Today marks the first day of Wisconsin’s second consecutive wolf hunting and trapping season in decades. The first wolf was killed this morning after suffering in a steel-jawed leghold trap. It’s another round of killing in what has been a pogrom against wolves in the areas they’ve reclaimed—with hundreds killed in the Rocky Mountains and Great Lakes after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stripped wolves of their federal protections and turned management of their populations over to states with hostile anti-wolf policies.
In Wisconsin, despite opposition from scientists, humane groups and Native American tribes, the state established a quota of 251 wolves to be killed this year. In fact, a recent public opinion poll showed that Wisconsin residents opposed a wolf hunt by an 8 to 1 margin. The state’s wolf population has declined from a high of 880 to 809 over the past two years, and the sport hunting and trapping quota of 251 wolves does not include those that will be killed for depredation purposes (76 last year), or those killed by illegal poaching and car collisions.
Cumulatively, this could result in more than 40 percent of Wisconsin’s fragile, recovering wolf population perishing this season. After decades of work and millions of dollars spent to bring the wolf back from the brink of extinction, the species is now at risk from the same practices that caused the decline in the first place. Worst of all, if breeding wolves are killed at random, packs will disband, which has happened in Yellowstone National Park. Because of these significant concerns, wildlife protection groups, including The Humane Society of the United States, filed a lawsuit earlier this year to restore federal protection for Great Lakes wolves.
Today through February, Wisconsin’s iconic wolves will be left to suffer in traps and killed with firearms, crossbows and bow and arrows with disregard for science-based concerns about the species’ sustained conservation. Wolf hunters can use electronic predator calls and shoot wolves over bait. Most unsettling, and rightfully the subject of opposition and legal challenges from Wisconsin animal shelters and respected animal behaviorists, is the use of packs of dogs to chase down and kill wolves this season. A Wisconsin veterinarian has shared gruesome details of hunting dogs being brought to his clinic ripped to pieces and dying on the surgery table and his concerns for dogs involved wolf altercations. The state rightly bans dogfighting, but has essentially sanctioned wolf-dog fighting.
These are the same threats we expect wolves to face in other states that have rushed to open hunting and trapping seasons. In the neighboring state of Michigan, where the wolf population has also declined from 687 to 658 animals in the last two years, the first hunting season is set to open on November 15. The politicians in Wisconsin and other states where reckless wolf hunts are taking place may not be listening to their citizens, but in Michigan, the voters have a unique opportunity to make things right. By gathering enough signatures and placing a referendum on the statewide ballot, all Michigan voters can have a say in whether to keep wolves protected or allow their hunting as a game species—and can send a message to other states that people don’t support a renewed wolf slaughter. If you live in Michigan, we need your help collecting signatures—it could not be more urgent for wolves. And if you care about wolves, please support our efforts to be vigilant and energetic in their defense wherever and whenever they come under threat.
