Wolf recovery has farmers howling
By DAN EGAN
Last Updated: Nov. 9, 2002
Grantsburg – It starts after sunset with howls echoing from the black
woods at the edge of the pasture.
Then the cows begin to moan.
It is the return of the endangered timber wolf. And for the Fornengo
family, there is nothing remotely romantic about it.
These beef cattle ranchers in northwestern Wisconsin say nighttime wolf
raids cost them 92 calves last year alone, and they expect similar losses
when the cattle are finally tallied for this year.
They say they are being driven out of business – and practically out of
their minds – by a wildlife recovery program run amok. When they think of
wolves, they see red.
Blood red.
They’ve found calves with their hindquarters shredded, still alive and
trying to suckle. They have stumbled upon a pregnant cow ripped open and
her fetus torn out. They have seen calves with crushed throats – dead
without losing a drop of blood. Killed, they believe, simply for the
thrill.
“You see pictures of (wolves) looking all pretty in the winter, but you
don’t see pictures of what they do,” says Cortney Fornengo, 19. She says
wolf numbers have increased so much in the past two years that she no
longer will walk alone in the woods around their ranch. “There is a reason
the farmers made (wolves) extinct before, and this is probably the
reason,” she says.
Reviled for their uncanny ability to make life hell for farmers, wolves
were shot, trapped, poisoned and eventually eradicated in Wisconsin by the
late 1950s. Now, three decades of federal and state efforts to restore the
species to the state are starting to pay off – in a big way.
Just over a decade ago, the state was home to less than a few dozen of the
deer-loving carnivores that had roamed over from Minnesota’s northern
timberlands. Today, packs are breeding here with abandon, and their
numbers easily top 300.
“I don’t know if we ever thought we would be at this point. We figured 100
or 150 wolves may be as many as the state could hold,” says Adrian Wydeven
of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
In Wisconsin’s North Woods, the wolves have reclaimed their spot as the
top carnivore, but the federal government has yet to formally acknowledge
that success.
The wolf in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is still listed as
endangered under the Endangered Species Act, and that means each animal,
no matter how problematic for a farmer, is still protected and cared for
as if it were worthy of a berth on Noah’s ark.
Most wolves live off deer, though some develop a taste for livestock. So
as wolf numbers climb, so do problems for some farmers. Last year alone,
Wydeven says 17 hunting dogs were also killed by wolves.
Now even the staunchest wolf advocates agree it is time to reclassify the
animals as “threatened,” which would allow government workers to kill
problem animals. Minnesota wolves have been classified as threatened since
1978.
The federal government first proposed the switch for Wisconsin and the
U.P. more than two years ago, but the papers have yet to be signed –
thanks, basically, to a tangle of red tape in Washington, D.C. One of the
problems is that Wisconsin’s reclassification is lumped in with a proposal
to change protection levels for wolves in the West. That is a highly
emotional and political issue, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is
proceeding cautiously.
Still, the reclassification should come before year’s end, and most expect
the species could be listed as officially recovered within a couple of
years. That could open the door to limited wolf hunts.
Meanwhile, trapping and relocating problem animals are the only options to
help people such as Cortney Fornengo’s father, Tony. He says the process
is too slow, and there is no guarantee problem wolves won’t return in a
couple of days.
When it comes to wolves, Tony Fornengo can be an emotional and sometimes
foul-mouthed fellow. Some wildlife workers just shake their heads when his
name comes up. But people do agree he has a problem that could be fixed
with the stroke of a pen.
“I’m frustrated by the slow pace of the (reclassification) process
probably just as much as the folks out there with wolves in their
pastures,” says Ron Refsnider, regional endangered species listing
coordinator for U.S. Fish & Wildlife in Minnesota.
Probably not.
As Fornengo pilots his big black Dodge turbo diesel pickup truck across
one of the muddy pastures on the family ranch that stretches over more
than 2,000 acres and straddles the Wisconsin-Minnesota border north of
Grantsburg, he looks past his herd and off into the woods. He knows there
are yellow eyes staring back.
He believes government wildlife officials secretly and illegally
reintroduced the animals to Wisconsin, something DNR officials say is
nonsense. “It’s a (expletive) nightmare around here,” he says. “Start
shooting the bastards, or let us kill them.”
He hears howls at night and gets so mad he can’t fall back asleep.
He says he is about to adopt a wolf-management policy he says some others
in the area already embrace. It’s called shoot, shovel and shut up. “It’s
gotten to the point where I’ll take care of it myself,” he says.
Warns Refsnider: “There is a risk. A very big risk.”
The maximum federal fine for killing an endangered wolf is up to $100,000
and six months in jail.
Wildlife officials acknowledge illegal killings are on the rise. In a
recent 12-month period, 15 wolves were found killed in Wisconsin. This
fall, four turned up shot in the U.P.
“In the past, we’d probably have one or two shot per year,” Wydeven says.
Fornengo insists he is left with little choice but to take the endangered
species law into his own hands.
The bleeding, he says, has spilled out of his pastures and into his
ledgers, and he is not sure how long he can keep operating the ranch his
father purchased in 1953. He says the wolves claimed $50,000 worth of
livestock last year alone.
State policy provides for Fornengo and other farmers to be reimbursed for
livestock lost to wolves, but state wildlife managers question Fornengo’s
numbers. Only nine of his losses last year could be confirmed. Fornengo
says wolves are such voracious eaters that they often leave no trace of
their kill on his expansive ranch lands, which are home to more than 1,200
head of cattle. State biologists remain dubious, but they did agree to pay
for about one-third of the family’s reported losses last year.
Fornengo sent back the check, hired a lawyer and has vowed to sue.
“I’m just trying to make an honest living,” he says.
Back from oblivion
Before he will talk about the issue, Fornengo wants to know one thing:
“Are you for the wolf, or against the wolf?”
He divides people into these two camps. His side is by far the underdog.
The wolf enjoys overwhelming support across America. Maybe it’s because
the creatures have been gone for so long they no longer seem so big and
bad. Maybe it is because people today have a greater appreciation for all
aspects of the environment, even the messy business that goes on at the
top of the food chain.
Maybe it’s because the closest most people ever get to one of the beasts
is a glossy magazine photo.
Sitting on a bar stool in the North Woods city of Spooner, well driller
Chris Lindstrom says it is simply a matter of respecting Mother Nature.
“We have coyotes. We have fox. We have fishers. We have a lot of predators
in this area,” he says. “It’s nice to have the wolf around . . . you’ve
got to have balance.”
Not everyone is so tolerant. Gilman’s Lawrence Krak has fought wolf
recovery for years. He doesn’t believe the species ever was endangered,
given its numbers in Minnesota and Canada. He considers the recovery a
make-work project for federal biologists. As for the wolves themselves, he
says, “We got along just fine without them.”
For others, the animals have become, quite literally and simply, a matter
of fact.
Asked what she thinks about the creatures, Radisson gas station attendant
Amy Rynda replies, “They’re around. That’s all.”
It is a testament to a wolf recovery program that has been, by most
accounts, a wild success.
The wolf was among the first protected following passage of the 1973
Endangered Species Act, and not long after that, they began to roam over
from northern Minnesota and slowly began to recolonize Wisconsin forests.
Today biologists count 323 animals inside state borders, and the actual
figure likely is higher. The U.P. has a similar number.
The key to the recovery?
“Just quit shooting them for a while, and let them do their thing,” says
Martin Smith, a biologist for the conservation group Defenders of
Wildlife.
Perhaps their natural return is the reason so many people in the northern
Midwest have been so willing to make room for them.
It was a different story out West.
In 1995, the federal government embarked on a controversial program to
capture Canadian wolves and drop them in the wilds of central Idaho and
Yellowstone National Park.
Network television news loved the story, but many Westerners saw the
reintroduction more as a chance for the federal government to flex its
muscles than as an attempt to save a species.
It didn’t take long before some of the animals started turning up dead
with bullet holes in them.
Now, almost eight years later, populations in both Yellowstone and Idaho
continue to grow. While rules do allow problem wolves to be killed, hard
feelings about the transplant linger.
Stanley, Idaho, hunting guide and outfitter Ron Gillett opposed the
reintroduction but says he decided to give the wolves a chance when they
first arrived. Their population in Idaho has since blossomed from a
handful to hundreds, and he says it is ruining ranching and killing the
elk hunt upon which his business depends.
He has sympathy for people such as Fornengo who are trying to cope with a
creature Gillett refers to as a “land piranha.”
“If I ever go to jail, it will be because of wolves.”
Fur flies
Wildlife officials like to say that understanding the science behind an
environmental problem and finding a solution to it are the simple parts.
Problems occur when that science collides with human interests.
That’s when the fur flies. That’s where the wolves could be headed as
their numbers climb.
“We’ve built up a store of goodwill in this state toward the wolf,” says
Eau Claire wolf advocate Jim Olson, a retired college professor. “That is
gradually eroding as we get more and more depredation kinds of issues.”
State wildlife managers are scrambling now to keep a handle on the
burgeoning species. With federal rules prohibiting killing wolves in all
but the most extreme cases, such as when a human life is threatened,
biologists are playing an elaborate game of musical chairs. Dozens of
animals this year have been trapped and transferred around the state.
Recently, an entire pack was shipped to the Menominee Indian reservation
located about 40 miles northwest of Green Bay.
“We’re running out of places to relocate problem wolves, and we’re
starting to run the risk that relocated wolves could cause new problems in
other locations,” says the DNR’s Wydeven.
Just last week, one of the wolves that plagued the Fornengo farm was
relocated to central northern Wisconsin.
The DNR planned the release for late afternoon to lessen chances that
someone would stumble upon the creature while it was in a drug-induced
stupor.
The biologists were worried it might get shot.
Their worries were not unfounded. Their dream of restoring the wolf to the
North Woods has been realized, but the fear exists that a public relations
nightmare could be in store for the animal if the government doesn’t move
to strip its endangered status.
Some wildlife managers may not like Fornengo’s feisty attitude, but they
know he has a legitimate problem.
“It’s way beyond time” to begin killing problem wolves in Wisconsin, says
David Mech, a senior research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey
and perhaps the world’s foremost authority on North America’s wolves.
“I worry,” says Mech, who has worked to recover the wolf for more than
three decades. “If we don’t handle it right, and if the government doesn’t
respond to people’s needs by delisting the wolf and by letting appropriate
management tools be used, then there will be an increasing backlash.”