Sara Kupper/MEDILL
North American gray wolf Chenoa strikes a pose at Emily Oaks Nature Center on Saturday as British Columbian wolf puppy J.J. looks on.
by Sara Kupper
Oct 16, 2013
\Sara Kupper/MEDILL
John Basile introduces North American gray wolf Chenoa and British Columbian wolf J.J.
“We’ve never had a verified injury to a person from a wolf in the state of Wisconsin."
Dave MacFarland, Wisconsin DNRTwo wolves pranced at the end of the metal chain-link leashes John Basile and Renee Cajandig were holding. Basile’s charge, a North American gray wolf named Chenoa, entered the circle of assembled spectators and put her nose to the ground, sniffing the gravel and pacing in a semicircle before giving her fluffy coat a vigorous shake. Cajandig followed behind with a British Columbian wolf puppy, J.J. A furry black ball of energy, J.J. pounced on Chenoa’s shoulders and trotted around the circle, his pink tongue lolling from his mouth. The children stared, enthralled but afraid to get too close until Cajandig gave the OK and J.J. let them stroke his head.
For a half-hour, they watched the North American gray wolf, a creature of intense debate, a hunter now hunted. In Basile’s words, the participants at Wild Wolf Saturday had the privilege to “look a pure wolf right in the eyes.” And she looked back.
Basile, Cajandig, Chenoa and J.J. were visiting Emily Oaks Nature Center in Skokie for a special treat for kids and families alike. They came from Big Run Wolf Ranch, a non-profit educational facility in Lockport. Basile, the ranch’s president, offered the assembled spectators a brief history of the gray wolf in North America.
“Generations before us did not understand this animal, and they greatly feared him,” Basile said, before launching into a horror story of decimation during the 20th century: Wolves, he explained, were shot, poisoned, and infected with mange until the animals scratched off their own fur and died in the winter.
Gray wolf populations have rebounded since those dark days, after Congress passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973 and placed the wolves under its protection in 1974. But today the future of the gray wolf is more uncertain than ever.
Over the past five years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has removed gray wolf populations in the northern Rockies and the upper Midwest (Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan) from the Endangered Species list, noting that numbers had improved in these areas. Control of these wolf populations fell to the states in question, all of which legalized gray wolf hunting.
According to Dave MacFarland, carnivore staff specialist for the Wisconsin DNR Bureau of Wildlife Management, some level of wolf control is warranted, given the negative consequences of the state’s burgeoning wolf population, including “significant livestock issues,” “the loss of dogs to wolves,” and the “feeling amongst some of our rural residents that wolves are in too close contact with people.”
Wisconsin resident Becky Redling, a resident of Liberty Grove in Door County, spotted a gray wolf in her neighborhood while walking her 10-month-old puppy. She also knows friends who have seen wolves crossing the road and foraging at deer feeders. But Redling does not support wolf hunting in the state, although she does “know that [wolves] have been a pest in central Wisconsin because of the killing of livestock.”
DNR’s MacFarland is ambivalent about Wisconsin’s hunting laws. There are too many wolves in Wisconsin to label the animals “endangered,” he said, but wolves themselves aren’t dangerous — at least not to humans. “We’ve never had a verified injury to a person from a wolf in the state of Wisconsin. Your risk, in Wisconsin, of having an issue with a wolf is less than you would have with any other animals,” MacFarland said. Wolf hunting in Wisconsin, he added, is “justified," but not “necessary."
Wisconsin’s second state-managed hunting season began Tuesday.
There is an ongoing debate over the Endangered Species Act’s protection of wolves nationwide — not only in states such as Wisconsin where populations have rebounded in the past 40 years, but also throughout the entirety of the lower 48 states. In June, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a proposal that would remove all of the country’s gray wolves from the Endangered Species list. Environmental groups are fighting the proposal.
"There's a pervasive culture in the U.S. that's anti-predator," said Christine Williamson, chair of the Sierra Club's Chicago group and of the club's national Wildlife and Endangered Species team. "We're really in favor of intact ecosystems, and intact ecosystems do include members at the top of the food chain."
For example, the reintroduction of gray wolves in Yellowstone actually improved the ecosystem, Williamson explained. The wolves killed weaker elk along the Yellowstone river, thereby strengthening the elk population as a whole and controlling grazing in the area.
There's even a chance wolves in Illinois could be affected by the delisting. "They're coming down from a pack that's near Beloit, Wis.," Williamson said. "There are individual lone males coming down and they're protected by the Endangered Species Act in Illinois. If the protection is taken away ... I don't think Illinois would have open season. But they could."
“The thinking behind the delisting is that wolves are recovered in the Lower 48 — that the population is stable and that there’s little risk of extinction,” MacFarland said. “The opposition says the Endangered Species Act … should lead to the restoration of the species across its historic range … across all of North America.”
L. David Mech, a senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey and a professor at the University of Minnesota, has studied wolves for more than 45 years. Basile lauded him as “the foremost expert on wolves in the world.” Mech said, “Wolves have recovered in the 48 states and are no longer endangered, so it is OK to delist them except in the Southwest” — the habitat of a rarer subspecies of gray wolf, the Mexican gray wolf.
Public review of the decision to delist the gray wolf will last until Oct. 28, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, though the government shutdown may result in lengthening the review period.
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For a half-hour, they watched the North American gray wolf, a creature of intense debate, a hunter now hunted. In Basile’s words, the participants at Wild Wolf Saturday had the privilege to “look a pure wolf right in the eyes.” And she looked back.
Basile, Cajandig, Chenoa and J.J. were visiting Emily Oaks Nature Center in Skokie for a special treat for kids and families alike. They came from Big Run Wolf Ranch, a non-profit educational facility in Lockport. Basile, the ranch’s president, offered the assembled spectators a brief history of the gray wolf in North America.
“Generations before us did not understand this animal, and they greatly feared him,” Basile said, before launching into a horror story of decimation during the 20th century: Wolves, he explained, were shot, poisoned, and infected with mange until the animals scratched off their own fur and died in the winter.
Gray wolf populations have rebounded since those dark days, after Congress passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973 and placed the wolves under its protection in 1974. But today the future of the gray wolf is more uncertain than ever.
Over the past five years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has removed gray wolf populations in the northern Rockies and the upper Midwest (Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan) from the Endangered Species list, noting that numbers had improved in these areas. Control of these wolf populations fell to the states in question, all of which legalized gray wolf hunting.
According to Dave MacFarland, carnivore staff specialist for the Wisconsin DNR Bureau of Wildlife Management, some level of wolf control is warranted, given the negative consequences of the state’s burgeoning wolf population, including “significant livestock issues,” “the loss of dogs to wolves,” and the “feeling amongst some of our rural residents that wolves are in too close contact with people.”
Wisconsin resident Becky Redling, a resident of Liberty Grove in Door County, spotted a gray wolf in her neighborhood while walking her 10-month-old puppy. She also knows friends who have seen wolves crossing the road and foraging at deer feeders. But Redling does not support wolf hunting in the state, although she does “know that [wolves] have been a pest in central Wisconsin because of the killing of livestock.”
DNR’s MacFarland is ambivalent about Wisconsin’s hunting laws. There are too many wolves in Wisconsin to label the animals “endangered,” he said, but wolves themselves aren’t dangerous — at least not to humans. “We’ve never had a verified injury to a person from a wolf in the state of Wisconsin. Your risk, in Wisconsin, of having an issue with a wolf is less than you would have with any other animals,” MacFarland said. Wolf hunting in Wisconsin, he added, is “justified," but not “necessary."
Wisconsin’s second state-managed hunting season began Tuesday.
There is an ongoing debate over the Endangered Species Act’s protection of wolves nationwide — not only in states such as Wisconsin where populations have rebounded in the past 40 years, but also throughout the entirety of the lower 48 states. In June, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a proposal that would remove all of the country’s gray wolves from the Endangered Species list. Environmental groups are fighting the proposal.
"There's a pervasive culture in the U.S. that's anti-predator," said Christine Williamson, chair of the Sierra Club's Chicago group and of the club's national Wildlife and Endangered Species team. "We're really in favor of intact ecosystems, and intact ecosystems do include members at the top of the food chain."
For example, the reintroduction of gray wolves in Yellowstone actually improved the ecosystem, Williamson explained. The wolves killed weaker elk along the Yellowstone river, thereby strengthening the elk population as a whole and controlling grazing in the area.
There's even a chance wolves in Illinois could be affected by the delisting. "They're coming down from a pack that's near Beloit, Wis.," Williamson said. "There are individual lone males coming down and they're protected by the Endangered Species Act in Illinois. If the protection is taken away ... I don't think Illinois would have open season. But they could."
“The thinking behind the delisting is that wolves are recovered in the Lower 48 — that the population is stable and that there’s little risk of extinction,” MacFarland said. “The opposition says the Endangered Species Act … should lead to the restoration of the species across its historic range … across all of North America.”
L. David Mech, a senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey and a professor at the University of Minnesota, has studied wolves for more than 45 years. Basile lauded him as “the foremost expert on wolves in the world.” Mech said, “Wolves have recovered in the 48 states and are no longer endangered, so it is OK to delist them except in the Southwest” — the habitat of a rarer subspecies of gray wolf, the Mexican gray wolf.
Public review of the decision to delist the gray wolf will last until Oct. 28, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, though the government shutdown may result in lengthening the review period.
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