For several years now, I’ve been worrying about wolves. The Minnesota gray wolf (canis lupus) is a beautiful animal. But wolves are hanging around a bit closer than I would like.
I grew up in Cook County, about six miles west of Grand Marais on County Road 7. I walked to my cousin’s house, about a mile away. I rode my bike to Fall Creek (or Rosebush, as we called it back then). I wandered the woods with a passel of cousins, building tree forts, splashing in creeks, and just having a good time outdoors.
When I was about 10, I moved closer to town—about a mile west of the hospital on County Road 7. I continued to spend a lot of time outdoors, now biking uphill to Rosebush Creek and exploring the woods around my new home.
During all the adventuring, I never encountered a gray wolf. I remember seeing plenty of deer. I remember seeing moose—in fact, one day our school bus trailed behind a lumbering yearling moose for miles. I remember seeing rabbits, fox, squirrels, chipmunks and all kinds of birds. I remember being scared by bears occasionally.
I heard tales from friends who had seen them. I knew folks who had heard howling and snuffling around them as they traveled Lake Saganaga.
But I never saw a wolf in my growing up years.
Now I see them with great regularity— on Highway 61, on County Road 7; at dusk and in broad daylight. When we hike our five acres, we see wolf scat and tracks. We don’t have to hike very far to find it.
So I worry about wolves. When I let my ultra-friendly but not so bright golden retriever out at night, I stand shivering on the porch, praying that he will do his business and get back inside safely.
So it is with some relief that I receive the news that the wolf has been removed from the Endangered Species List—perhaps for good this time. Wolf advocates seem to have run out of grounds for further lawsuits.
I’ll admit I’m not a scientist or biologist, but by what I’ve observed, I would say that the wolf population has recovered. From seeing wolves on County Road 7 on a frequent basis to getting wolf pictures from News- Herald readers from every corner of the county, it seems that wolves are growing in number. A wolf apparently killed by other wolves at the Pincushion Ski Area in 2010 leads me to believe that there are too many wolves in the neighborhood.
I know that the citizen’s committee that met repeatedly in the late 1990s worked diligently to reach consensus on what to do about the gray wolf. I can only imagine the contentious debate that led to a compromise that placed a moratorium on hunting or trapping wolves until five years after federal delisting. I respect the work that went into creating the 2001 Minnesota Wolf Management Plan.
But at that time the wolf population had just reached its peak. According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service report Gray Wolf Recovery in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, last updated in December 2011, the wolf population in the late 1970s was estimated at 1,000 to 1,200.
A Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) survey during the winter of 1988-1989 estimated 1,500 to 1,750 wolves. According to the report, surveys conducted every five years determined that the wolf population grew in size and range to an estimated 2,921 animals in 2007. According to the DNR, the state’s wolf population, estimated at fewer than 750 animals in the 1950s, has stabilized at about 3,000 wolves.
The DNR’s own wolf management plan, approved by the federal government, calls for a minimum population of 1,600 for “the long term viability of the species.”
So, according to the DNR we are 1,400 wolves over the goal established when the wolf was placed on the endangered species list.
The five-year waiting period following delisting has been eliminated, and state officials have begun to plan for a limited gray wolf hunting or trapping season in late 2012.
I agree that they are not endangered anymore. I don’t see the need to wait five more years to begin a limited hunting or trapping season.
Although I admit when it comes to that hunting or trapping season, I again worry about wolves. I well remember watching horrific films of wolf slaughter when I was a teen. People tend to go a little crazy in their desire to control the wolf population. The remembered image of aerial wolf shooting still sickens me.
I never want to see something so patently unfair again. If Minnesota is to have a wolf hunt or trapping season, the wolf needs to have a fighting chance. Thankfully, Congress passed the Federal Airborne Hunting Act of 1972, which put an end to that barbarous hunt by air.
The DNR needs to come up with a good plan for this management, which is not so cruel. They need to decide if hunting will even be allowed or if a trapping season is more appropriate. If hunting is allowed, will baiting be authorized? If trapping is the method to be used, how will zones be determined?
And perhaps most importantly, how will the population be monitored? The DNR must find a way to ensure that the population does not fall below its minimum goal. And it needs to make this information available to a worried human population.
There are more questions than answers at this point, so I find it hard to believe that the DNR will be able to enact a wolf season in 2012.
Either way, I’ll be worrying about wolves.
The natural world is dynamic. From the
expanding universe to the hair on a
baby’s head, nothing is the same from
now to the next moment.
Helen Hoover
Leave a Reply