The Wolf in the Great Lakes Region
By Ted B. Lyon
Protecting wolves in the Midwest will cease to be practical or even possible according to the Endangered Species Act, as species integrity is disappearing.
Before 1974
The nationwide campaign to eradicate wolves did just that by the 1960s, except in the upper Midwest where a small group of wolves (three hundred or less) retreated into wilderness. Wolves were declared close to extinct and given the equivalent of endangered species protection in Wisconsin in 1957 and Michigan in 1965. Until the mid-1970s, gray wolves in the Great Lakes region were almost entirely found in northern Minnesota in the Superior National Forest. This was the largest population in the United States, numbering about one thousand. It was kept in check by hunting and trapping.
In Minnesota, there was a bounty on all predators, including wolves, until 1965. Between 1965 and 1974, Minnesota had an open season on wolves and a Directed Predator Control Program that removed about 250 wolves per year. Anti-wolf sentiment in that region ran fairly high.1
After 1974
Following the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, wolves all across the United States were listed as endangered in 1974. Almost immediately, the wolf population in the Midwest began to increase and expand, aided by a succession of mild winters and a large whitetail deer population. According to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, wolves were breeding in Wisconsin by 1975 and in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula by 1989.2 There was also a small population of wolves on Isle Royale that got to the island by crossing the ice in winter; incidentally, these wolves, which fed on moose, were perhaps the most studied wolves in the world.
Due to their population increase, wolves in Minnesota were reclassified to “threatened” in 1978. As the numbers of wolves in the Great Lakes area began to rise, people became more aware of them, and pro-wolf campaigns were launched by environmental and animal rights groups. Early public opinion surveys, after listing wolves under the Endangered Species Act, were largely positive. Christening Minnesota’s NBA team the “Timberwolves” no doubt aided early positive public opinion of wolves.
Rising Population
Protection aided wolf population growth. According to former Michigan Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist James Hammill, “Michigan and Wisconsin have typically had a 15 percent annual rate of increase in the number of wolves since 1977. The wolves in Minnesota have also continued to increase but at a slower rate of roughly 4 percent annually.”3
Just how many wolves there are in this region is controversial. The US Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that the current Midwest wolf population is about 4,400.4 This is a conservative number. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) says there are nearly seven hundred wolves currently in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.5 Wisconsin DNR says it has at least as many.6 And Minnesota DNR says that it has over three thousand wolves.7
Hammill, who lives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and is active in studying wolf behavior, believes that the Midwest wolf population of 2012 will actually approach six thousand animals, about four thousand of which are in Minnesota.8 Wolves also have been reported in North and South Dakota, Iowa, and northern Illinois. And, of course, wolves are found in neighboring Canadian provinces.
There have been multiple reports of wolves in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.9 Presumably, these wolves reached Michigan’s Lower Peninsula by crossing Lake Michigan or Lake Huron in the winter, but as in other states, some people raise wolves and wolf-dogs in captivity, and some escape or people purposefully release them into the wild. In 2000, Michigan took steps to reduce this problem by passing the Wolf-Dog Cross Act, which requires wolf-dog owners to prove the hybrid has been sterilized, to keep the animal in a fenced area, and to display a sign reading: “A potentially dangerous wolf-dog cross is kept on this property.”10
As Dr. Matthew Cronin states in his chapter on wolf genetics, the identification of specific species and/or subspecies of wolf is not uniformly agreed upon among scientists. Basically, there are two wolf species: the gray wolf (Canis lupus) and the red wolf (Canis rufus). At one time, there were as many as twenty-four subspecies of wolf recognized in the United States. Today, most scientists agree that there are five subspecies of gray wolf in North America: the Arctic wolf Canis lupus arctos, the eastern timber wolf Canis lupus lycaon, the Great Plains wolf Canis lupus nubilus, the Rocky Mountain wolf Canis lupus occidentalis, and the Mexican wolf Canis lupus baileyi. Of these five, at least two subspecies—the Great Plains wolf and the eastern timber wolf—interbreed in the Great Lakes region, and Ontario also considers the Arctic wolf territory along Hudson Bay to overlap with eastern timber wolf territory.
Today there are only forty-five to sixty wild red wolves, a population which was bred in captivity and released into the wild. They all live in the mountains of North Carolina. As this chapter is being written, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing that starting in late 2017 they plan to limit wild red wolves to a federal wildlife refuge and some adjacent land in eastern North Carolina’s Dare County, rather than the five-county area where they currently roam. For this discussion of wolves in the Midwest, the red wolf needs to be noted as, at one time, it may have been found as far west as Texas and Missouri and northward to southern Ontario. Therefore, some Midwestern wolves may well also contain DNA of red wolves.11
The point simply is that, sooner or later, if it is not already the case, all wolves in the Midwest will be hybrids—either mixtures of wolf sub-species or wolf-coyote-dog hybrids.
“I can tell you this: The adage that a wolf only kills the old animal or the sick or wounded is total bull. I had them kill twelve sheep in one night.”
—Tony Cornish, retired MN game warden12
Wolves and People in the Great Lakes States
Gray wolves in Minnesota have normal ranges of twenty-five to 150 square miles, which is much smaller than wolves in the Northern Rockies. As food availability influences the territorial behavior of wolves, presumably the smaller range area in Minnesota is due to the abundance of whitetail deer. These wolves are also smaller than the Canadian wolves that were transplanted into the Northern Rockies. Minnesota gray wolf females run fifty to eighty-five pounds, and males, seventy to 110 pounds.
Reviewing each state’s website about wolf management, one finds fascinating differences of opinion about the number of deer per year that an adult wolf consumes. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources estimates that an adult wolf kills thirty to fifty deer per year.13 The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources estimates only about twenty deer per year are taken by an adult wolf.14 The two states share a border and are so similar in habitat that it’s hard to imagine that the Minnesota estimation is lower because of some dramatic difference in habitat.
As the wolf population in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan has grown, wolf-hunting territory expanded, both to find new land not already occupied by a wolf pack and to find food. The Midwest has National Forests, but extensive wilderness habitat like in the Northern Rockies is not found in the Great Lakes region, except in the far north. So Midwest wolves increasingly approach farms and urban areas where hunting has not been permitted. As wolf populations increase, they move closer to population centers including Minneapolis-St. Paul and Duluth, Minnesota; Green Bay, Wisconsin; and even Chicago, Illinois—and wolf-human contact increases. According to James Hammill, wolves have attacked and killed pets in the immediate vicinity of homes and within city limits in all three states.15
As predation on pets and livestock has increased, according to the USDA Wildlife Services, over three thousand wolves in the Great Lakes area have been killed due to conflicts with human settlements. Wolf attacks on pets and livestock hit record levels in 2010. In Minnesota, fifteen dogs were killed by wolves, up from an average of just two dogs per year from 2006 to 2008, according to the federal agencies. Minnesota officials verified 130 of 272 complaints—both records—involving 139 livestock and poultry and twenty-three dogs. The verified complaints were 31 percent above the five-year average. One person’s safety was threatened by a wolf.16
In Wisconsin in 2010, wolves attacked livestock on forty-seven farms, fifteen more than the previous high, killing sixty-nine animals.17 Also, wolves killed twenty-four dogs and injured fourteen more, the most ever.18
In May 2012, the Michigan DNR killed eight wolves that had moved into the Upper Peninsula town of Ironwood, where they hunted pets and consumed garbage.19
Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan have a livestock compensation program for animals killed or injured by wolf predation, and Wisconsin has a pet owners’ compensation program. In 2011, Minnesota paid out $154,136 compensation to farmers for livestock—mostly for cattle but also for sheep, turkeys, pet dogs, a horse, and a llama.20 The state paid 128 claims totaling $102,230 in fiscal 2011 and 104 claims for $106,615 in fiscal 2010. Contrast this with $72,895 paid for 71 claims in 2006.
In Minnesota, trappers with the USDA’s Wildlife Services killed 192 problem wolves in 2011, down slightly from the 196 killed in 2010. The state Department of Agriculture paid about $96,000 in 2010 to people who lost livestock to wolves.21
Wolf Politics
Like the Northern Rockies and the Southwest wolf population centers, attempts to manage wolf numbers by hunting and trapping in the Midwest have been met by legal action from pro-wolf organizations. In 2003, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) reclassified Midwestern wolves from endangered to threatened, but this was judicially overturned. In April 2005, the USFWS issued sub-permits to allow the Michigan and Wisconsin Departments of Natural Resources (DNR) to kill depredating wolves. But in September of the same year, the sub-permits were stopped by Federal District Court in Washington, DC, due to inadequate public notice of the states’ applications.
In May 2006, a permit to kill depredating wolves was issued to the Wisconsin DNR and the Michigan DNR by the USFWS. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and others filed suit against the Department of the Interior (DOI) and USFWS for issuance of those permits. On August 9, 2006, a US District Court judge ruled against DOI, and the permits were no longer in effect.
In 2007, the USFWS delisted the wolf in the Midwest, but again HSUS sued to block it. Finally, Endangered Species Act protection for gray wolves in the Western Great Lakes Distinct Population Segment (DPS) was published in the Federal Register on December 28, 2011.22 However, in 2012, suits were filed to prevent hunting wolves with dogs in Wisconsin and to block the Minnesota management wolf hunt. These lawsuits have cost the federal government considerable money to defend.
Ontario: A Model for Wolf Management?
On the eastern side of the Great Lakes, the US gray wolf population comes into contact with gray wolves from Ontario. Ontario presently has eight to ten thousand wolves, about the same as Alaska. Provincial parks, such as Algonquin Provincial Park, are known to be wolf population centers. As the landscape there is heavily forested and viewing wolves is less easy than in the more open western United States, “howl-ins” are a popular tourist activity in some Ontario parks.23
The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) considers there to be two species of wolf in Ontario: the gray wolf in northern boreal and tundra areas and the Eastern wolf in the central and northern hardwoods and conifers. MNR also states:
Coyotes, a close cousin to the wolf, co-exist well with humans and are common in the developed and agricultural areas of southern and northern Ontario. Where the ranges of Eastern wolves and coyotes overlap, interbreeding makes it difficult to distinguish between Eastern wolves and coyotes, and they can easily be confused.
Other researchers say there are four subspecies of wolf in Ontario: 1. Canis lupus hudsonicus that inhabits the subarctic tundra; 2. a race (Ontario type) of the eastern timber wolf (Canis lupus lycaon) that inhabits the boreal forests; 3. a second race (Algonquin type) of Canis lupus lycaon that inhabits the deciduous forests of the upper Great Lakes; and 4. a small wolf (Tweed type) in central Ontario that may be a hybrid between the Algonquin-type wolf and expanding coyotes, Canis latrans.24 The hybridization between wolves and coyotes is a major reason why some scientists are opposed to establishing a wolf population in the Adirondack Mountains, as it would not be able to be protected under the Endangered Species Act.25
Regardless of the species or subspecies of wolf, Ontario has some important lessons for US wolf management. For example, Ontario has long had wolf hunting and trapping, and their wolf population is robust—more wolves than in the entire lower forty-eight, and the population has been stable for about thirty years.26 The size of the Ontario wolf population in itself should answer concerns about hunting and trapping alone driving wolves to extinction. Science-based management is the key.
The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources has an Enhanced Wolf Management Plan (EWMP) that seeks to ensure that wolves occupy 85 percent of their historic range in the province. It states that hunting and trapping should play an integral role in controlling wolf populations within the province.27
What we can also learn from Ontario’s experience is that, as wolf populations grow and expand, more and more conflicts between wolves and people will occur. This has translated into several recent attacks on people:
• In Algonquin Provincial Park, there have been five attacks on humans, mostly on children, between 1987 and 1998 by four different wolves.31
• September 2006. A lone black wolf attacked and seriously injured six people, including three children, at the popular Katherine’s Cove Beach in Lake Superior Provincial Park. The wolf was killed by park staff and tested negative for rabies.28
• December 31, 2011. A lone wolf attacked two ice fishermen and their Border Collie on a lake adjacent to Algonquin National Park, where hunting and trapping wolves had been curtailed.29
• Summer 2012. There were two wolf attacks on people with dogs in the Thunder Bay, Ontario area.30
Conclusion
Before wolves were placed on the Endangered Species Act protected list, public opinion was not too favorable towards wolves. As soon as they were listed, environmental groups sought to exploit wolves for fund-raising, and people who did not have daily contact with wolves became more positive about them. A 1990 study by Steven Kellert found that 80 percent of Michigan’s deer hunters favored Michigan’s wolf population being replenished.32 At that time, there were a handful of wolves in the Upper Peninsula. Fifteen years later, when the wolf population had reached about four hundred, 812 people attended a series of meetings about wolves in the Upper Peninsula—22 percent said they wanted no wolves in the Upper Peninsula, and 36 percent said they wanted fewer than existed at that time.33 Another study conducted in 2002 found that residents of the Lower Peninsula (where there were no wolves) were much more supportive of having wolves than were residents of the Upper Peninsula.34 Elsewhere, as Midwestern wolf populations have increased, conflicts with farmers and dog owners have risen. As conflicts have increased, public acceptance of wolves has declined.35
Reviewing these studies and several others, wildlife biologist James Hammill concluded: “The current trajectory of public attitudes, especially in Michigan and Wisconsin, is not favorable to sustaining wolves in those states.”36 This conclusion leads Hammill to suggest that—in addition to the biological carrying capacity of an area determining the desired population for a species, especially species like wolves where contact with humans may lead to conflicts—a “social carrying capacity” should be developed for a realistic management plan.
As Midwestern states grapple with wolf management, much could be learned from Ontario about the practical sensibility of managing wolves in modern times.
For some dramatic perspective on what it’s like to find yourself living with habituated wolves, Bruce Mahler, police chief of Marenisco Township in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, has provided Ted Lyon with details on the situation in that area for the last two years.
In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Wolves Come Into Town
Marenisco Township is a scenic outdoor recreation area in Gogebic County in the copper country of the far western Upper Peninsula of Michigan. With approximately 330 square miles of numerous lakes, streams, and densely wooded areas, it’s the second largest township in the state. The area is a mecca for fish and game, as much of the township is located in the Ottawa National Forest and Commercial Forest Reserve. Approximately 1,704 people live in the township, many residents residing on the shores of Lake Gogebic, the largest inland lake in the Upper Peninsula.
Wolves were originally native to Michigan, but vanished from the Upper Peninsula by the early 1960s due to hunter bounties and declining local white-tailed deer populations. Ironically, the Marenisco police department patch for their officers’ uniforms features a wolf’s head—the design coming the drawing of a high school student who won a contest for a new patch design in 2006. Bruce Mahler, chief of the township police, says that inspiration probably came from the appearance of wolves near the town of Marenisco, population three hundred, at that time.
Since the winter of 1993–94, combined wolf numbers in Michigan and Wisconsin have risen to and surpassed a hundred, meeting federally established goals for population recovery. The Michigan goal of a minimum sustainable population of two hundred wolves for five consecutive years also was achieved. From 1994 to 2003, the Upper Peninsula wolf population saw an average annual growth rate of 19 percent. Growth then shrank to 12 percent as the wolf population neared the maximum biological carrying capacity of the area.
In January 2012, citing wolf recovery in the region, the US Fish and Wildlife Service took gray wolves off the federal endangered species list in Michigan and Wisconsin and the threatened species list in Minnesota, as the USFWS said wolves were thriving in that area.
In 2013, a total quota of forty-three wolves was set for the Upper Peninsula, with all twelve hundred available licenses sold. Trapping was not allowed. Hunters killed a total of twenty-two wolves during the hunt, which lasted from November 15 to December 31, 2013.
Nonetheless, the Humane Society of the United States filed a formal complaint, and in December 2014, a federal judge ordered the wolves relisted in those three states under the Endangered Species Act. Michigan’s laws on wolf depredation and the ability of wildlife managers to use lethal means, including hunting, to control wolves was suspended in December 2014, after a ruling from the US District Court in Washington, DC.
The Michigan DNR’s most recent minimum estimate of the Upper Peninsula wolf population in the spring of 2014 was 636, and current population estimates are that there are at least that many wolves roaming the UP.
There were no wolves in Marenisco Township for several decades, but recently they’ve been returning. There are now three to four packs of wolves in the township, including several habituated wolves that have decided to make the town their home in winter months.
Because wolves have been relisted in Michigan, the wolves of Marenisco cannot be harmed, unless they are actually attacking a person. This is causing a serious problem for a Chief Mahler, who wears a wolf patch on his shirt every day when he goes to work.
What’s been happening in Marenisco Township clearly follows Valerius Geist’s habituation model. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources reports that at least twenty-six cattle and seventeen hunting dogs were killed by wolves in the Upper Peninsula in 2014. Only twenty animals were attacked in 2013.37
The attacks on dogs continued in 2016, including dogs that were not in the woods with hunters.38
According to Chief Mahler, since the fall of 2015, several wolves have moved into town, following a herd of fifty to sixty deer. The deer were originally encouraged to move into town because people were feeding them, but it soon became clear that the deer had also moved into town to avoid the wolves, which prey heavily on deer in winter; so the wolves fearlessly followed the deer.
On February 25, 2016, Chief Mahler sent a letter to the Michigan DNR documenting forty-one reports of wolf interactions with humans close to their homes in 2015 and 2016. The report suggested between two to four wolves have been involved. This is only a sample of what’s been happening.
The sightings started on January 9, 2015, when two wolves, including a large black male, were seen in the early morning hours on Presque Isle Street between and within twenty feet of two homes that were built right up to the street.
The next day, two wolves, including a large black male, were seen in the early morning hours in the yard of a home on another street. Nearly a week later, two wolves—again, including a large black male—were sighted at the end of a Main Street driveway in the early morning hours by a woman letting her dog out. She immediately brought the dog inside.
Almost a month passed before, on February 14, two wolves, again including a large black male, were seen in the same Main Street driveway. That person saw the wolves in the early evening and called the homeowner to urge her not to let her children outside.
Six days later, things became a lot more tangible when a corrections officer on her way to work at the Ojibway Correctional Facility hit a wolf in town with her car. According to the officer, the wolf appeared to be chasing a deer.
“There was substantial damage to her car but the wolf ran off into the woods,” Mahler said. “I was unable to locate that wolf. This incident occurred early in the morning.”
As the weather warmed, the deer moved out of town, and so did the wolves. When winter came in 2015, the wolves and deer returned to Marenisco.
• March 4, 2015, a deer was killed by wolves in town in a yard between two houses.
• March 18, 2015, a resident reported a wolf walking down the main street toward Dutch’s Old Bar. Shortly thereafter, a resident saw a wolf staking his dog who was inside a fence. The wolf retreated when the resident opened his door and yelled at the wolf.
• March 19, 2015, a resident living on the shore of Lake Gogebic reported that a wolf had killed a deer in her yard and was eating the deer.
• April 2, 2015, a resident reported a black wolf was in her yard, about twenty feet from the house. She was concerned about her five-year-old granddaughter who lives with her.
• The black wolf was reported in town again on April 2, 3, and 8, and on April 14 it killed a domestic rabbit in the yard of a woman who lived in town.
• April 15, 2015, a resident reported that a pack of four wolves had been seen in the state park on Lake Gogebic. Sightings continued in April and May, and then the wolves disappeared until October, when they returned to town. On November 25, one of the wolves appeared on the back porch of a resident.
• In February 2016, two ice fishermen on Lake Gogebic reported that wolf was circling their fishing shanty. A week later wolves were seen near the school in the afternoon as children were heading for the school buses. There were several more reports of wolves that month including wolves walking down streets, in people’s yards, and appearing near children waiting for school buses or returning home from school.
Since Chief Mahler’s report to the DNR in February of 2016, wolf encounters in town have continued. For example, on March 11, 2016, a homeowner reported a wolf killing a deer by near his home. Mahler said, “He stated he was awakened to the cries of the deer, which seemed to be right outside his window. In the morning, the homeowner found the kill and reported it.”
Five days later, on March 16, a resident walking his dog during daylight hours encountered a wolf that came out of the wood-line, stopped about thirty feet away, looked at the man and his dog for several seconds, then turned and walked back into the woods.
Another sighting occurred on March 18. Mahler says, “At approximately 2000 hours I was called at home by a resident who saw a large black wolf walking down the middle of the road in front of her house . . . she said the wolf was walking toward Dutch’s Bar.”
Finally, on March 18, a resident reported that his dog, chained outside, was barking wildly. The man said he looked out—the yard has a backyard flood light on when the dog is outside—to see a wolf “stalking” the dog. He yelled, and brought his dog in the house.
“The above instances are all within the town limits of Marenisco,” Mahler says. “In addition, I have reports of wolves near homes in the Lake Gogebic area and this doesn’t include the usual sightings of wolves in the outlying areas of the township.”
The incidents that Mahler reports, forty-two total and thirty nine in town, took place during winter months, when the deer herd had moved into town. “My concern is not environmental, it is simply public safety. People are afraid to walk their dogs, let their children and grandchildren outdoors to play, and some are even afraid to go outside and shovel snow.”
Chief Mahler said that he has three major concerns about the wolves. The first is that they seem relatively fearless. Wolves kill deer in people’s front yards, watch kids get off school buses, attack dogs, and people now are carrying firearms when they walk their dogs. Mahler says that since legally he has to wait until someone is physically attacked before shooting the wolf, he asks, “Just when and where does a case of ‘imminent threat’ exist?”
“It’s not good enough anymore to say the wolves are not a threat or that there is nothing we can do because they’re an endangered species,” Mahler says. “I now have people arming themselves and I foresee it won’t be long before they take matters into their own hands. If I get a call and there’s a wolf and it’s a threat to a child or someone in my community I will shoot that wolf. Plain and simple.”
The second concern is that one of the major winter recreational activities in the area is snowmobiling. Abandoned railway lines now form a network of ORV and snowmobile trails, which provide many residents and visitors access to miles of scenic areas of the township. The hundreds of inches of snow that fall on the area every winter make the area a preferred destination for numerous snowmobilers. There are several instances of wolves attacking snowmobilers in Alaska. Mahler says that wolves quickly seem to learn that loud noises and other repellant methods mean no harm, and so they begin approaching people.
“I keep thinking about what will happen if someone is out there alone in the evening on their snowmobile and it breaks down or runs out of gas. We find carcasses of deer that are killed by wolves on the snowmobile trails. There is no way that we can be sure that a person who has to walk back into town from one of trails won’t be a target for wolves.”
A third concern is that the deer herd in that area is virtually gone—except for the deer that are trying to hide in town. If the wolves remain in that area, the town deer herd will decline and the wolves will inevitably be driven to prey on livestock and pets, and feed on garbage and roadkill.
Mahler says that even if the wolves haven’t attacked a person, the presence of a pack of habituated wolves in the area has serious economic implications for tourism, livestock, and hunting in Marenisco Township.
There may not have been any attacks on humans in Marenisco Township yet, but Mahler called attention to an incident on January 2, 2015, in Presque Isle, Wisconsin, which is located about eighteen miles from Marenisco, where the body of sixty-one year-old Corrine Gerster’s was found outside the Towne House store.
Gerster’s neighbor has two retrievers. One of them tried to spend the night on her porch, and so she put it on a leash and walked the dog over to the neighbor’s house. That was the last that anyone saw of her until the next morning when her body was found. The woman’s clothing was torn from her body, her arm was partially amputated below the elbow, and there were signs of a real struggle.
An autopsy found that Corrine Gerster had died of a heart attack, but just what caused her to have a heart attack is the real question. Initially law enforcement in Presque Isle and the Wisconsin DNR said that animal tracks were discovered near the body, but couldn’t say what animal it was. Wisconsin DNR then later said some of the tracks belonged to domestic dogs and led to two different homes.
Chief Mahler says the woman had deep puncture bite wounds on her head and in the heart-lung area of her body. It seems likely that the woman died because of the attack. The dog she was returning was not hurt.
Charged with protecting the people of Marenisco Township, in his letter to the DNR Chief Mahler says, “I will take whatever action ‘lawfully’ necessary to safeguard the people of my township—including lethal force if a wolf is a threat to either myself or another. I strongly urge you to do whatever you can to help overturn this judicial order so an adequate management plan can be adopted and put in place.”
Marensico is less than ten miles from Wisconsin, which has a growing problem with wolf attacks on dogs. Between March 25, 2016, and September 18, 2016, the Wisconsin DNR reports thirty-six wolf attacks on dogs in the state. All but two of these attacks resulted in one or more dogs being killed.40
The significance of this has already been explained by Dr. Geist as a part of the sequential wolf habituation that brings them closer and closer to attacking people.
In September 2016 Paul and Judy Canik, who own a farm in Butternut, Wisconsin (about fifty miles from Marenisco), with 350 sheep and dogs to guard them, reported at a “wolf summit” held in that area in early September 2016 that in the last year and a half, wolves had killed two dogs and seventeen exotic sheep. The ewes they lost in late May were all pregnant with twins, tripling their losses. The wolves didn’t eat any of the sheep.41
Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Utah—all have filed briefs in support of the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s delisting of the wolf in the Great Lakes region, calling for Congress to pass legislation overturning a 2014 federal judge’s decision to place gray wolves in the Great Lakes states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota back on the endangered species list after they had been delisted in 2012.
While the wolf population in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is stable, there have been reports of wolves moving into the Lower Peninsula, presumably the wolves walked across the ice on Lakes Michigan and Huron in winter. According to the Michigan DNR, in March 2014, biologists with the Little Traverse Band of Odawa Native Americans discovered wolf tracks and collected scat from what was presumed to be a wolf in Emmet County. In September 2015, confirmation was received from Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, that the Emmet County scat submitted for DNR analysis was from a male gray wolf.
This was the second confirmation of wolf presence in the Lower Peninsula since 1910. The first occurred in 2004 when a wolf, collared by the DNR in Mackinac County, was accidentally killed by a coyote trapper.42
For more information about wolves in Michigan, including statistics of attacks on dogs, see: http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,1607,7-153-10370_12145_12205-32569—,00.html.
Ted Lyon: Update as of October 2016
In July of 2016 in the American Association for the Advancement of Science magazine, Science Advances, a group of scientists from Princeton, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Francisco, SiChuan University from the Republic of China, and Efi Arazi School of Computer Science in Israel published an extensive study of the wolf genome sequence that revealed that the eastern wolves of the Great Lake states, and the red wolf of the southeastern United States are in fact wolf-coyote hybrids. The red wolf showed 75 percent coyote ancestry while the eastern wolf showed 25 percent coyote ancestry.43
This scientific study is the beginning of what I predict will eventually lead to the delisting of eastern wolves in the Great Lake states and the red wolf in North Carolina. The simple reason for this is that the ESA is designed to protect only species not hybrids. It’s never been used to my knowledge to protect hybrids and probably never will be in the future.
It’s my position that protecting hybrids will require Congress to rewrite the Endangered Species Act to include hybrids, and that’s something that probably won’t happen. Delisting lawsuits challenging the listing of the eastern wolf and the listing of the red wolf will probably be filed in the near future and both, if done properly with the proper evidence, will probably be successful. This study did not sequence the genetics of the Mexican wolf which has been highly controversial but if that testing is done in the near future, it will probably reveal the same thing. This is very controversial right now. There is strong evidence that the original Mexican wolves were wolf-dog hybrids.44
There is also research that indicates Mexican wolves in captivity may be pure wolves,45 but there are other studies that conclude that Mexican wolves are hybrids.46
Regardless which study is correct, as soon as they are released into the wild, as chapters by Laura Schneberger and Jess Carey demonstrate, Mexican wolves show habituated behavior that includes breeding with domestic dogs, and wolves waiting along roadsides for USFWS trucks to come by and dump food for them, such as roadkill.47 The 2016 study reported in Science Advances even revealed that the Yellowstone wolves show an 8.5 percent coyote ancestry. This study should have profound implications for coyote/wolf management in the future and is even more reason to turn over all management of wolves to the states.
Endnotes:
1. Weiss, et. al., “An Experimental Translocation of the Eastern Timber Wolf,” Audubon Conservation Report 5, 1975, Twin Cities, MN: NAS.
2. Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Michigan Gray Wolf Recovery and Management Plan, Lansing, MI, 1997.
3. James Hammill, “Policy Issues Regarding Wolves in the Great Lakes Region,” Transactions of the 72nd North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, Wildlife Management Institute, 2007, pg. 378.
4. http://www.fws.gov/midwest/wolf/aboutwolves/WolfPopUS.htm
5. http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,1607,7-153-10370_12145_12205-32569-,00.html#recovery
6. http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/45452492.html
7. http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/rsg/profile.html?action=elementDetail&selectedElement=AMAJA01030
8. Hammill, Op. Cit., p. 387.
9. http://greatlakesecho.org/2010/02/20/wolf-count-raises-questions-about-michigan-range-threats/
10. http://www.animallaw.info/statutes/stusmi287_1001.htm
11. http://www.wolf.org/wolves/learn/wow/regions/United_States/North_Carolina.asp and http://www.valleymorningstar.com/news/us_news/article_90da8565-be47-5bd2-8f96-21e2d959c8b5.html
12. http://www.startribune.com/sports/outdoors/169262076.html
13. http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/mammals/wolves/mgmt.html
14. http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/mammals/wolves/mgmt.html
15. Hammill, Op. Cit., p. 383.
16. http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/mammals/wolves/mgmt.html
17. http://www.startribune.com/sports/outdoors/116787898.html; and http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/WildlifeHabitat/wolf/
18. http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/wildlifehabitat/wolf/dogdeps.html
19. http://www.mlive.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2012/05/government_killing of_8_wolves.html
20. http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_21518716/minnesota-wolfs-recovery-seen-higher-livestock-loss-payouts
21. http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/mammals/wolves/mgmt.html
22. http://www.thewildlifenews.com/category/wolves/wisconsin-wolves/
23. http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/en/Business/SORR/2ColumnSubPage/STEL02_163450.html
24. http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/100/suppl_1/S80.abstract
26. http://www.ofah.org/news/Research-needed-on-Algonquin-wolves
27. http://www.ofah.org/news/Government-announces-Enhanced-Wolf-Management-Plan
28. http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org/2006/articles09/six_injured_in_rare_wolf_attack.htm
29. http://www.ontariooutofdoors.com/News/?ID=203&a=read
30. http://www.ontariooutofdoors.com/news/?ID=153&a=read
31. http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/species/mammals/wolf/FinalWolfHabPlanforemail.pdf
32. Kellert, S.R., Public Attitudes and Beliefs about the Wolf and its Restoration in Michigan, Wisconsin: HBRS, Inc., 1990.
33. Hammill, Op. Cit., p. 383.
34. Mertig, A.G., “Attitudes about Wolves in Michigan,” Report to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources-Wildlife Division, 2004, East Lansing, MI.
35. Mech, L. D. 2001. Managing Minnesota’s Recovered Wolves, Wildlife Society Bulletin 29:70–77.
36. Hammill, Op. Cit., p. 387.
37. http://www.9and10news.com/story/27877103/number-of-wolf-attacks-double-in-michigan
38. http://abc10up.com/warning-graphic-wolves-attack-dog-dnr-confirms/
39. http://www.rivernewsonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=6&SubSectionID=59&ArticleID=68395
40. http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/wildlifehabitat/wolf/dogdeps.html
41. http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/story/news/local/2016/09/15/great-lakes-wolves-spil-blood-stir-fear/90315186/
42. http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-153-10366_46403_63473-378496—,00.html
43. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/how-do-you-save-wolf-s-not-really-wolf
44. https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2015/01/12/are-mexican-wolves-in-arizona-actually-wolf-dog-hybrids/
45. http://mexicanwolves.heritageparkzoo.org/Genetic%20Management%20of%20the%20Mexican%20Wolf%20Captive%20Population.pdf
46. http://www.earthtouchnews.com/natural-world/animal-behaviour/is-this-coyote-wolf-hybrid-taking-over-north-america
47. http://www.azgfd.gov/w_c/wolf/faq.shtml#4
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