Sportsmen offer wolf hunt regulations
Associated Press
MADISON, Wis.
A group of outdoorsmen has offered wolf hunt regulations to state wildlife officials.
The Wisconsin Conservation Congress suggests the hunt be restricted to state residents and charging a $10 license application fee and a $100 license fee. A license would be granted only once in a hunter’s lifetime.
The congress suggested the same regulations back in 1999. The group and the Natural Resources Board are scheduled to discuss them at a meeting next week.
Federal wildlife officials removed wolves from the endangered list in Wisconsin last year. That means the state Department of Natural Resources can authorize a hunt to help manage them if their population grows beyond 350.
DNR estimates released Tuesday put the population at between 537 and 564 over the past winter, or about the same as a year earlier.
DNR wolf specialist Adrian Wydeven said the growth in wolf numbers appears to be slowing down or leveling off as the population approaches the maximum number of wolves that the heavily forested areas of the state can support comfortably.
The gray wolf was wiped out in the state by the late 1950s after decades of bounty hunting, but once they were granted protection in the 1970s under the Endangered Species Act, wolves began migrating into the state from Minnesota. The population has been growing ever since.