Washington can’t manage wolves

By The Journal Times Editorial Board

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 6:00 PM CDT

For years humans punished wolves for existing and hunted them to the brink of extinction. Now it is the humans who may be punished because several advocacy groups are insisting that the Great Lakes states be forbidden from reducing their wolf populations.

This is an unfortunate idea, and while one can understand the advocacy groups’ goal of making sure wolves have a chance to rebuild their numbers, their procedure is mistaken and will lead to more bitterness about and perhaps harm to the animals they seek to protect.

These groups sued to stop a decision by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to remove about 4,000 gray wolves in western Great Lakes states from the federal Endangered Species List. The wolves have reached management goals, and states such as Wisconsin wanted tools to hold their populations in check. Tools means mainly hunting, of course. That’s the same management tool used to stop deer herds from becoming so large that they decimate forests and crops in their quest for food.

Wisconsin’s wolf population numbers 537 to 564 animals in 144 packs. Most roam the forested northern third of the state, but there is a secondary concentration in central Wisconsin roughly where Juneau, Jackson, and Wood counties converge. Scientists say the environment has capacity for about 500 wolves.

In filing suit, the Humane Society of the United States, Help Our Wolves Live, and the Animal Protection Institute argued that wolves shouldn’t be removed from the list until they have recovered across a significant portion of their historical range, and that delisting would return them to the same unprotected status which caused their near extinction in the first place. Two weeks ago a federal judge tentatively agreed, putting the wolves back on the list and asking parties in the suit for more information.

However, saying that wolves must recover everywhere before any hunting occurs is like telling Wisconsin that its deer herd must grow to 5 million because the Wyoming herd isn’t large enough. These are separate populations, and even though there is limited migration what happens to Wisconsin animals isn’t intimately linked to Wyoming’s.

While we wait for a legal ruling, Wisconsin residents bear the burden of larger wolf packs. Since 1990, 671 animals — cows, horses, dogs, and others — have been killed or injured by wolves in Wisconsin, and since 1985 the state has paid slightly less than half a million dollars in wolf damage claims. While we’re waiting for the national wolf numbers to meet some distant goal, how many will be “accidentally” shot, and how much resentment will build between landowners and state officers who think the same but must enforce the law?

Animal populations don’t pay attention to what the Endangered Species Act says. Animals just are, and we have to deal with them on their terms. No one is advocating a return to the unlimited hunting which almost eliminated wolves, but no one should ignore the fact that because of human numbers and animal numbers we must impose a certain balance. The best people to do that are state wildlife experts, not people counting commas in a Washington courtroom.

Special Offer: Get 5 Weeks of the Journal Times for $7!