Minnesota Wolf Management Plan
Minnesota’s wolf legacy is unique: There state’s northeastern corner of lakes and forest once sheltered the last remaining wild wolves in the lower 48 states. Today, wolves are distributed across half of the state in numbers (2,700) well above Endangered Species Act recovery plan goals (1,251-1,400) for the wolf in Minnesota. Wolf population growth in Minnesota has contributed significantly to the expansion of wolf range in other parts of the upper Great Lakes region that includes Wisconsin and Michigan, and Minnesota’s wolf population represents nearly half the current wolf population within the lower 48 states.
Wisconsin Wolf Management Plan
The increase in wolf numbers over the past 30 years has generally been accompanied by range expansion within the state. In portions of the northern and central forest, where wolves have been established for many years, territorial behavior has kept wolf numbers fairly stable. In recent years, range expansion across the state has been minimal, suggesting that wolves likely occupy all suitable habitats in Wisconsin. During the 2021-22 overwinter, the number of pack-associated wolves was estimated between 812 and 1,193 within the pack-occupied range, with the most likely estimate being 972 wolves. The total number of packs was estimated to be between 243 – 352 packs, with a most likely value of 288 packs. Wolf monitoring is conducted every winter when snow cover allows efficient tracking, representing the low point in the annual population cycle. Wolves in the Western Great Lakes region surpassed federal recovery goals in the winter of 1999-2000, when Wisconsin and Michigan had a combined total of 100 wolves for 5 consecutive years, in addition to the population in Minnesota being stable or growing
Michigan Wolf Management Plan
The Recovery Plan for the Eastern Timber Wolf established federal recovery criteria for gray wolves in the eastern United States (USFWS 1992). In addition to requiring that the Minnesota wolf population was stable or growing with its continued survival assured, a second population outside of Minnesota (or Isle Royale, Michigan) also had to be re-established before wolves could be removed from federal protections. This second population is considered viable if it has “at least 100 wolves in late winter if located within 100 miles of the Minnesota wolf population,” or “at least 200 wolves if located beyond that distance,” and is maintained for five consecutive years. Because wolves in Michigan are not isolated, a combined “Wisconsin-Michigan population of 100 wolves” is currently the criteria that must be exceeded to ensure federal recovery criteria are met. The 1997 Michigan Wolf Recovery and Management Plan adopted the definition of a viable isolated population from The Recovery Plan for the Eastern Timber Wolf as a criterion for wolf recovery in Michigan (DNR 1997). Therefore, a winter wolf population of 200 animals for five consecutive years is the criteria that must be exceeded to ensure State recovery criteria are met. Since 2011, the minimum estimate for the wolf population has remained stable ranging from 618 to 695. A minimum of estimate of 695 wolves occurred in the U.P. during the winter of 2020. The minimum wolf population estimate from the 2022 survey is 631 wolves, plus or minus 49 wolves. A total of 136 packs was estimated with an average number of individuals per pack calculated at 4.5.