December 19, 2014 at 3:15 p.m.
More than $1.7M doled out in wolf depredation payments
More than $1.7M doled out in wolf depredation payments
Over the last 30 years, the DNR has issued more than $1.7 million in wolf depredation payments.
The lion's share of the depredations - accounting for $1.3 million in compensation payouts - have been calves, missing calves and hunting hounds.
The single largest category has been hunting hounds, for which $453,951 in payments has been made in the last 15 years alone.
The DNR recently drew criticism when the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism reported that the program had paid $19,000 to seven individuals who had been convicted of crimes or paid forfeitures for hunting or firearms-related offenses, and $20,000 was paid to four individuals who were subsequently fined for offenses including bear hunting without a license.
DNR Wildlife Biologist and Agricultural Damage Specialist Brad Koele has pointed out that legislation regulating the depredation program does not prohibit criminals or hunting violators from receiving compensation.
In 2011, the state legislature passed Act 169 requiring the DNR to create a wolf harvest season following the federal delisting of wolves from the endangered species list.
Part of that act changed how depredation payments were funded as well. Prior to 2012, the wolf depredation program was administered by the endangered resources program, Koele said.
"State statute funding for that program came from a couple sources, mostly through the sale of the endangered resources license plate and also a voluntary check off on the income tax form," Koele said. "Those were the two main sources, and some supplemental funding from the general endangered resources account."
The depredation program is now funded entirely by wolf harvesting license fees and processing fees. Under the new program, the department reimburses deaths or injuries caused by wolves to livestock, pets and hunting dogs with the exception of dogs that were depredated while engaged in wolf hunting.
Depredation payments are prorated if funds accrued from licenses and processing fees are insufficient to cover all depredations at year's end. To date, there have been sufficient funds every year to avoid prorating payments, but some are concerned that may not always be the case.
With the number of wolf hunting and trapping license applications falling, the funds for depredation compensations wane.
"If we get more wolves on the landscape, there's not going to be enough money to pay for this in times to come," Wisconsin Bear Hunters' Association, Inc. President Al Lobner said. "License sales aren't going to be there to pay for it and there's only so much money to go around, so it will get prorated."
That is a concern shared by Koele who said that while wolf hunting and trapping license application sales have been sufficient to pay for all depredations for the first couple of years after delisting, declining tag issuances will result in a reduction in revenue, a decline in applications and the potential need to prorate depredation payments.
Koele said part of the reason the department did not have to prorate depredation compensation payments in 2013 and 2014 is that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service provided grants to support the program.
"Last year we received a $50,000 grant," Koele said. "This year we received a $100,000 grant from the (U.S.) Fish and Wildlife Service to help with the depredation compensation. So in light of the declining license sales, hopefully those grant services will be available and we can tap into those resources as well."
Any funds remaining after depredation payments are made may be used in part or in whole for DNR activities related to the management and control of the wolf population. Any surplus after that is put into the conservation fund.
"The last couple of years we've had a $140-150,000 surplus after the payments are made," Koele said. "We've used those remaining surplus funds to go back into wolf population monitoring and depredation management."
Depredation management tools have also changed with the federal delisting of wolves. Prior to delisting, a farmer would have been prohibited from euthanizing wolves, even if the wolves were caught in the act of depredating livestock, according to Koele.
"They could have been held liable for those penalties for shooting an endangered animal," Koele said.
Many farmers voiced their frustration over losing cattle to wolves and their inability to defend their livestock.
"Prior to delisting, we didn't have any lethal control authority for depredating wolves," Koele said. "We did have some limited lethal control options for health and human safety concerns, but for general depredations we did not."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture gained the ability to implement lethal controls - primarily through trapping and shooting - with the 2012 federal delisting, Koele said. The delisting also allowed for the creation of removal permits for landowners to use lethal methods of removal in cases of wolves caught in the act of depredating livestock.
Policy of predation
Act 169 was an emergency rule, and the DNR is currently in the process of making changes to the wolf hunting and trapping program that it hopes will become permanent in spring 2015.
During the December Natural Resources Board meeting, DNR Large Carnivore Specialist David MacFarland said the proposal will be made public in Jan. 2015 with a public comment period running into February and seven public sessions throughout the state, most of which will occur within wolf range.
One of the recommendations made by the Wolf Advisory Committee tasked with advising the department on its proposal was to change the way in which hunting hound payments are made.
Currently, cattle and livestock payments are made based on market value of the depredated animal while payments made to dog owners are capped at $2,500 per dog. Bear hunters have been critical of this policy since the market price of trained bear hounds often exceeds the $2,500 cap.
The committee advised the DNR to pay dog owners market value for depredated hounds. This would require the worth of each hound to be estimated by a professional.
Koele said that is a possibility the department is pursuing and plans to contact individuals who may be able to help evaluate the market value of depredated hunting hounds.
"We're in the process of getting together with those individuals to see if it is reasonable to come up with some sort of market analysis or market price for these dogs," Koele said. "I don't know what the end result will be, but we're going to try to put together some type of market analysis so that we can appropriately compensate people if there's a different level of dog out there."
Koele admitted that there is uncertainty over whether the department would have sufficient funds to avoid prorating compensation payments if the payments to hound owners was substantially raised.
"Our hope is that depredations go down and we won't have as many conflicts as we had before," Koele said. "Our end goal is to have those depredations go down."
Lobner believes that is easier said than done. Despite best efforts to avoid conflicts, bear hounders contend that conflicts are at times unavoidable.
"A lot of people, including people within the department, think all we've got to do is call a dog's name and he comes back to us," Lobner said. "They don't realize that a lot of times I can hear my dog, but he can't hear me when there's a pack of dogs barking around him."
Lobner said hounders are often unable to recall hounds when they are out of hearing distance or being tracked on GPS despite hunters' best efforts to remain within earshot.
"When you have a situation where a bear just runs off, you're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard spot," Lobner said.
"The DNR will tell us that the reason our dogs get killed when we go bear hunting is because we've gone into a [wolf] rendezvous site," Lobner said. "The fact of the matter is, if you ask them where are these rendezvous sites, they can't tell you."
With aid of dogs
A study comparing bear hounding in Wisconsin and Michigan, a state which does not compensate wolf depredations on hunting dogs, concluded that the net effect of compensating hunting dog depredations may contribute to a higher number of depredations.
The study suggests that hunters may be more willing to put their dogs at risk if they are insured compensation for dogs killed or injured by wolves.
MacFarland has a different take, saying that depredation payments incentivize reporting incidents of conflict. If he is right, that could explain Wisconsin's higher number of reported wolf depredations.
Koele said it is difficult to forecast whether the number of hound depredations will increase or decrease if the $2,500 cap is removed and owners are paid market value for their hounds.
Others, like Dr. Joe Bodewes of All Creatures Veterinary Clinic in Minocqua, have called on the state to prohibit predator hunting with hounds completely.
"I have been involved with many animal abuse cases, but nothing compares to the mauled dogs and painful deaths that come through my clinic in the late summer and fall during the bear hound training and hunting season," Bodewes wrote in a September 2013 letter to the editor in the Wisconsin State Journal.
"Dogs lying mangled and dying on the surgery table - all in the pursuit of sport," Bodewes wrote.
Wisconsin remains the only state in the nation that allows the use of dogs to hunt wolves. State statute does not allow for compensation payments for wolf depredation of dogs used to hunt wolves or for hounds killed by bears while being used to hunt bears.
The DNR has been conducting surveys on wolf pelts to determine whether there were conflicts between wolves and dogs while hunters employed dogs to hunt wolves. So far, those tests have remained largely inconclusive.
In 2013, when there were more than 30 wolves harvested with aid of dogs, one wolf pelt exhibited evidence of bite marks, suggesting that there had been conflict between the wolf and hounds.
It is illegal for hunters to use dogs to attack or kill a wolf. Wolf hunters using the aid of dogs must use a firearm or bow to kill the wolf.
The original reasoning behind the depredation payments, MacFarland said in an interview, was to help public attitudes toward wolves while they were still listed as an endangered species.
The thought was, if owners of dogs and livestock depredated by wolves received compensation, they would be less likely to feel animosity toward wolves or kill them illegally.
Partiality for the predated
The Public Attitudes Toward Wolves Survey data released this year reported that respondents who knew someone who had an animal depredated by wolves perceived wolves to be more abundant in their county than those that did not.
The way the statute was originally written, depredation payments for wolf damages were meant to cease once the species was delisted. MacFarland said that was overruled when the governor signed Act 169 in 2012, which indefinitely extended the payment of wolf depredations.
Wolves are not the only species of wildlife for which the department makes depredation payments. Wisconsin has a long tradition of compensating agricultural damages through the Wildlife Damage Abatement and Claims Program.
Through the WDACP, commercial farmer applicants may receive damage prevention assistance and partial compensation for damage caused by wild white-tail deer, elk, bear, cougar, geese and turkey.
The DNR also has an Urban Wildlife Damage Abatement and Control Grant to implement control measures for wild deer and Canada geese. Grants are available to any town, city, village, county or tribal government in an urban area.
The DNR has a list of areas that qualify to be considered an urban area. Included on the list are Rhinelander, Hurley and Rice Lake.
Wolves, however, remain the only animal for which the DNR will compensate the owner of a depredated non livestock animal. While the DNR would compensate for a bear depredation of cattle under the WDACP, the department does not compensate the depredation of an hound by a bobcat, coyote, bear or cougar since hunting dogs are not considered commercial livestock, Koele confirmed.
When asked why the DNR does not compensate animal depredations by other predators, MacFarland said that was simply how the statute was written and that wolf depredations do not dramatically exceed those by other predators, despite public perception.
The DNR plans to release its new wolf management plan in early Jan. 2015 with a public comment period from Jan. 15 to Feb. 28, 2015. The department will offer seven opportunities across the state for the public to voice opinions in person.
The wolf attitudes survey found that only 24 percent of respondents living in wolf range rated "reduce wolf populations on public lands where they are killing bear hunting dogs" as a high priority for the management plan.
Along with population goals and quotas, the depredation program will certainly be one of the contested issues at those meetings.
Ryan Matthews may be reached at [email protected].
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