The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) is seeking public comment on the future of wolf management as they begin to update a new 10-year management plan. With a growing wolf population, input from hunters, ranchers and trappers is imperative.
Public input will be accepted from April 15 to May 15 and can be submitted at the following link: https://www.research.net/r/2021_WI_Wolf_Comment
Wisconsin now has more than 1,000 wolves in the state, twice as many as were present in 2007, when they were originally delisted from Endangered Species Act protections, and the last time a management plan was created.
According to the WDNR, there were an estimated 5 to 25 wolves and no wolf packs in the state in 1980. The wolf comeback in Wisconsin was made possible after federal protections were established under the Endangered Species Act in the 1970s. The wolf population in Minnesota then increased in size and began to expand its range. In the winter of 1999-2000 wolves in the western Great Lakes states surpassed federal recovery goals, making them eligible for removal as an endangered species.
What followed was a back and forth of changes to listing status. In 2007, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) finally delisted the wolves in the Great Lakes area, but in less than two years they were once again re-listed as endangered in Wisconsin and Michigan and threatened in Minnesota due to a judicial decision. In 2010, the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation (SAF) petitioned FWS to resume its delisting efforts. FWS then ordered another delisting from early 2012 to late 2014, and during those years legal hunts occurred. At the time of the 2012 delisting, there were 815 individual wolves and 213 packs.
In 2013, the Humane Society of the United States and other animal-rights organizations filed another lawsuit that overturned that delisting, once again returning wolves to the endangered species list in 2014. On our appeal, the decision was modified in a landmark ruling in 2017, which clarified that the Great Lakes wolves had recovered. More importantly, the decision confirmed our argument that FWS could delist a species in a region where it has recovered even if the species has not recovered elsewhere. Unfortunately, the ruling stated that the Great Lakes wolves still had to be relisted, due largely to issues concerning wolves outside the Great Lakes.
The most recent delisting of wolves occurred in 2020, and the delisting covers all gray wolves in the Lower 48 states. Today, the population in Wisconsin has soared to a conservative estimate of 1,034 to 1,057 individual wolves and 256 packs. Such large numbers require that the biologists at WDNR create a new 10-year plan to scientifically manage the growing wolf population. The present delisting is again being challenged, and again the primary issues concern wolves not in the Great Lakes. For well over a decade, SAF has fought these delisting battles and the current court case will be no different. SAF and our partners have begun the process of engaging in this latest attack to defend the 2020 delisting, and we anticipate that the briefing of the case will begin in fall of 2021. The new delisting case is related to, but separate from, the revisions of the Wisconsin wolf plan that the WDNR is now considering.
About the Sportsmen’s Alliance: The Sportsmen’s Alliance protects and defends America’s wildlife conservation programs and the pursuits – hunting, fishing and trapping – that generate the money to pay for them. Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation is responsible for public education, legal defense and research. Its mission is accomplished through several distinct programs coordinated to provide the most complete defense capability possible. Stay connected to Sportsmen’s Alliance: Online, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.