Tomah man honored for work with wolves
By Keith Zukas
Richard Thiel was honored this summer for his work educating the public about wolves through the Timber Wolf Information Network (TWIN). The timber wolf, or grey wolf, was taken off the endangered species list in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan last March.
It was neat to be recognized for something we had put our careers into, said Thiel. Many of us had started out of college with this goal, and it finally paid off this year when the wolves were delisted.
Many states put bounties on wolves in the late 1950s. Wolves were exterminated in Wisconsin by the early 1960s and were extinct in every state except Minnesota. There, in a small northeastern region near Arrowhead, a small population persisted.
People dont like wolves because of the roles they play in myths and fairytales where they are portrayed as bad animals, said Thiel. Biologists believe there are systems in life like predation, which are necessary. Were augmenting the restoration of a population that never should have been messed with in the first place.
It wasnt until 1973 when the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service worked with the Endangered Species Act to put wolves on the endangered list. In 1978 a federal plan was created to reestablish a stable population of wolves in Minnesota. The plan also allowed the natural spread and growth of new populations in Wisconsin and Michigans Upper Peninsula.
Wisconsin delisted wolves from the states endangered species list 25 years later in 2003, but the federal government waited until last winter to remove them from its list. Because the federal list has authority over the states, wolves were still endangered in Wisconsin until last March.
The State will now begin a wolf management plan, which weighs environmental and social caring capacities to determine healthy wolf populations. Environmental capacity is how much natural habitat is available for wolves in the state. Social caring capacity refers to tolerance for wolves by state residents, which is typically far less.
An alfa wolf pair (male and female) typically have five or six pups each year, but only about half survive more than a couple years. Two generations of the pups will stay with their parents until they leave on their own or find a new pack.
The longest recorded distance a Wisconsin wolf has traveled is 500 miles, said Thiel. He was radio collared and traveled across rivers, forrests and roads in three states. He almost made it to Ohio.
Today there are an estimated 540-577 timber wolves in Wisconsin and the population is still rebounding. Thiel remembers when he used to have to travel to northern Wisconsin to find them, but he now knows of two packs in the Tomah area.
One area pack is in the forest at Fort McCoy and another is northeast of Tomah. He has tracked wolves near the Black River State Forest as well.
This summer Thiel traveled to Washington, D.C., to accept his award for wolf education. He was Wisconsins first wolf biologist and spent much of his time tracking and studying wolf populations. He is also a founding member of TWIN in 1989. In D.C., Thiel received a Collaboration Honor Award from the U.S. Department of the Interior for his efforts in supporting wolf recovery.
A lot of people hate wolves, and others think wolves can do no wrong, said Thiel. We dont deify them or vilify them. We try to stay in the middle of the row, but we know that they need to be protected.