States Seek to Emulate Wisconsin's Wolf Massacre

Other States Seek to Emulate Wisconsin’s Wolf Massacre | Sierra Club

Plans include hunting with dogs, ATVs, bait, snares, and helicopters
March 15, 2021

In the course of three days in late February 2021, Wisconsin hunters killed 216 wolves, nearly 20 percent of the state's wolf population. The hunt was the result of a last-minute court order issued after the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty filed a lawsuit on behalf of Hunter Nation Inc., a Kansas-based hunting advocacy group, because Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) failed to hold a wolf hunt. Local tribes condemned the decision, urging tribal inclusion in the rule-making process. Conservation groups also opposed the wolf hunt due to the rushed process and lack of public input.

“This hunt represents an unprecedented and extreme departure from sound, science-based wildlife practices on the part of Wisconsin DNR and an insult to science, democracy, and good conscience,” says Elizabeth Ward, the director of the Sierra Club's Wisconsin Chapter.

Wisconsin is the only state that mandates a wolf hunt. Republican lawmakers and hunting groups in the state have called for an open hunting season ever since DNR decided to wait until the fall in order to include new population data into its wolf management plan. But the court order forced the agency to hold a hunt with just a week left in the season, giving them mere days to devise a quota. The DNR initially set a quota of 200 wolves but later reduced the number to 119 after tribes, who did not participate in the hunt, protested their lack of inclusion in the planning process.

In the end, the DNR issued 2,000 hunting permits, almost twice the number of its 2020 estimate of wolves in the state...

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/other-states-seek-emulate-wisconsin-s-wolf-massacre