By Erin McDonough
John Barnes’ recent article contesting that Michigan’s upcoming wolf hunt is being fueled by myth and emotion was decidedly one-sided, heavily reliant on the viewpoint of anti-hunting activist Nancy Warren, and dismissive of the wildlife management experts and sound science that has led to the implementation of the hunt.
The Michigan Natural Resources Commission relies on the recommendations of professional biologists at the Department of Natural Resources when deciding on such matters as wildlife management. In this case, the experts put forth a Wolf Management Plan to be used as a tool under certain circumstances, including when the population density of wolves in an area is linked to wolf-human conflicts. The plan, which Ms. Warren and her National Wolfwatcher Coalition signed on to, allowed for public hunting.
The DNR and NRC experts have subsequently concluded that the conditions requiring a controlled wolf hunt have occurred in three different unconnected areas of the Upper Peninsula, and those are the only areas where hunting will be allowed.
However, now that the conditions have occurred which warrant a conflict-resolution hunt, Ms. Warren is trying to stop it, claiming the hunt is predicated on myths, not science. It is no myth that a wolf was seen outside a home day care center staring at a family pet, nose to nose, and left only after continued screaming by the pet’s owner. A few months later, the day care provider saw two more wolves running near the brush line at the rear of the property. That in and of itself is enough to know that wolves in that area are too comfortable with humans.
According to the DNR’s professional biologists, public hunting pressure could change that. And while the DNR biologist may have misspoke about a resident pounding on a glass door, the truth that the resident had to scream at the wolf to get it to go away is hardly a misleading distinction.
It is no myth that we now have populations of wolves that have come to see cattle as a food option and farms as a viable place to eat. That situation must be controlled, and the DNR’s management goal with the hunt is both to reduce the number of wolves in those areas and, over time, to increase wolves’ wariness of humans through public hunting pressure.
Ms. Warren claims that a public hunt will not address the actual wolves posing a threat. However, biologists used telemetry data to draw the hunt unit boundaries around the territories occupied by the wolf packs that are causing the most trouble. Public hunting pressure, over time, is expected to increase wolves’ wariness of humans and human habitations among the wolves that are not taken.
In other states that have had a wolf hunt, only 4% of hunters were successful. If Michigan experiences similar results, this means the other 96% of hunters will primarily be putting hunting pressure on wolves and making them more wary of us.
The Natural Resources Commission didn’t approve a hunt because of a radio interview, a politician’s statements, or one farm’s experience. They approved a hunt because the conditions set forth in the Wolf Management Plan have occurred, and because the state’s professional wildlife biologists recommended a public hunt as a management tool to address those conditions by structuring a very limited hunt to reduce conflicts and make wolves more wary of people with minimal impact on the overall wolf population.
The people of Michigan mandated that the Natural Resources Commission use sound science in its wildlife management decisions when almost 70% of Michigan citizens passed Proposal G in 1996, and that’s exactly what the NRC did in this case.
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