by Angie Riebe, Mesabi Daily News
ELY — The gray wolf population is on the rise, even as wolf hunts in some northern states, including Minnesota, have been canceled by a federal judge’s ruling.
“It’s great to see gray wolf populations doing well across much of the American landscape,” said Rob Schultz, executive director of the International Wolf Center in Ely. “With continued efforts to conserve and manage our wildlands, both wolves and humans can effectively co-exist and continue to prosper.”
Yet, wolf hunts that were being touted as a measure to successfully manage the wolf population will need federal legislation to once again be scheduled in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Meanwhile, 15 wolves have been trapped in the past four months in Minnesota after attacks on domestic animals.
According to the IWC, a minimum of 5,600 gray wolves now live in the U.S. outside of Alaska. Recent state counts of gray wolves from the Upper Midwest through the West and Southwest show that populations are faring well in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona, and New Mexico — and are increasing in several of these states.
The Upper Midwest is home to some 3,700 wolves, while a minimum of 1,800 inhabit the West. After years of effort, even the numbers of Mexican wolves, a local race of the gray wolf, have increased to more than 100 in the past year, according to the IWC.
The only exception to the growing wolf population trend is in North Carolina, where the critically-endangered population of red wolves has dropped by more than 10 percent during the past two years. Recent estimates report that less than 90 red wolves are known to exist in the wild.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists gray wolves as endangered except in Minnesota, where they are classed as threatened.
In Idaho and Montana they are state-managed and subject to public hunting and trapping, yet their populations are holding their own or increasing, according to researchers.
But a ruling last December that relisted gray wolves as endangered in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Wyoming has halted wolf hunting seasons in those states.
The Washington, D.C., judge’s ruling tossed a decision by the Barack Obama administration that delisted the estimated 3,7000 gray wolves in the western Great Lakes region. Another federal judge had ruled in September that Wyoming no longer had wolf management authority, which returned that state’s wolves to federal protections under the Endangered Species Act.
Several members of Congress, including 7th District Democratic U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan and 7th District Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson, are supporting legislation to undo the ruling that relisted gray wolves as endangered in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Wyoming. Minnesota’s U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken have also come out in support of such a bill.