Wisconsin finds itself in dance with wolves
Efforts to save the animals have worked so well, officials are looking to
reduce the population
By James Janega – Chicago Tribune
BLACK RIVER FALLS, Wis. — In a state where wolves vanished a generation
ago, the animals now hunt deer through cranberry bogs and run in small
packs through the suburbs of Green Bay.
Locals who once wondered if they would ever encounter a wild wolf say they
now hear howling with unnerving frequency, that it runs chills up their
spines on quiet nights and makes normally insubordinate dogs enthusiastic
about coming inside.
State wildlife officials believe enough wolves live at the edges of
Wisconsin’s cities and towns–to say nothing of its forests and
marshes–that it is time to revisit the animal’s status as a threatened
species.
Privately, even those working to restore wolves to Wisconsin are beginning
to wonder if a clash with mankind is inevitable, and if managing their
growing population may eventually mean allowing people to shoot them.
“There’s a finite amount of space for wolves in this world, and you’re
reaching the place where wolves are melding with an amazing sea of
humanity. And that border country’s called Wisconsin,” said Dick Thiel,
monitoring coordinator for Wisconsin’s central forest.
Only four years after being taken off the endangered species list,
Wisconsin’s estimated 335 wolves may have their status upgraded to a
“state protected species,” bringing them into the company of
yellow-bellied racer snakes and uniform brambles.
For landowners, the change in status would mean they could get permits to
shoot miscreant wolves that hunt livestock and family pets, rather than
needing to call state officials to trap or kill them.
For many others it is a powerful symbol of the animal’s resurgence in an
area where even advocates did not think they would be able to return as
recently as a decade ago.
Long road back
The last native wolf in Wisconsin was shot by a bounty hunter in the late
1950s. The current population came back on its own in the mid-1970s,
trotting from Minnesota into one-time wilderness area now heavily bisected
by roads and human settlements.
The push to remove Wisconsin’s wolves from state threatened species rolls
is being closely watched by environmental groups, backwoods hunting
associations and federal wildlife managers, who likely will take wolves
off U.S. threatened species lists in the eastern half of the country as
early as 2005.
“The Great Lakes are going to be the exemplar for what happens to wolves
after federal control, to see how states will manage them,” said Nina
Fascione, vice president of species conservation for the national watchdog
group Defenders of Wildlife.
In Wisconsin the wolves are monitored by the state Department of Natural
Resources, on whose behalf Ellen Heilhecker bounces down a frozen dirt
road at least once a week with what looks like a television antenna in the
bed of a brown pickup truck.
The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point graduate student listens for
signals from radio collars on some 30 wolves she has trapped and tagged,
spending hours a day alone in a truck cab listening for a metronome tick
hidden in the static of an old radio.
Sometimes, hearing that tick is as close to the wolves as she gets. Other
times, she carries dead pups from the country highways where they were hit
by cars.
Lately, she has worried about their safety. A wolf named Flint has taught
four pups to make easy meals out of roadkill, leaving them vulnerable to
hunters and drivers as they play on the side of busy thoroughfares.
Two of Flint’s pups have died. Heilhecker found one on a highway shoulder.
She suspects the other was also hit by a car. “Flint does look both ways
before crossing the street,” Heilhecker said. “I don’t know if her pups
do.”
Researchers with the DNR say the roadkill scavenging highlights the
intelligence and adaptability of wolves. But to Wisconsin activist Norm
Poulton, of the Environmentally Concerned Citizens of the Lakeland Area,
it illustrates challenges the animals face in the state.
“The wolf is coming back to a far different Wisconsin than their ancestors
occupied, simply because northern Wisconsin is being fragmented at an
alarming rate,” Poulton said.
Paper companies have logged and sold forested land as individual acreage,
while more roads are built every year, making encounters between wolves
and man still more likely, he said.
“[The population] now is too much,” said Dan Goffard, a hunter from
DePere, who increasingly has crossed paths with wolves in Wisconsin
forests, including a meeting unsettlingly close to his home in the suburbs
of Green Bay.
On the hunt
He was using dogs to chase a bear he was hunting when one started tracking
a wolf instead.
“There were two of them at first, but when they went circling around, I
saw four at one time,” Goffard said. “They’re making a comeback, and
they’re moving south into populated areas.”
Wolves were named an endangered species in the U.S. in 1974, a year after
passage of the federal Endangered Species Act, and were put on Wisconsin’s
endangered species rolls in 1975.
Wisconsin reclassified the wolf as a threatened species in 1999, and
federal wildlife authorities reclassified them as a threatened species in
April.
Removing wolves altogether from federal lists in the eastern U.S. is
expected if Wisconsin upgrades them from a threatened species to state
protected.
Moving wolves off of state lists is largely symbolic until federal
officials follow suit, which then allows greater flexibility to deal with
problem animals. Landowners could then trap or shoot wolves if they get
state permission.
“The population actually is not stable,” Thiel said. “It’s increasing. The
question soon will be, what do you do with the excess wolves?”
Ninety-four wolf packs make their home in northern and central Wisconsin,
each containing three to five wolves.
Last year, a lone wolf with an ear tag from one of Heilhecker’s central
Wisconsin packs was shot in northern Indiana. Somehow, somewhere, it snuck
past or through Chicago.
Wisconsin packs run from Danbury to Kingsford, Mich., and from Lake
Superior to within a half-hour’s drive of Portage. Besides the group near
Black River Falls, several are making their way toward the Upper Peninsula
of Michigan, while another central Wisconsin pack is welcome in Ocean
Spray’s cranberry bogs because they hunt deer that gulp down $30,000 worth
of berries a season.
Neighborly gesture
“They’re good neighbors,” said Flying Dollar Farms manager Kirby Rice, who
has watched with satisfaction as three wolves repeatedly drive marauding
deer into ambushes on the company’s cranberry acreage near Bear Bluff.
He does not mind them even though they tussle often with one of his guard
dogs and once bit his family’s pet spaniel on the rump. “He was just
teaching the dog a lesson,” Rice said.
Even federal officials were surprised with how quickly the wolves came
back in Wisconsin, said Ron Refsnider, endangered species coordinator at
the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Minneapolis office.
That seemed to happen in the late 1980s, he said. Until then, the wolf
population in Wisconsin hovered around 20. It reached about 100 in the
mid-1990s and more than 300 in 2002.
Having a state population of 250 for two years in a row triggered the
current round of reclassification, officials said.
Despite satisfaction in wolf recovery, Wisconsin conservationists believe
it would be irresponsible to let the population grow much further.
“We’re at that point of reaching what we’re calling the `social carrying
capacity.’ Obviously, we can’t support great numbers of wolves without
basically rising the ire of the public, and we’re at that point,” Thiel
said. “The western world just doesn’t want to have big mega-predators
running around anymore.”