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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: March 2006

Wisconsin and Michigan wolves

The heavily publicized Yellow-stone region wolf wars have parallels in the upper Midwest, the one part of the Lower 48 states where wolves were never killed out.


After wolves gained Endangered Species Act protection in 1974, the Wisconsin wolf population continued to struggle for a decade, but now has increased to as many as 455, a fourfold increase in 10 years, coinciding with abundant deer and falling numbers of human deer hunters.


Wolves in the upper Midwest in April 2003 were federally downlisted from “endangered” to “threatened,” but the “endangered” status was judicially restored in January 2005. In the interim, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources killed 70 alleged “problem” wolves.


Humane Society of the U.S. conservation consultant Karlyn Atkinson Berg told Lee Berquist of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in February that Wisconsin wolf numbers warrant downlisting.


“Unfortunately,” Berg said, “the history of wolves is that if a wolf kills one sheep, then people want to kill 100 wolves.” she said. Farmers, Berg observed, are “never required to exercise good husbandry,” to prevent predation on unattended animals.


There are now about 405 wolves on the Michigan Upper Peninsula, say state biologists, who believe the Michigan population has reached the carrying capacity of the habitat.

 

Alaska Board of Game scraps own accountability rules to allow shooting wolves from aircraft

ANCHORAGE––Ten years after Alaskans banned hunting wolves from aircraft by ballot initiative, 157 pilot/gunner teams are shooting wolves from aircraft by authorization of the Alaska Division of Wildlife Conservation and Board of Game––as hunters have every winter since 2003/2004––and there is nothing that Friends of Animals can do through the law to stop it, Alaska Superior Court Judge Sharon Gleason ruled on January 31, 2006.


On January 17, 2006, three years after FoA sued seeking to stop the airborne wolf hunt, Gleason ruled that the Board of Game violated its own rules by failing to publish written justification for it, including explanations of why alternatives to lethal control such as wolf sterilization could not be used.


The 2006 airborne wolf hunt was suspended for two weeks after only 24 wolves were killed, out of a quota of more than 500. The quota exceeds the total of 445 wolves killed during the first three winters of the program.


“This may be a clear indication that the state is inflating the number of wolves in these areas, which we have suspected, as there have been few if any surveys,” said Karen Deatherage, Alaska representative for the Defenders of Wildlife.


“There are far fewer wolves than they thought,” said FoA president Prisicilla Feral.


On January 29, however, the Board of Game at an emergency meeting “just flat-out repealed requirements for public notice and input regarding wolf and bear control. It also repealed all requirements and limitations that apply generally to wolf control,” fumed Feral.


Gleason then denied an FoA petition for an injunction against the action, which amounted to retroactively undoing the Board of Game accountability procedures to allow wolf-strafing to resume.


The Board of Game is appointed by the Alaska governor. Current Governor Frank Murkowski has favored airborne wolf hunting throughout his political career.


Division of Wildlife Cons-ervation director Matt Robus contends that the Alaska wolf population has risen since an FoA-backed ballot initiative banned shooting wolves from the air in 1996.


Officially, Alaska now has 7,000 to 11,000 wolves. Official estimates have agreed on a minimum of about 7,200 wolves surviving each winter since 1991. The higher estimates appear to be based on the numbers of wolves who go into each winter, including spring pups.


Hunters nonetheless blame wolves for regional scarcities of caribou and moose. Predator populations rise and fall with the abundance of prey, while prey populations tend to fluctuate mainly due to habitat changes, such as global warming and maturing tree canopy, which tends to grow beyond the reach of caribou and moose within 20 to 30 years after tracts are logged.


Explosive growth of a predator population typically follows either explosive growth of the prey base, as result of natural factors that increase the carrying capacity of the habitat, or because the predator population has been artificially thinned, so that females are able to bear and nurse larger litters.


Board of Game member Ted Spraker of Soldotna argued at the emergency meeting called in response to the January 17 ruling that the number of wolves killed in most of the five target areas has more than doubled during the past two years through use of aerial wolf control. Statewide, the toll jumped from about 150 to 276.


“This clearly points out that even though trappers do the best they can, and hunters do the best they can, it does take aerial shooting to get the number of wolves stated in our objectives,” Spraker said.


“Airplanes are the only thing that work,” agreed Wasilla board member Cliff Judkins.


What Spraker and Judkins actually appeared to be describing, however, is a phenomenon known to wildlife managers as “The more you shoot, the more you get.”


The effect was documented among coyotes in Texas more than 50 years ago, as federal Animal Damage Control agents gradually discovered that the females among the most heavily persecuted coyote populations within a few years increased their average litter size from four to seven.d Alaska Division of Wildlife wolf-killing policies most often result in killing fewer than 70%, allowing survivors to rebuild their populations quickly.


“For the first time ever,” added Feral, “Alaska is allowing the sale of bear hides and skulls,” to augment the wolf massacres by encouraging bear hunting in caribou and moose calving areas, seeking to reduce another calf predator.


The 2005 wolf casualities included most of the Toklat pack, long observed by visitors to Denali National Park. The alpha female was trapped and shot on February 11, 2005, FoA wildlife biologist Gordon Haber reported. A hunter escorted by a guide shot the alpha male on April 17, 2005.


Studies of the Toklat pack were begun in the 1930s by Adolph Murie. Haber had studied them since 1966.