Up until gray wolves – also known as timber wolves – were placed on the endangered species list in 1974, they had been shot and trapped out of existence in Wisconsin. Until 1957 there was a $20 bounty on adults and $10 on pups.

“The only remaining population in the lower 48 states was in northeastern Minnesota,” Edberg said. “There were some on Isle Royale, but on a land-based habitat, the protection under the Endangered Species Act allowed the animals to have the freedom to travel into areas where historically they were persecuted, where they were shot on sight.”

Proof that the Endangered Species Act works can be seen in wolf number: 3,000 in Minnesota (where they are listed as threatened rather than endangered, 650 in Wisconsin, and about 600 in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

“We figure they went extinct about 1960 and started coming back about 1975,” said Adrian Wydeven, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources wolf expert based in Park Falls, Wis., about Wisconsin’s wolf population.

The DNR does an annual winter count of the wolf population.

“Last year we counted 626 to 662 wolves, and that’s the most we’ve ever counted in the state. It’s the most we’ve recorded in Wisconsin I guess in any survey. It’s probably the most wolves that have lived in the state in over 100 years,” Wydeven said.

Even the DNR acknowledges it may have a conservative count of wolves.

“The count we have is minimum count,” Wydeven said. “People often say, there are a lot more wolves than the DNR says there are. Most of the year there are. The population doubles in the spring and most of the pups die off. Most years we lose two-thirds of the pups born in the springtime by the end of the first year.”

Whatever the exact numbers are, Wydeven said the growth of the wolf population naturally results in more problems with wolves and encroaching civilization.

“We are having some problems,” he said. “In 2008 we had 32 different farms that had depredation to livestock. We had 20-some dogs that were attacked and killed by wolves. Those kinds of numbers have started to increase in recent years as the population started to grow.”

More than 30 dog attacks were reported through September of this year.

The state has a wolf management plan, but the federal Endangered Species Act supersedes state plans.

“We developed a state management plan for wolves in 1999, and at the time we had less than 200 wolves in Wisconsin,” Wydeven said. “We had set a goal of 350 wolves in the state, outside of Indian reservations, and most years we have 15 to 25 wolves living on Indian reservations, so that would be a statewide population of about 375 wolves.”

And that, Wydeven said, was a reasonable number of wolves to manage.

“One of the things we were anticipating with the plan in 1999 is that the federal government would be removing wolves from the list of endangered species relatively soon,” he said. “There were indications it was going to happen within a year or so from the time we had that plan completed. But, frustratingly, that’s taken a lot longer because of court challenges and lawsuits. We’ve been on again and off again on the endangered species list. The state hasn’t had much opportunity to manage the wolf population because it’s mostly been a federally listed endangered species.”

Now that the population has almost doubled what state wildlife managers had planned for, the chance of wolf-human problems has increased.

As a logger who has been working the woods around Rice Lake since 1990, Mike Severson has seen his share of wildlife, but he said lately he and his wife Connie, who works by his side as forwarder operator, have been seeing a lot more wolves.

“We’ve always had a pack just northeast of where I live, the Deer Lake pack, but now it’s common around here. Someone you know sees wolves almost every day,” Severson said. “They are way too bold. They have no fear. We saw a whole pack just the other day. They’ll sit down like a dog on their haunches and watch you from 30, 40 yards away. I’m not scared of any wildlife, but I watch my back more than I used to.”

Severson believes wolves are to blame for the decimation of the deer in his area.

“It’s the lowest deer population I’ve seen. I’ve hunted in these woods all my life. I’ve been hunting since I was 8 and I’m 48,” he said. “Normally in our area in the wintertime, we’ll have 40 to 50 deer at a cutting. Last year I worked the same exact spot as I did two years ago and there were only 14 deer. By spring there was four left. The wolves killed 10. We saw them. The landowners were finding them on a regular basis. The farther north you go, the worse it gets.”

“We’re starting to see more of a backlash from people whoa re dissatisfied with the wolf population, and people who are concerned about impacts on dogs and deer and livestock,” Wydeven said. “If we can’t readily deal with these problems, people will take them into their own hands. And when they do that, it’s not always offending animals.”

Lest anyone think the wolf is all taker, no giver, Wydeven points out that wolves are part of the ecosystem and have benefits.

“If you think about a healthy growing forest with healthy regenerating trees, you can’t have that with too high of a deer population,” he said. “By having wolves in the landscape and culling the deer herd some, there’s a better chance for good regeneration of the forest and more diversity. We’ve occasionally had a problems with too high of a beaver population causing flooding of timberland and roadways. We’ve had complaints a decade or two ago, especially in northeast Wisconsin, that beavers were starting to impact trout streams. We’ve been hearing less of that. One of the most important controlling factors of the beaver population is wolves. They can reducer a beaver population in an area by 20%.”

Wolves may be de-listed by spring

Joel Trick of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Fish & Wildlife Service’s Green Bay regional office said it’s only a matter of time before the wolf is removed from the endangered species list.

“We do intend to de-list the wolf,” he said. “The proposal is still working its way through Washington. I anticipate we will have a proposal out this fall.”

Once the proposal is published and undergoes a mandatory 60-day public comment period, the wolf could be de-listed early in 2010.

Jess Edberg of the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minn., said it’s time. The endangered species listing did what it was supposed to do.

“Biologically speaking, the wolves in the Great Lakes area have achieved recovery,” she said. “The Endangered Species act funding is one pool of money. If the wolf no longer requires federal protection, there are hundreds of other species that really are at risk of going extinct and could really use that money.”

Wolves were temporarily de-listed between March 2007 and September 2008, which allowed the state wolf management plan to go into practice. USDA Wildlife Services staff would investigate and trap and euthanize problem wolves. The plan allows landowners to shoot wolves in the act of attacking livestock on their property, and allows permits to be issued to landowners in areas where wolves have caused problems.

“Those were very useful tools for dealing with problem wolves and removing them from the landscape efficiently,” DRN wolf expert Adrian Wydeven said. “But we’ve lost all that, so right now all the wolves that are trapped have to be released near the farm site or a short distance away. We’re pretty limited now in what we can do.”

Wydeven said the DNR is always interested in hearing about wolf sightings from the public.

“We’re always interested in hearing about those,” he said. “We have a website where people can report those (it’s actually a “Wisconsin rare mammal observation form” at http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/er/forms/rare_mammal.asp). We’re also interested in getting pictures of wolves. We’ve started to get in recent years a lot of trail camera pictures of wolves. We really appreciate those. It helps us better document where wolves are occurring and the status of population.

To report fearless or aggressive wolves, contact the DNR at 715-762-1363 or 715-762-1362, or USDA-Wildlife Services, Northern Wisconsin 800-228-1368, or
Central and Southern Wisconsin 800-433-0663.