Dan Treml was among the 20,272 people who tossed their names in the running to be part of a historic group, Wisconsin’s first state-sanctioned wolf hunters.
He missed landing one of the 1,160 licenses in the random drawing. But Treml, a resident of the northern Wisconsin community of Fifield, remains fervent about the need for the wolf hunting season that opened Monday and yielded four reported kills by Tuesday.
“We need to get them under control,” said Treml, 49, a hunter, hobby farmer and lifelong resident of the area. “In those first two or three seasons, you’re going to get rid of the main core of the problem, the ones that have no fear.”
The gray wolf is an environmental success story that to some has become a dangerous nuisance.
Almost wiped out of existence decades ago, the resilient animal has rebounded and now generates a wide spectrum of emotion as the biological flash point where hunters, farmers, environmentalists, government administrators and Native Americans converge.
In 1974 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deemed the wolves endangered, a status that led to a migration of wolves from Minnesota to Wisconsin, said Kurt Thiede, a DNR land division administrator.
The ban on killing wolves worked so well that the population in the western Great Lakes region, which includes eight Midwestern states, totals about 4,400, the Fish and Wildlife Service reports.
For about the past decade, Wisconsin officials fought over whether to reduce the population, an effort that was stymied by litigation. In the meantime, the population kept growing, Thiede said.
Today, Wisconsin’s wolf population totals about 850, the state Department of Natural Resources reports. That is more than double the 350 the agency contends is appropriate based on a number of “biological and social factors,” Thiede said.
When the Fish and Wildlife Service withdrew the animals from the endangered list earlier this year, Wisconsin enacted a new wolf season. The first hunting season runs through February, although the state can end it early if the numbers killed exceed the quota of 201.
Treml said he’s seen firsthand the growth in the wolf population in Wisconsin.
Packs of the animals have “escorted” Treml and his hunting dogs from the woods three times in the past four years while he was raccoon hunting at night, he said. About 18 months ago, the Fish and Wildlife Service began euthanizing what ended up being 17 wolves that had killed about five heifers at a nearby dairy farm, he added.
“Right now,” Treml said of the wolves, “they’re not human-shy.”
But some conservation groups and animal rights advocates continue to oppose wolf hunting. The Humane Society of the United States has notified the Fish and Wildlife Service of its intention to sue the agency if the wolves are not again given endangered species status in Wisconsin.
“We’ve made our intentions clear,” Humane Society President and CEO Wayne Pacelle said Tuesday. “We think the plans that Wisconsin and Minnesota have embarked on are too severe and jeopardize the wolf population.”
The law requires critics of removing the wolves from the endangered list to provide 60 days’ notice before filing litigation, which Humane Society has done, Pacelle said.
The decision to allow wolves to be hunted has less to do with a desire to protect livestock and property than it does with the desire of hunters to add wolves to their collections, Pacelle said.
“People aren’t killing these for food, and there’s already an allowance under federal law to kill wolves that endanger livestock or public safety,” he said. “This is effectively a trophy hunting and trapping program to kill wolves who are in forested or open area who aren’t bothering anyone.”
Pacelle called the hunting “the equivalent of a crime control policy predicated on shooting into a crowd. It’s nonselective, it’s random and it makes no common sense.”
The DNR’s Thiede said the agency is attempting to balance many interests. Legal protection of wolves has led the state to compensate pet owners and farmers who have lost livestock to the predators. Last year the state paid more than $300,000 for wolf damage, Thiede said.
Other Midwest states are evaluating what to do with burgeoning wolf populations. In addition to Wisconsin, Minnesota also has a wolf hunting season. Michigan lawmakers are considering one. Alaska, Idaho and Montana also allow wolf hunting and trapping.
But in Illinois, concern about wolf overpopulation is virtually nonexistent.
The Fish and Wildlife Service lists the animals in the state as endangered south of I-80. They are no longer considered endangered north of the interstate, though a spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service said “there probably aren’t any there,” either. State law deems it illegal to hunt wolves in that area, too.
Despite a half-dozen wolf sightings in Illinois since 2000 — including one struck by a car in McHenry County in 2005 — most of the wolves in the Midwest roam vast wooded areas of northern Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s unlikely that Illinois will establish a wolf hunting season soon.
“To answer the question of whether in 10 or 15 years we are going to see huntable populations in Illinois, I don’t know,” said Georgia Parham, spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Midwest Region. “There are no established wolf packs in Illinois right now.”
Parham said that the Fish and Wildlife Service will continue to monitor the western Great Lakes population. If the number of wolves drops perilously, it can reinstate the animals to the endangered list, she said.
The hunting season remains controversial in Wisconsin’s Native American communities. Mic Isham Jr., secretary/treasurer of Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, based in Hayward, said his organization opposes the hunting season.
“To us everything is connected,” he said Tuesday, “and if one part of the web is broken or gone, that puts a strain on the other parts. Bringing back the wolf helps bring that back together.”
Chronic wasting disease, which severely affected deer, is one example, Isham said. More wolves would have taken the sick animals, reducing the spread of the disease, he said. Isham also fears that the DNR’s wolf population numbers are too high, which will lead to “over-harvesting.”
Beyond those concerns is the Native American spiritual attachment to the wolf.
“The way we hold the wolf is like how the Catholics hold the Holy Trinity — Father, Son, Holy Spirit,” Isham said.
“The wolf is like one of those to us. It’s a sacred, holy being. To us the wolf was put on Earth at the same time as man to walk together as brothers, and as one goes, so goes the other. That’s real strong in our culture.”
