Return of the wolf
By BETSY BLOOM / Of the Tribune staff
FORT McCOY, Wis. – She is called Sassafras, or Milly, depending on who you talk
to at Fort McCoy. And for her, Friday the 13th did prove to be an unlucky day.
A tree stump dabbed with a special blend of coyote urine and ground beaver meat
was her undoing. The leghold trap, thought too small to hold a wolf, snapped at
just the right spot between her right footpad and two toes.
Staff Sgt. Jeff Sarver, who sets a trap line on Fort McCoy when not working
with the installation’s explosive ordinance disposal unit, knew when he was
still a quarter-mile away that he had caught something different than he
expected Dec. 13.
He still walked within six feet of the panting animal, fascinated by the sight.
“She had these really big, giant, piercing eyes, just staring at me,” Sarver
said. Then he called one of the fort’s biologists.
Tim Wilder, endangered species biologist at Fort McCoy, has known since 1999
that wolves were roaming the dense pine and oak woodlands at the installation.
But the trapped female was the first time he’d actually seen one of the animals
he had been filing reports on years.
“It was just pretty exciting, as a biologist, to get to work with an animal
like this,” Wilder said.
When the wolf was released a few hours later, two toes broken but otherwise
none the worse for the experience, she had been tranquilized, fully examined
and blood samples taken for analysis.
She also was fitted with radio collar, which has allowed Wilder and the
Department of Natural Resources to pinpoint, on a weekly basis, just where she
is in Monroe County.
And she had two names. Sassafras was assigned by the radio collar. But Sarver,
as the person who captured her, was told he got to name the animal. He
christened her Milly.
“She was beautiful, let me tell you,” said Dick Thiel, central forest wolf
monitoring coordinator for the Department of Natural Resources, who came down
from Wood County to see the Fort McCoy female. “That was a gorgeous lady
there.”
In the late summer of 1999, wolf tracks began showing up on Fort McCoy lands.
It was not the first time a wolf had wandered onto the installation, which is
not far from territories in Jackson and Juneau counties that had already been
colonized by the predator.
But this time, the same set of tracks kept turning up on the fort roads. The
wolf, which from its marking behavior and size of its footprints was judged to
be a large male, appeared to have claimed Fort McCoy as home.
In 2001, he disappeared from the installation for a short period, and then the
single set of wolf tracks became a pair. Wilder figured their male went off the
fort to find a mate, which could be the recently trapped female. But he failed
to find any signs this summer that the two had pups or established a den site.
The trapped female did not show signs of ever having born a litter, even though
at age 3 or 4 she is old enough for breeding, Thiel said. But in most packs,
only the alpha male and female are allowed to breed, which is one reason why
young wolves go off in search of new territory.
Since the female was collared Dec. 13, however, Wilder has identified at least
four separate sets of tracks. And a bowhunter in late December told Wilder he
saw five wolves, one limping, one of them black. The largest came within about
15 yards of his stand, apparently trying to figure out what was behind the
white camouflage.
It raises the strong possibility, Wilder said, that this spring could see the
first wolves born in Monroe County in roughly a century.
The presence of wolves deep into Wisconsin’s central forest region is one
reason why the gray wolf, once hunted to the edge of extermination in the
United States, is expected to be removed from the federal Endangered Species
List in the next few weeks.
Gray wolves once roamed all of Wisconsin, but their decline coincided with the
arrival of European settlers who viewed the predator as a threat to livestock
and competitor for wild game. As late as 1957, the state still offered a bounty
on wolves.
The species was gone from southern Wisconsin by the end of the 1880s, and 1914
marked the last wolf killed in central Wisconsin. By 1930, wolves had been
driven to the extreme northern counties of the state. The species was
classified as extripated – extinct in Wisconsin – from 1960 to 1975, when a
wolf pack was confirmed south of the Duluth-Superior area.
With protection and a shift in public attitude, wolves have managed to spread
south and east in Wisconsin at a much faster pace than the DNR envisioned,
Thiel said. Last year, the state’s population topped 350, the target the DNR
had set in its management plan for removing the wolf completely from
protection.
“Having them colonize the central forest was a shock for me,” said Thiel. “I
thought they couldn’t get here, stay alive to get here.”
Multiple packs now roam parts of Jackson County, Necedah National Wildlife
Refuge in Juneau County and Adams County. As those packs grow in number, the
young wolves are pushed out and have to find their own territory.
In some respects, the species’ move into Fort McCoy was natural, since it is
not far from the Black River State Forest. But for years, Interstate 94
appeared to be a barrier the wolves were reluctant to cross, Thiel said.
Thus far, those monitoring the central forest packs have not confirmed any
livestock losses, though a few hunting hounds have been killed by wolves, which
normally will not tolerate another canine in their territory, Thiel said.
“They’ve behaved admirably well,” he said.
But as reports of wolves killing livestock in northern Wisconsin have grown, so
have calls for stronger control measures, which would require a change in the
federal status. If the wolf is reduced from endangered to threatened, animals
that attack livestock or pets could be killed rather than relocated as is now
done.
Public sentiment in Wisconsin has been generally favorable toward the wolf’s
return – a wolf’s picture is on the state’s endangered species license plate –
but that could shift if the wolf becomes more of a menace to livestock and
pets, Thiel said.
“When they first see a wolf track, that’s cool,” he noted. “Then the neighbor’s
dog gets whacked, and they change their attitudes.”
Some landowners around Fort McCoy already are questioning whether the wolf
should be welcomed back into an area bracketed by farms and residential
properties.
“I’m not really in favor of the wolves,” said Dwaine Griffin, who raises beef
cattle on his property just east of the fort, and has seen a wolf crossing his
land. “They think they should have stuff back like it used to be, but I don’t
think they want to turn off their electric lights or give up their cars.
“Maybe the concern is unfounded, but you just don’t know. And you’re scared of
what you don’t know.”
So could La Crosse area residents someday hear howls ringing down from the
river bluffs?
The chances that wolves would someday spread into La Crosse County and farther
south are seen as remote, though DNR wildlife experts say nothing can be ruled
out in light of the species’ successful return to other parts of the state.
Fort McCoy, with much of its land left undeveloped for military training
purposes, represented the last patch of central forest left to colonize, Thiel
said.
“In the Coulee Region, where there’s more of a mixture of farmlands, permanent
packs are unlikely,” said Adrian Wydeven, the DNR’s mammalian ecologist, who
has studied wolves in the state for more than a decade.
In 1999, one female wolf was tracked as she made a wide loop through the state,
crossing east to almost Green Bay, then south into Portage and western
Wisconsin before she returned to Minnesota. She came within perhaps 10 miles of
La Crosse, Wydeven said.
If wolves did come to La Crosse County, both Wydeven and Thiel agree it’s
likely they would favor the Mississippi River bottomlands. In the central
forest, even at Fort McCoy, the animals seem reluctant to stray too far outside
what Thiel described as the state’s “wildest places.”
“But these are adaptable animals, this is an adaptable situation,” Thiel said.
“You learn, never say never.”