Decision protecting wolves ripped.

[philranger]

This article appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal. October 6, 2008

By ROBERT IMRIE
Associated Press Writer


WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) -- A northern Wisconsin farmer who has watched a growing pack of wolves harass his sheep and kill one can't believe the animals are back on the federal endangered species list.

"All it means is the wolves win," said Merrill Rosenwinkel of Herbster, in far northern Bayfield County. "It is discouraging is what it is. It would be nice if we could go back to when there weren't any wolves here."

Last week, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in Washington, D.C., overturned the Bush administration's decision to remove gray wolves in the western Great Lakes region from the endangered list. He sided with environmental groups that accused the government of misreading the law last year when it lifted federal protections for about 4,000 wolves in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The ruling means the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources now can no longer manage wolves like it wants - basically allowing the killing of the problem ones that go after livestock, pets and even bear hunting dogs.

"I am very much disappointed," said Adrian Wydeven, the agency's wolf expert. "This really reduces our flexibility. It creates a lot more problems trying to manage our population. I think we lose public support to some extent because people were more willing to accept wolves when we could rapidly go out and have the problem animals removed."

Before last week's ruling, 45 problem wolves were killed in Wisconsin this year, mostly by government agents who trapped them near farms where they were causing problems, Wydeven said.

No more wolves will be killed until the state can acquire a special federal permit, a process expected to take months, he said. "This permit will be very restrictive, under specific conditions, likely leading to fewer wolves removed."

The only legal way to kill a wolf right now is if one was attacking a human being, he said.

The state issued 38 shooting permits for landowners in eight counties to kill problem wolves this year, he said. Eight permits were still active when the judge made his ruling and they were immediately revoked. The permits allowed the landowners to shoot any wolf coming onto their property.

Rosenwinkel had one of them.

So did Taylor County cattleman Jim Tlusty of Westboro.

"I am basically really discouraged with it," Tlusty said about strict protections being put back on wolves. "It is hard enough to make a living let alone feeding the wildlife. It is just disgusting. That ruling is completely foolish."

In the past five years, wolves have killed five cattle in his herd, he said. "We got plenty of wolves."

Decades of bounty hunting wiped out wolves in Wisconsin by the late 1950s, but they migrated back from Minnesota after being placed on the federal endangered species list in the 1970s. Between 600 and 700 now live in northern and central Wisconsin, roaming in 138 packs, Wydeven said.

Some critics believe the population estimate is far too conservative. There could be 1,200 wolves, they say.

Anna Cellar, coordinator of the Timber Wolf Alliance in Manitowish Waters, said people do not have to fear that too many wolves will suddenly risk harm to humans.

"Every creature, every species is going to reach it's own biological carrying capacity, so it is not going to be a situation where the wolves are going to completely overpopulate to the point of being dangerous to people," she said.

There are few documented cases of healthy wolves attacking people, she said.

In March 2007, federal officials removed the gray wolf from endangered lists in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, handing over management to state and tribal governments, completing the so-called "delisting" effort first announced by the U.S. Interior Department in 1998.

The Humane Society of the United States and several other groups sued, claiming the government had acted illegally and more caution was needed before the wolf protections were lifted.

With the judge's ruling, problem wolves in Wisconsin now can only be trapped and relocated, leaving farmers and ranchers with just nonlethal means, such as noisemakers, to scare them away.

"We are close to 30 farms that have depredation problems this year," Wydeven said. "Five years ago, it was five or six farms."

He knows the more restrictive controls will cause more landowner frustration. And he fears one backlash could be more illegal killing of wolves.

In 2006, the DNR documented 17 illegal killings, Wydeven said. In 2007, when the animal was off the endangered species list, that figure dropped to 11 - and included six incidents in which people turned themselves in after they shot a wolf after mistaking one for a coyote in areas of the state where wolves normally would be expected to run, he said.

Rosenwinkel, who started farming in 1976 when there were no wolves around and wildlife never caused a problem, answered Wydeven's fear by asking another question.

"If you have a poodle outside your house and a wolf comes up and is going to kill him, what are you going to do? Are you going to stand there and watch? Or if the gun is in the closet are going to get it and shoot?" the farmer asked. "They weren't here when I bought the place. They moved in. I kind of feel like I have a few more rights than they do."

Tlusty, the 70-year-old cattleman, said people are getting so aggravated by environmentalists who "just like to see all this game" that maybe hunters should just quit buying hunting licenses.

"We are not even going to go, just let the country get overrun with this foolishness," he said.

[johnhens]

Interesting take on wolves from Alod Leopold:

Thinking Like a Mountain
By Aldo Leopold
A deep chesty bawl echoes from rimrock to rimrock, rolls down the mountain, and fades into the far blackness of the night. It is an outburst of wild defiant sorrow, and of contempt for all the adversities of the world. Every living thing (and perhaps many a dead one as well) pays heed to that call. To the deer it is a reminder of the way of all flesh, to the pine a forecast of midnight scuffles and of blood upon the snow, to the coyote a promise of gleanings to come, to the cowman a threat of red ink at the bank, to the hunter a challenge of fang against bullet. Yet behind these obvious and immediate hopes and fears there lies a deeper meaning, known only to the mountain itself. Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.
Those unable to decipher the hidden meaning know nevertheless that it is there, for it is felt in all wolf country, and distinguishes that country from all other land. It tingles in the spine of all who hear wolves by night, or who scan their tracks by day. Even without sight or sound of wolf, it is implicit in a hundred small events: the midnight whinny of a pack horse, the rattle of rolling rocks, the bound of a fleeing deer, the way shadows lie under the spruces. Only the ineducable tyro can fail to sense the presence or absence of wolves, or the fact that mountains have a secret opinion about them.

My own conviction on this score dates from the day I saw a wolf die. We were eating lunch on a high rimrock, at the foot of which a turbulent river elbowed its way. We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock.

In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy: how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable slide-rocks.

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes - something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.

I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades. So also with cows. The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf's job of trimming the herd to fit the range. He has not learned to think like a mountain. Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.

We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau's dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.