Gray Wolves

Robert Lisiecki

NRES 320 Blog

            The gray wolf also known as the timber wolf has been roaming the woods of the north american continent  for much longer than humans. Wisconsin particularly has had a long but not so good of a history when it comes to wolves. In the mid 1800’s wolves began to prey on livestock after humans hunted elk, bison and deer to near extirpation in the Wisconsin causing very limited food resources for the wolves. Humans were not very happy to be loosing their precious livestock to wolves so a bounty was placed on their heads and by the 1960’s wolves were declared to be officially extirpated from the state. In the 1970’s, the gray wolf was listed as a federally endangered species and because of this the wolf population in northern Minnesota began to thrive. Sometime in the mid 1970’s a small pack of wolves dispersed into northern Wisconsin.

            Ever since these wolves naturally moved back into the state the Wisconsin DNR has been closely monitoring and managing the wolf population. As of January 2012 the gray wolf was officially delisted for the endangered species list because of the great rebound of the wolf population under the extreme amount of protection due to the endangered species act. Many question arise now that the wolf is an unprotected animal, for instance, “will there be a carnivore management hunt?” or “will hunters/landowners be more inclined to shoot wolves due to the lessened consequences of a now unlisted species?”. The truth is no one really knows the answers to these questions yet. We all can speculate to what we think will happen next when it comes to wolves in Wisconsin but no one can really say.

            The general public has a very mixed opinion of wolves in Wisconsin. There is the group of people who think that wolves should be left alone because they were here first and we have no reason to control them. There are other groups that think that wolves should be managed/controlled so that they don’t get out of control. Then there is another group that think that the wolves should all be killed because they prey on our livestock, kill hunting dogs and they kill all the deer. Who’s right though? Maybe they’re all right or maybe they’re all wrong. It all comes down to trusting the DNR, who know the biology of these animals, to do their jobs. As a wildlife ecology student I realize the importance of the gray wolf to the overall ecosystem of Wisconsin, so for me it is clear that we can’t just get ride of them but we have to manage them so that both sides are some what happy. The only thing that is left to be determined is how do you feel about wolves in Wisconsin?