Wisconsin

Former Rep. Joel Kleefisch, whose wife is now running for governor, called sandhill cranes "the ribeye of the sky." I tend to see GOP moves to widen the hunt as total disregard for proper natural resource management. If gun-owning hunters want to shoot and trap and fish more species more often, the GOP is 100 percent in favor, no matter what state wildlife biologists say. And so the gerrymandered GOP legislature has given itself more power to control these kinds of decisions.

Result: Wisconsin again has a wolf-hunting season. Wolves were last year de-listed by the feds from the endangered list, and although the state DNR set a responsible kill quota, hunters blew past that ceiling by a significant number, killing an appreciable plurality of the wolf population. Not sustainable.

Wisconsin hunters killed the last of the passenger pigeon species endemic to the Great Lakes region and North America about a century ago. That man-made extinction event helped drive the state's ensuing century of wise natural resource policy. No longer.