wolf management,” said Lawrence Krak of Gilman. Wolves were wrongly protected by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service more than 30 years ago, he said.
“Instead of being rewarded for killing a wolf, you were penalized with a huge fine and loss of hunting privileges,” Krak said.
Gray wolves are on the federal endangered species list, although Wisconsin removed them from its endangered list in 2004 because of successful recovery efforts and lists it as threatened.
Krak’s resolution on wolf management was one of dozens of resolutions submitted by residents and acted on Thursday at the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, which is holding its annual meeting this week at Lambeau Field in Green Bay.
The Conservation Congress is an independent organization of Wisconsin residents elected by county residents to represent their county’s interests to the state Department of Natural Resources.
Without discussion, members of the Rules and Resolutions Committee voted Thursday to refer Krak’s resolution to the DNR wolf study committee.
By the 1950s, wolves had been hunted into extinction in Wisconsin, then began to return to the state with protected status since the 1970s.
After Wisconsin began its wolf recovery plan, the gray wolf population grew from zero in 1973 to about 450 in 2005.
The Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation said in a statement the gray wolf needs to be de-listed so the DNR can better manage the wolf population. The state plan generally calls for wolves to be left alone, except near farms and outside northern forest areas.
In 2005, a total of 300 cattle and 2,700 calves were killed by predators in Wisconsin, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics. Two-thirds were killed by coyotes with one-third killed by wolves and bears.
The farm bureau supports a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan to create a new population segment in the western Great Lakes in order to de-list the gray wolf from the Endangered Species list.
According to the farm bureau, the plan is needed because a federal judge in 2005 stopped the Fish and Wildlife Service’s plan to de-list the gray wolf in the Eastern recovery zone, which included Wisconsin. While wolves have made a recovery in the Great Lakes region, the recovery has not advanced similarly in states in the Northeast and West that were also included in the Eastern recovery zone.
This proposal would pull the Great Lakes region out of that larger recovery zone, giving the Wisconsin DNR greater tools to manage the gray wolf population in the state, the farm bureau said.
“The Wisconsin landscape cannot handle any more wolves. We are having problems with wolves and we need to be able to deal with them,” said Jeff Lyon, director of governmental relations with the Wisconsin Farm Bureau.
The farm bureau said the plan will de-list the wolf from threatened to a nonlisted, nongame species when the wolf population reaches 250 animals based on late winter count. A management goal of 350 is recommended.
To address concerns over the lost value of livestock, the farm bureau worked with DNR and state legislators last year on a rule to provide payment to farmers for depredation caused to livestock by gray wolves.