Wisconsin Senate committee faces divided testimony over wolf management rule

This week the State Senate Committee on Financial Institutions and Sporting Heritage, chaired by Senator Rob Stafsholt (R-New Richmond), held a public hearing on the permanent rule package relating to wolf management. Several hunting and trapping organizations were represented and several members of the public were on hand to provide testimony regarding their thoughts about the rule package. The committee first took up the issue of elk management in the state, and then turned to the rule package, receiving over two hours of testimony from those present. The committee also had written input from several citizens who did not appear in person.

As is to be expected, the minds were split in support of and opposition to various parts of the rule package. The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) was on hand to answer questions from the committee, represented by large carnivore biologist Randy Johnson, policy specialist Scott Karel and wildlife management bureau director Eric Lobner. There was a general consensus that, after all stakeholder groups had a proverbial “kick at the can,” there was no perfect solution for any group, necessarily. However, Karel said, the department felt they had done their due diligence over the past several years to gather as much input as possible.

“The memo in your report shows that there were 29 groups involved in this very lengthy information gathering,” said committee member Senator Kristen Dassler-Alfheim (D-Appleton). “Is there any of the 29 groups that is perfectly happy with this rule?” The question brought chuckles from around the room. “I will add a large bet the answer’s no. I Bring that up on purpose because these 29 groups are polar opposites in some case, and it seems like all 29 have pulled together to figure out this version, and everybody’s a little bit irritated.” Johnson, Lobner and Karel all agreed to that statement. The plan was a compromise of all of the input received from the advisory committee as well as the board. 

Dassler-Alfheim asked Johnson if he would agree that no rule was perfect, and that it may need to be augmented as time went on. A rule, she said, was better than no rule. Johnson passed the question to Karel, who said it was rare that there was ever a rule about which every group was perfectly happy.

Stafsholt began by reading a section of the rule, which spoke about the department’s responsibilities and authority in the matter of wildlife harvest, including setting a population goal. The goal, he said, was what he was most concerned with, as it was mentioned in the rule itself. 

“Can you tell me why we’re going away from the population goal when it’s right on the very first page?” he asked.

Johnson said that historically wolves, here in Wisconsin and elsewhere, had been managed as a recovering species. Now, as indicated in the new wolf management plan, which has already been approved, the state has moved away from managing wolves as recovering.

“And with that, we have moved away from a numeric population goal towards an adaptive management approach,” he said. “Instead of focusing all of our efforts on ‘are we at, above, below this particular number of wolves?’ let’s focus instead on the things that matter: conflict, population trends, how the season is going — all of these metrics that we’ve been discussing. That, in a nutshell, is the reason to move from a population goal to adaptive management.”

“It just seems to me that the public is screaming for some kind of metrics because there’s mistrust in this program,” Stafsholt said. “I hear it virtually every day when I’m in the district. It saddens me a bit because I think, for the most part, DNR has the best of intentions, but I think that there are several programs that just breed mistrust by the public. This is one of them.” He said he was not arguing a specific number, but the idea that for over two decades there was a specific number in the plan. If the intention was to gain back public trust, he asked why that would not be included, even if it were to have a specific range in each zone.

The lack of a numeric population goal, indeed, has been a point of contention throughout the creation of the wolf management plan. Added to that has been the fact that the department did not provide a population estimate for the 2023-24 winter season. Johnson had said in previous meetings that snow conditions were too poor to allow for many of the winter tracking block surveys to be completed last winter. That idea has been countered by some as well, showing the mistrust that still exists from some groups and members of the public of which Stafsholt spoke.

The committee hearing brought up many of the same issues that have been brought up since the beginning of the update of the wolf plan. One of those was the buffer zones around Tribal Reservation areas. Stafsholt asked if the tight limits of harvest in those areas, which included a good deal of private land, might open the state or the department up to a lawsuit. 

“That’s a good clarifier when we talk about conflict,” Johnson said. “When we talk about the conflict program itself, so, for livestock, or pets, that is full force. That is not affected by the sub zones. In this case the sub zones are to provide an early closure or early harvest limit, so there’s full opportunity to hunt, trap legally in these spaces, but there is an early closure limit.”

The lack of a wolf advisory committee has been a point of contention as well and was one of the issues brought up by Chris Vaughn of Hunter Nation. He said Hunter Nation supported a wolf management plan, not a wolf protection plan. That, he said, should have a defined wolf harvest quota. He also acknowledged that wolves are an important part of the state’s natural and cultural heritage, and that having them on the landscape was important.

Several members of the public, too, testified that they were in favor of having wolves on the landscape, with some agreeing there should be some management available and others more willing to protect the species as a whole. 

The overall feeling, at the end of public testimony, was still to get a permanent rule in place, whether or not it may need to be amended in the future. Without a permanent rule in place, when the wolf becomes delisted, the state would still be subject to court litigation once again, when it attempted to create the statutorily mandated harvest season, according to Wisconsin Wildlife Federation executive director Cody Kamrowski, who also testified at the public hearing. While the Pet Protection and Livestock Act, introduced by Congressman Tom Tiffany (WI-07) and Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (CO-04) does not allow for judicial review, Kamrowski said, that is only in relation to judicial review under the ESA, meaning litigation based on lack of a permanent rule could still shut down a wolf-harvest season in Wisconsin. Kamrowski said he intended to follow up with the senators on the committee to urge them to “get this ball rolling ASAP.”

Beckie Gaskill may be reached via email at [email protected].