Wolf population reaches new high
Up to 590 in state; human conflicts rise
By LEE BERGQUIST
Wisconsin’s resurgent gray wolf population reached a record high over the winter as signs of conflict with humans appear to be on the rise.
The state’s preliminary count jumped to as many as 590 wolves, the Department of Natural Resources reported Tuesday.
That compared with a maximum count of 502 during the winter of 2005-’06, the DNR said.
Meanwhile, the agency reported the killing of a wolf on March 28 in Price County, west of Park Falls, when a landowner found it chasing his border collie.
It was the first such instance in Wisconsin of a citizen legally killing a wolf in more than 50 years after wolves were removed from the federal government’s list of endangered species on March 12.
Wolves are now managed by the DNR as a protected species.
The DNR also reported that a pack of wolves attacked and killed a bird hunting dog on April 7 near Tomahawk in the Harrison Hills region of Lincoln County.
“It’s highly unusual for wolves to attack bird dogs,” said Adrian Wydeven, a wolf ecologist for the DNR.
The hunter was in the woods training his dog, Wydeven said.
Three other wolves have been trapped and killed in northwestern Wisconsin by personnel of the U.S. Department of Agriculture since wolves were removed from the federal list of endangered species in the western Great Lakes.
The cases are the inevitable outcome of a growing wolf population, Wydeven said.
He said he was surprised by the over-winter estimate of 539 to 590 wolves, and thought the population would have approached about 500.
The count does not include pups born this spring and nine wolves that are believed to live on Indian reservations.
The DNR believes Wisconsin’s landscape has the ability to support 300 to 500 wolves.
The winter population estimate is the highest measure since wolves returned to Wisconsin from Minnesota in the mid-1970s. Wisconsin may have been home to 3,000 to 5,000 wolves before European settlement, according to the DNR.
Wydeven attributes the rise in the population to several factors:
An abundance of public land, a teeming deer population and wolves’ own population dynamics that, like turkeys and Canada geese, has grown steadily “and then just seems to have taken off.”
Another factor is a “fairly tolerant public,” he said, and in some circles, a deep reverence for an animal that graces Wisconsin’s endangered resources license plate.
But today, Wydeven said the population is too high and has engendered growing animosity among some groups, such as livestock farmers.
“I’m not surprised” by the new estimate, said Eric Koens of the Wisconsin Cattlemen’s Association. “Everybody is seeing more wolves.”
In a related matter, animal advocacy groups filed suit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Monday for removing wolves from the endangered species list in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan.
The suit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., claims that wolves remain endangered in the three states.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.