There was no biological or social imperative for a hunt. It only happened because some hunters just wanted to kill wolves.
I am a Wisconsin hunter and I am embarrassed and disgusted at what took place in my state last week with a rushed and ill-considered wolf hunt.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's outdoor writer, Paul Smith, has written an excellent account of the history that got us to this point. But "this point" is carnage that exceeded the Department of Natural Resources' harvest goals by an astounding 82 percent.
Don't blame the DNR's wildlife professionals for that. They wanted to delay the hunt until November to give them adequate time to set proper limits, consult with Native American tribes, and administer the program correctly. But they were overruled by the courts, legislators and their own bosses on the Natural Resources Board.
"Never before had the DNR put together an application period and drawing for a hunt in such a short period of time," Smith writes. "It compromised the agency's legal requirement to consult with Native American tribes.
"And never before had the state held a hunting and trapping season during the wolves' breeding season."
To make matters worse, almost 90 percent of those wolves were hunted with dogs. Most ethical hunters would consider that to be out of bounds, unless you were trying to track down wolves that had been known to kill domestic animals. And to those who would say that it is very hard to find wolves without dogs, I’d say: Yes. It’s hard. That’s what makes it hunting instead of a video game.
A quick summary of the lengthy story recounted by Smith goes like this. On Jan. 4, Trump's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisted the gray wolf as endangered. Wisconsin law requires that, when these federal protections come off, the DNR must schedule a hunt between the beginning of November and the end of February. (This is a bad law. DNR scientists and wildlife managers should make this decision, not legislators.)
DNR staff told agency policy makers that that did not give them enough time to put together a hunt by February. They recommended waiting for November. The board went along, but then a Kansas-based extremist group called Hunter Nation (Ted Nugent is on its board; enough said) sued and Wisconsin courts agreed that the DNR had no authority to delay the hunt. The result is this awful mess: a harvest quota grossly exceeded, tribal relations damaged, and the general non-hunting public appalled.
According to the DNR, wolves took only 152 domestic animals last year and their owners were well compensated by the public with payments totaling $1.8 million. And many of those animals were dogs used to hunt bear, another unethical hunting practice. Finally, Wisconsin law already allows anyone to shoot a wolf at any time if the wolf is threatening a domestic animal.
On the other hand, the wolf population now stands at over 1,000 and, even with the exceeded quotas, the department isn’t worried that the population will crash. But obviously we can’t exceed harvest quotas by this much every year.
But let's be honest: There was no biological or social imperative for a hunt. It only happened because some hunters just wanted to kill wolves.
Extremist groups like Hunter Nation should understand that they may have unwittingly helped end wolf hunts for a good long time into the future. This kind of thing will, no doubt, be used to push the Biden administration to relist the gray wolf, thereby automatically ending Wisconsin’s wolf hunt. Under the circumstances, I’d be for that.
If you accept the idea that hunting is okay (as about 70 percent of Americans do), then responsible policy makers should regulate it in a way that is sustainable for the species, is consistent with the ethical tradition of “fair chase,” and also respects the prevailing cultural values of the public at large.
The rushed wolf hunt travesty of last week honored none of those goals.
[Editor's note: This column was corrected to note that it was the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that delisted the gray wolf.]
A version of this blog originally appeared on Dave’s website, Yellows Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
