After a year of controversy, Michigan recently launched it’s first wolf hunt in nearly 40 years.
Although this is Michigan’s first hunt, that’s not the case for other states in the upper Midwest. Minnesota and Wisconsin are both heading into their second wolf hunt this year.
On Nov. 16, the first day of Michigan’s hunt, Current State spoke with Dan Kraker, a Minnesota Public Radio reporter based in Duluth, about last year’s hunt in that state and what Michiganders might learn from it.
There was a 400 wolf quota for last year’s wolf hunt in Minnesota, and the quota was met. Kraker describes his state’s wolf population as robust, even though it is down from 3,000 to 2,200.
Minnesota’s second wolf hunt offers lessons for Michigan by Great Lakes Echo
Kathleen, with respect, I did not say they were the same, this is about population control. Kill a few or kill them all. If God fordid a Wolf mauls a kid or worse, popular opinion would be screaming to kill them all. I understand natural instinct, you can’t really blame the wolf, but they will.
Feral hogs are not wolves. Feral hogs are a non-native species; wolves and coyotes are native wildlife, so let’s not confuse or equate the two. The thing that they do have in common is persecution by Homo sapiens.
Humans themselves are responsible for the feral hog situation, but to hear people talk, it’s like hogs are a pestilence visited upon us (“they’re aggressive! they’re destructive! they’re diseased!) Yes, they may be those things, but let’s remember why they are a problem in the first place–escaped domestics and, more significantly, introduction of Eurasian wild boars because, apparently, hunters can never have enough species to blow away. The vendetta against feral hogs is disingenuous and self-serving in the extreme.
As for killing native wolves and coyotes on one’s private property, that’s one’s prerogative. It always strikes me as odd, however, that someone would choose to live in wild habitat (or on the edge of it) and then, rather than attempting to co-exist, prefers to kill the native wild inhabitants as if *they* were the invaders. But that’s speciesism for you.
Learn more about speciesism and its sad legacy–as well as the vendetta mentality against predators–at my website, Other Nations. http://www.othernationsjustice.org/ Don’t miss the blog post, “Hunter kills companion dog: I thought it was a wolf.” This tragedy just occurred last weekend and is the direct fallout of an egregious wolf policy brought to bear by the livestock industry and hunters who felt they were “competing” with wolves for “their” elk.
I do not plan to hunt wolves, but if one showed up in my backyard I would shoot it. Like the Coyotes if wolve populations continue to grow and spread farther south into cities etc.. if a kid is mauled or killed it would be Kill all wolves! Perhaps this clip a few save a few plan avoids that. I killed 2 coyotes in my backyard woods (10 acres), chasing a deer, my grandaughter plays in those woods. I’m reminded of the guy who’s son was mauled by a feral hog in Ohio, in his backyard. That guy has dedicated himself to killing every hog he can find. With hogs we have to kill more than they can breed to control them. Not the case with wolves for now.
Harold, the scientists PAID to study the wolves on Isle Royale (can you see the bias there?) need wolves there to study, don’t they? While they were dancing with wolves, the moose herd declined. Now that wolves are having a tough go of it there, the moose herd is booming. Yet we’re to believe that a decimated moose population in Minnesota (where there are thousands of wolves) is due to climate change? Then why wouldn’t climate change be impacting Isle Royale? A very inconvenient truth, isn’t it?
Michigan needs to get serious with wolves. A harvest of 43 isn’t even a drop in the bucket. Wisconsin has killed 212 already, a year after more than 200 were taken by legal hunt/trap, federal trapping on problem wolves and illegal kill/roadkill, yet the population is still doing fine. The reason? Wolves have been and will continue to be seriously underestimated by those too close to the situation (wolf lovers who watch too much PBS). For years the DNRs in both Michigan and Wisconsin dismissed wolf sightings but thank goodness for trail cameras. Then when shown the proof, it was “possible wolf-dog hybrid” more often then not. Finally, they came around to admitting wolves were indeed in “County XX” when hunters had seen them for many, many years already. There are tens of thousands of square miles of land in northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. How many of them do you really believe are covered by “trackers” each winter? Not nearly enough.
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Rich T: How do you reconcile the fact that the scientists who have been studying wolves for decades on Isle Royale were opposed to the wolf hunt in Michigan?
Many people actually favor select control methods to curtail wolf depredation problems. But they are opposed to an indiscriminant wolf hunt because that does not address the problem. A lot of people who favor wolf hunting would really rather see the wolf exterminated in Michigan. That attitude is more of a problem to wildlife management than any wolf could create.
We need to tell the dovies, swanies, and the anti-hunting HSUS that they can’t have it both ways. The science supports global warming just as the science supports wildlife management. We support the science of fish and wildlife management. We brought back the wolf population and now it is time for the wolf license money to pay for the wolf management and research programs.