Wolf recovery prompts talk of hunts

Wolf recovery prompts talk of hunts

April 14, 2002
By Peter J. Wasson
Central Wisconsin Sunday

RIB MOUNTAIN – The professionals who have managed Wisconsin’s timber wolves for the 24 years since the animals returned to the state have a controversial and difficult job.

The wolf evokes deeper and more heated emotions than perhaps any other animal and it has for centuries. On the one hand, environmentalists and animal lovers want wolves roaming freely across the state that was their home for thousands of years before European settlement.

On the other are farmers, ranchers and hunters who lose livestock and hunting dogs every year to wolf predation. Many of them believe the wolf has no place in Wisconsin or, at the very least, its numbers must be strictly controlled.

The Department of Natural Resources is responsible for trying to satisfy the demands of both groups, and it has come to an inescapable conclusion explained Saturday at a gathering of wolf interest groups in Rib Mountain: Within the next year or two, some of the state’s wolves will have to die and legal hunting of them will come next.

“As long as the population is stable, killing wolves that are causing problems might be the fastest and easiest way to deal with the problems they cause,” DNR wolf biologist Ron Schultz said last week. He added before Saturday’s meeting that he hoped details of how to conduct such a hunt might come out of its discussions.
“We’re trying to please all these people as best we can,” he said.

The wolf’s history

As many as 5,000 wolves once lived throughout Wisconsin’s woodlands and thrived until European settlers began transforming the state’s ecology through agriculture and settlement.

In 1865, the state instituted a bounty on wolves, and by 1880, the wolf was gone from settlement areas in the southern half of the state. The last Wisconsin wolf was killed in 1958, according to the DNR. In 1973, the federal government named the wolf an endangered species, prohibiting the killing of the animals.

In 1974 a pack of wolves was discovered to have naturally migrated from Minnesota and established a territory south of Superior. By 1980, five packs were known in the state, including one in Lincoln County, and opposing interest groups began calling for the animal’s destruction or protection.

“Old attitudes die hard,” said Norm Poulton, a representative of the pro-wolf group Environ-mentalists and Concerned Citizens of the Lakeland Area, who attended Satur-day’s meeting.

“Europeans brought the idea of werewolves and Little Red Riding Hood with the wolf seen as evil, and some people never got over that,” Poulton said. “The other side is, the wolf is a true symbol of the wild. It’s a symbol of everything we’re doing wrong to the wilderness and it needs our help.”

The problem today

Those first five packs of wolves struggled as farmers, poachers and wolf opponents illegally killed some and others died of disease, being hit by cars or encounters with other wild animals.

But by 1999, the state’s population reached 200 animals dispersed across 20 counties. That’s when the trouble really started.

As the wolf’s population grew to today’s estimate of 320 animals, so did encounters that brought it into conflict with people. Farmers began losing calves, sheep and chickens. Bear and bobcat hunters turned their hounds loose in the woods and never saw them alive again.

“A lot of people have this romantic feeling and would like to see wolves running loose everywhere, but that can’t be allowed,” said Dan Riley, a representative of the state’s sheep and cattle farmers who spoke at Saturday’s meeting.

“Our ancestors wanted to wipe them all out and that wasn’t all bad,” he said.

“They’re causing economic problems and we can’t let them just roam free.”

The DNR reimburses farmers and hunters for their losses. In 2000, it paid out about $23,000 in wolf damages, but Riley said that isn’t enough.

He said the DNR denies the claims of farmers when it can’t be proven that a wolf was responsible and is slow to pay even when it does acknowledge wolf damage.

The DNR’s plan for what it calls “problem wolves” has been to trap them and move them to remote areas of the state, but farmers argue that the practice just shifts the trouble to a new area.

The only solution is to allow farmers to kill wolves that threaten livestock, Riley said.

Advocates fight back

Not surprisingly, pro-wolf organizations disagree and the number of those organizations is growing.

In recent years, the Big Bad Wolf stereotype has faded and the animal has become an almost mythic symbol of wildlife and the environment.

“People can really relate wolves to dogs,” Schultz said. “People who love wolves really love dogs. Then when wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone (National Park) and it kind of was blown up into this magnificent creature. Now groups are really fighting for it.”

One of those groups is the Alliance for Animals, a Madison-based animal protection organization that sent Cynthia Lott to Saturday’s meeting to continue the fight.
Lott said farmers and hunters who use hounds need to take responsibility for the deaths of their animals. Hunters are well aware of the wolf’s presence when they turn their dogs loose, and farmers in pack territory should take precautions to protect their livestock, she said.

“Hunting is a hobby and if you participate, you accept responsibility and risk of running a dog in an area inhabited by a predator,” she said. “Livestock is a bit different, but farmers can better manage their farms and use fences and things to reduce depredation.”

Then there’s the controversy of the wolf’s status among Wisconsin’s Native American peoples. Greg Bunker, an environmentalist for the Mohican tribes, said Saturday that Indians won’t tolerate killing wolves on their reservations.

Wolves’ future in state

The DNR is left trying to meld all those competing opinions into a cohesive and acceptable management plan.

Wisconsin already has “downlisted” the wolf from an endangered species to a threatened animal. Adrian Wydeven, the DNR’s chief wolf biologist, and Schultz said the federal government is likely to begin downlisting the Great Lakes wolf population to threatened this summer, allowing the DNR to begin more “aggressive management.”

“Aggressive management” means allowing farmers to shoot wolves that are caught in the act of attacking livestock or granting farmers permits to kill wolves if they can prove a history of wolf attacks.

“We’ve written it into our state wolf management plan,” Wydeven said. “In the discussions we’ve had, I think everyone has recognized that wolves will have to be killed.”

Even environmental groups are starting to agree with that. Judy Ettenhofer, a member of the Timber Wolf Alliance, said at Saturday’s meeting that her organization will always fight poaching, “but we are aware that some wolves will be euthanized.”

No matter what the DNR decides, Wydeven realizes it will never completely satisfy members of the diverse groups involved, such as Lawrence Krak’s People Against Wolves organization.

“We got along just fine without any wolves at all,” said Krak, who supports killing every wolf in the state.

“We don’t need a single one,” he said. “Whether we have 1,000 or none at all in Wisconsin makes no difference to survival of the species. They’re all over Canada. Doing all this to protect an animal that is nothing but a killer is plain foolishness.”

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