Lone wolves no longer- Wisconsin wolf report
With population booming, debate over state efforts to control them intensifies
By LEE BERGQUIST
lbergquist@journalsentinel.com
Park Falls - The gray wolf is on a roll.
Its population is booming. Lone wolves have turned up in every corner of the state. And increasingly, residents are reporting a growing number of close encounters with this elusive predator. "Nobody is alive in Wisconsin who has experienced this kind of wolf population," said Adrian Wydeven, the top wolf expert with the state Department of Natural Resources. "There has been nothing like this since the 1800s."
Wolves have been aided by government protection, a more charitable public image and a teeming deer population that has offered an abundant food supply. But the wolf remains a polarizing force, resurrecting old hostilities when it preys on livestock and meanders into residential areas.
Wisconsin's wolf population was estimated to be between 425 and 455 last winter - the most recent count available. That's five times the number of a decade ago, and as the wolves prosper, people are seeing more of them.
Ronda Dural called it a "lifetime experience" when she locked eyes with a wolf 20 feet away from her on a sunny summer day in 2003. But during the 2004 Christmas break, a pair of wolves, and then a third, followed her for several miles on a desolate road close to home near Butternut in Ashland County - even though she yelled and clapped her hands to scare them off. At one point, she stood 20 yards away, her springer spaniel hugging her legs, as two of the wolves watched her from a stand of pines. "I never personally thought they were going to attack me," said the fourth-grade teacher. "What concerned me is that they just didn't go away."
When wolves first returned to Wisconsin in the mid-1970s, biologists could only guess how many of the animals the state could support. In 1989, DNR biologists estimated it was about 80. Later, the goal was raised to 350 wolves. As a sign of how well the wolf has done, a 1997 study led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison estimated it could take 40 years for the state to hit 400 wolves. "Now I think we are pretty close to the number of wolves the state can hold," Wydeven said.
But others disagree. "It's hard for me to see these animals treated as a numerical figure," said Karlyn Atkinson Berg, a conservation consultant for the Humane Society of the United States. "Nature will take care of this," said Berg, noting that a declining deer population will control wolves better than government controls.
Some hunters in the north are also grousing that wolves are bringing down the deer population. Darrell Fohr of Donner's Bay Resort on the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage said that wolves are the reason he was skunked during seven days of hunting during the 2005 season. Customers at the resort also reported few kills, and it was the first time the resort wasn't full during the hunting season. "That's ridiculous," he said. "I personally think the wolf is a beautiful animal, but I don't think it is being controlled."
Before European settlement, wolves roamed the entire state. By 1865, the Legislature had approved its first wolf bounty, for $5. By the late 1950s, wolves had been extirpated, and according to the DNR, millions of state dollars had been spent to kill them. The wolf received protection under the federal Endangered Species Act in 1974, making it illegal for citizens to kill wolves.
Wolves survived an outbreak of canine parvovirus, which drove down the population from 1982 to 1986, and each year wolves are killed by mange, vehicle accidents and, inevitably, gunshots. At least seven wolves were illegally killed in 2004-'05, DNR figures show.
Less trust in figures
As the wolf population has boomed, there is mounting criticism the DNR is undercounting them. Wydeven makes two dozen speeches a year, and increasingly, "I have to explain our method of counting wolves," he said. "Now there seems to be much less trust, or believability, in our counts than there used to be." In January, Wydeven was summoned to a forestry committee meeting of the Ashland County Board where supervisors complained that residents are seeing more wolves than the 50 or so the DNR had counted in the area.
"These wolves - either rightly or wrongly - are not showing a fear of humans," said Mike Hamm, a county supervisor and critic of the state's population estimates. Hamm, who is a law enforcement officer, said a wolf stood 50 feet from his cruiser in the middle of the afternoon in 2004. "I put my siren on and it doesn't even run away - it walks away," he said.
In Montreal, southwest of Hurley in Iron County, reports of wolves wandering into town prompted a sit-down last winter between community leaders and the DNR. "We wanted them moved," said Mayor Robert Morzenti. "They've been seen on the street and there's a ton of little kids. People walk their dogs and they exercise. All it takes is for one person to get hurt, or one pet to be killed. I think it's a concern about safety." After the meeting, Morzenti was told by authorities that they couldn't do anything because of the Endangered Species Act.
But wildlife biologist Dave Ruid of the U.S. Department of Agriculture said he saw food in yards at two homes that attracted 20 to 30 deer in the middle of the day. The wolves were no doubt attracted to the deer, he said.
Attacks on humans are rare
The run-ins are driven by a combination of factors, Wydeven said. In addition to more wolves, urbanization is continuing across the north, which increases the likelihood that people will have some contact. Feeding deer then habituates wolves to draw ever closer to humans. Wolf attacks on humans, however, are rare. A biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in 2002 investigated 80 close wolf encounters in North America since the 1970s, and found 16 cases of wolf bites.
For years, advocates noted that no one in North America had been killed by a wolf in at least 100 years. But in November in northern Saskatchewan, a 22-year-old man is believed to have been killed by wolves near a remote camp owned by a mining exploration company. The death is bound to change the semantics of the wolf debate, all parties seem to agree.
However, Berg called the incident a "red herring" and an isolated instance. She lives in northern Minnesota, where there are more than 2,000 wolves. If people and wolves couldn't co-exist, "We'd have a lot of deaths in Minnesota by now," she said.
For all of the talk of a burgeoning wolf population, Wydeven, the veteran wolf expert, has never seen a wolf during 16 years of conducting his winter wolf surveys. The trips are one of the tools the DNR uses to count wolves. Wydeven and others also spend time searching for wolves by air, and trapping and following wolves that have been outfitted with radio collars.
On a survey last month in remote sections of Sawyer and Ashland counties in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, he drove slowly down snow-covered forest roads. He stopped suddenly and pronounced, "RLU," referring to raised-leg urination. For wolf biologists, it's a sign that an alpha male or alpha female has recently marked territory. Wolf packs often use streams and rivers, even roadways, to mark their territories.
He looked for blood in the urine, which could mean that a female is pregnant. Farther down the road, he spotted wolf tracks. He concluded they were from a wolf in the Log Creek pack, named for a local stream and tributary of the Flambeau River. By day's end, Wydeven had spotted the tracks of two of Wisconsin's 108 wolf packs and 17 urine stains believed to come from wolves.
All data from other ground and aerial trips, and contributions from residents trained to count wolves, will be analyzed at an all-day meeting and tallied later this winter to set a final wolf count for 2005-'06. Wolves are highly mobile, averaging 25 miles a day - sometimes covering 100 miles a day. Thus, a single wolf can be seen by many people, Wydeven said.
In 1999, an itinerant female under study in Minnesota and outfitted with a special satellite transmitter entered Wisconsin near Danbury in northwestern Wisconsin, traveled across the state to Green Bay, then back to Stevens Point, to Portage and La Crosse before making a final scramble north to Grantsburg in Burnett County and into Minnesota. Total elapsed time: three months.
'Wild areas' remain
The return of wolves has prompted groups such as the Wisconsin Cattlemen's Association to press federal authorities for freer regulations that would allow farmers to kill wolves that prey on livestock. The DNR also wants more authority to kill depredating wolves, but at the same time the agency views the big predator as vital to the ecosystem.
"Their comeback is a symbol that there are still wild areas left in the state," Wydeven said.
But as the wolf population grows, especially in the northwest, there is an uneasy co-existence between wolves and farmers and some hunters. Since 1984, farmers and hunters have been paid nearly $419,000 in public money after wolves have killed livestock and hunting dogs, DNR figures show.
In April 2003, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service downgraded the status of the wolf from endangered to threatened. But environmentalists and animal welfare advocates intervened in federal court and argued the agency was relaxing protections in other states where wolves hadn't yet recolonized.
A judge in Oregon agreed, and on Jan. 31, 2005, Wisconsin wolves were reclassified as an endangered species. The DNR, however, obtained a special permit to kill problem wolves in April 2005. But again activists objected in court, and Wisconsin lost the permit in September 2005. Authorities can't currently kill wolves, but 70 problem wolves were euthanized between 2003 and 2005, according to the DNR.
Berg, of the Humane Society, said Wisconsin should be downgraded to a threatened wolf status, which would allow problem wolves to be killed. "Unfortunately, the history of wolves is that if a wolf kills one sheep, then people want to kill 100 wolves," she said. "It never requires farmers to exercise good husbandry."
But Eric Koens of Bruce in Rusk County, a member of the cattlemen's association, said: "The pro-wolf people have been making excuses for years for wolves. They just say, put out guard dogs or lights. None of this works."
Eventually, there could be a hunting season on wolves, if other controls don't keep the wolf population at bay, Wydeven said.
But one experiment in wolf control appears to have been lost. For several years, the DNR trapped and moved problem wolves to areas in Forest County in the eastern section of the Chequamegon-Nicolet, where wolf numbers are lower. But citing safety concerns, county supervisors in 2001 voted to oppose new transfers. Seven other northern counties followed suit, and the DNR stopped the practice.
From the Feb. 16, 2006 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
By LEE BERGQUIST
lbergquist@journalsentinel.com
Park Falls - The gray wolf is on a roll.
Its population is booming. Lone wolves have turned up in every corner of the state. And increasingly, residents are reporting a growing number of close encounters with this elusive predator. "Nobody is alive in Wisconsin who has experienced this kind of wolf population," said Adrian Wydeven, the top wolf expert with the state Department of Natural Resources. "There has been nothing like this since the 1800s."
Wolves have been aided by government protection, a more charitable public image and a teeming deer population that has offered an abundant food supply. But the wolf remains a polarizing force, resurrecting old hostilities when it preys on livestock and meanders into residential areas.
Wisconsin's wolf population was estimated to be between 425 and 455 last winter - the most recent count available. That's five times the number of a decade ago, and as the wolves prosper, people are seeing more of them.
Ronda Dural called it a "lifetime experience" when she locked eyes with a wolf 20 feet away from her on a sunny summer day in 2003. But during the 2004 Christmas break, a pair of wolves, and then a third, followed her for several miles on a desolate road close to home near Butternut in Ashland County - even though she yelled and clapped her hands to scare them off. At one point, she stood 20 yards away, her springer spaniel hugging her legs, as two of the wolves watched her from a stand of pines. "I never personally thought they were going to attack me," said the fourth-grade teacher. "What concerned me is that they just didn't go away."
When wolves first returned to Wisconsin in the mid-1970s, biologists could only guess how many of the animals the state could support. In 1989, DNR biologists estimated it was about 80. Later, the goal was raised to 350 wolves. As a sign of how well the wolf has done, a 1997 study led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison estimated it could take 40 years for the state to hit 400 wolves. "Now I think we are pretty close to the number of wolves the state can hold," Wydeven said.
But others disagree. "It's hard for me to see these animals treated as a numerical figure," said Karlyn Atkinson Berg, a conservation consultant for the Humane Society of the United States. "Nature will take care of this," said Berg, noting that a declining deer population will control wolves better than government controls.
Some hunters in the north are also grousing that wolves are bringing down the deer population. Darrell Fohr of Donner's Bay Resort on the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage said that wolves are the reason he was skunked during seven days of hunting during the 2005 season. Customers at the resort also reported few kills, and it was the first time the resort wasn't full during the hunting season. "That's ridiculous," he said. "I personally think the wolf is a beautiful animal, but I don't think it is being controlled."
Before European settlement, wolves roamed the entire state. By 1865, the Legislature had approved its first wolf bounty, for $5. By the late 1950s, wolves had been extirpated, and according to the DNR, millions of state dollars had been spent to kill them. The wolf received protection under the federal Endangered Species Act in 1974, making it illegal for citizens to kill wolves.
Wolves survived an outbreak of canine parvovirus, which drove down the population from 1982 to 1986, and each year wolves are killed by mange, vehicle accidents and, inevitably, gunshots. At least seven wolves were illegally killed in 2004-'05, DNR figures show.
Less trust in figures
As the wolf population has boomed, there is mounting criticism the DNR is undercounting them. Wydeven makes two dozen speeches a year, and increasingly, "I have to explain our method of counting wolves," he said. "Now there seems to be much less trust, or believability, in our counts than there used to be." In January, Wydeven was summoned to a forestry committee meeting of the Ashland County Board where supervisors complained that residents are seeing more wolves than the 50 or so the DNR had counted in the area.
"These wolves - either rightly or wrongly - are not showing a fear of humans," said Mike Hamm, a county supervisor and critic of the state's population estimates. Hamm, who is a law enforcement officer, said a wolf stood 50 feet from his cruiser in the middle of the afternoon in 2004. "I put my siren on and it doesn't even run away - it walks away," he said.
In Montreal, southwest of Hurley in Iron County, reports of wolves wandering into town prompted a sit-down last winter between community leaders and the DNR. "We wanted them moved," said Mayor Robert Morzenti. "They've been seen on the street and there's a ton of little kids. People walk their dogs and they exercise. All it takes is for one person to get hurt, or one pet to be killed. I think it's a concern about safety." After the meeting, Morzenti was told by authorities that they couldn't do anything because of the Endangered Species Act.
But wildlife biologist Dave Ruid of the U.S. Department of Agriculture said he saw food in yards at two homes that attracted 20 to 30 deer in the middle of the day. The wolves were no doubt attracted to the deer, he said.
Attacks on humans are rare
The run-ins are driven by a combination of factors, Wydeven said. In addition to more wolves, urbanization is continuing across the north, which increases the likelihood that people will have some contact. Feeding deer then habituates wolves to draw ever closer to humans. Wolf attacks on humans, however, are rare. A biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in 2002 investigated 80 close wolf encounters in North America since the 1970s, and found 16 cases of wolf bites.
For years, advocates noted that no one in North America had been killed by a wolf in at least 100 years. But in November in northern Saskatchewan, a 22-year-old man is believed to have been killed by wolves near a remote camp owned by a mining exploration company. The death is bound to change the semantics of the wolf debate, all parties seem to agree.
However, Berg called the incident a "red herring" and an isolated instance. She lives in northern Minnesota, where there are more than 2,000 wolves. If people and wolves couldn't co-exist, "We'd have a lot of deaths in Minnesota by now," she said.
For all of the talk of a burgeoning wolf population, Wydeven, the veteran wolf expert, has never seen a wolf during 16 years of conducting his winter wolf surveys. The trips are one of the tools the DNR uses to count wolves. Wydeven and others also spend time searching for wolves by air, and trapping and following wolves that have been outfitted with radio collars.
On a survey last month in remote sections of Sawyer and Ashland counties in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, he drove slowly down snow-covered forest roads. He stopped suddenly and pronounced, "RLU," referring to raised-leg urination. For wolf biologists, it's a sign that an alpha male or alpha female has recently marked territory. Wolf packs often use streams and rivers, even roadways, to mark their territories.
He looked for blood in the urine, which could mean that a female is pregnant. Farther down the road, he spotted wolf tracks. He concluded they were from a wolf in the Log Creek pack, named for a local stream and tributary of the Flambeau River. By day's end, Wydeven had spotted the tracks of two of Wisconsin's 108 wolf packs and 17 urine stains believed to come from wolves.
All data from other ground and aerial trips, and contributions from residents trained to count wolves, will be analyzed at an all-day meeting and tallied later this winter to set a final wolf count for 2005-'06. Wolves are highly mobile, averaging 25 miles a day - sometimes covering 100 miles a day. Thus, a single wolf can be seen by many people, Wydeven said.
In 1999, an itinerant female under study in Minnesota and outfitted with a special satellite transmitter entered Wisconsin near Danbury in northwestern Wisconsin, traveled across the state to Green Bay, then back to Stevens Point, to Portage and La Crosse before making a final scramble north to Grantsburg in Burnett County and into Minnesota. Total elapsed time: three months.
'Wild areas' remain
The return of wolves has prompted groups such as the Wisconsin Cattlemen's Association to press federal authorities for freer regulations that would allow farmers to kill wolves that prey on livestock. The DNR also wants more authority to kill depredating wolves, but at the same time the agency views the big predator as vital to the ecosystem.
"Their comeback is a symbol that there are still wild areas left in the state," Wydeven said.
But as the wolf population grows, especially in the northwest, there is an uneasy co-existence between wolves and farmers and some hunters. Since 1984, farmers and hunters have been paid nearly $419,000 in public money after wolves have killed livestock and hunting dogs, DNR figures show.
In April 2003, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service downgraded the status of the wolf from endangered to threatened. But environmentalists and animal welfare advocates intervened in federal court and argued the agency was relaxing protections in other states where wolves hadn't yet recolonized.
A judge in Oregon agreed, and on Jan. 31, 2005, Wisconsin wolves were reclassified as an endangered species. The DNR, however, obtained a special permit to kill problem wolves in April 2005. But again activists objected in court, and Wisconsin lost the permit in September 2005. Authorities can't currently kill wolves, but 70 problem wolves were euthanized between 2003 and 2005, according to the DNR.
Berg, of the Humane Society, said Wisconsin should be downgraded to a threatened wolf status, which would allow problem wolves to be killed. "Unfortunately, the history of wolves is that if a wolf kills one sheep, then people want to kill 100 wolves," she said. "It never requires farmers to exercise good husbandry."
But Eric Koens of Bruce in Rusk County, a member of the cattlemen's association, said: "The pro-wolf people have been making excuses for years for wolves. They just say, put out guard dogs or lights. None of this works."
Eventually, there could be a hunting season on wolves, if other controls don't keep the wolf population at bay, Wydeven said.
But one experiment in wolf control appears to have been lost. For several years, the DNR trapped and moved problem wolves to areas in Forest County in the eastern section of the Chequamegon-Nicolet, where wolf numbers are lower. But citing safety concerns, county supervisors in 2001 voted to oppose new transfers. Seven other northern counties followed suit, and the DNR stopped the practice.
From the Feb. 16, 2006 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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