Wolf pack rumor debunked
By Sharon Roznik
The Reporter
Rumors that a wolf pack fitted with radio collars is roaming the Eden area of Fond du Lac County are unfounded.
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Biologist Mark Randall said his office has been inundated with calls and e-mails about wolves roaming the Northern Kettle Moraine State Forest.
The last report he received stated that there was a dead wolf in the road, apparently hit by a car, along Highway 45.
“It’s just another rumor that got started. We would never restore wolves in this part of the state. There’s too many people, too many roads, and too much agricultural land,” Randall said.
Investigations in the area by DNR officials have turned up no trace of wolf tracks, scat or hair.
Maybe coyotes
It’s possible people are spotting coyotes, Randall said, and it isn’t out of the question a lone wolf could have been traveling through that portion of the state. Reports of individual wolves in southern Wisconsin have been verified in recent years.
“They move in search of new territories,” said Wildlife Biologist Dan Weidert of Plymouth.
Already, the land in northern Wisconsin has reached its capacity for supporting the state’s growing wolf population, he said.
Some of Wisconsin’s radio-collared wolves have traveled as far as Indiana and Missouri and move back and forth into Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. They follow the river corridors and Great Lakes shorelines.
“A couple of wolves spotted in Manitowoc County in 2009 have come the closest to this area,” Randall said.
Management plan
The DNR’s management plan, completed in 1999, set a long-term management goal of 350 wolves outside of Indian reservations. In winter 2009, there were more than 626 wolves in the state and 162 wolf packs.
Randall believes the rumors about wolves in Eden may have gotten started last summer when DNR researchers were in Dundee and Mount Calvary conducting a blue-wing teal survival study.
“We had a pickup truck with a large antenna and we were trapping hens, fitting them with radio transmitters and then following the hens and their brood,” he explained.
Wolves are currently listed as a federally endangered species in Wisconsin. In the meantime, the DNR is updating its wolf management plan in preparation for having control and authority eventually returned to the state, including lethal control.
Although the Northern Kettle Moraine Forest may look like ideal territory for a wolf, Fond du Lac County has a 70 to 80 percent agricultural land base, Randall said. Landowners in the area the wolves were supposedly spotted have also debunked any sightings,
“The likelihood of getting a pack established in this part of the state is very low,” he said.
Additional Facts
Seen a wolf?
Wolf observations can be reported to the DNR at http://dnr.wi.gov/org/land/er/forms/rare_mammal.asp.