The Minnesota House of Representatives
now has a Mining and Outdoor Recreation Policy Committee. Such a
thing didn’t exist when I worked as a writer at the House Public
Information Office, in 1994 and 1995. I covered meetings of the
Environment and Natural Resources Committee, on the House side of the
Capitol. The late Willard Munger, a champion of the natural
environment in Minnesota, chaired the committee. He often waged a
lonely, uphill fight – against an array of well-funded industry
lobbyists and the elected officials in their service – for measures
that would have encouraged sustainability for the benefit of our
planet.
Anyway, the Mining and Outdoor
Recreation Policy panel held an informational hearing about
ma’iingan, brother wolf, on Jan. 20. As I wrote briefly in my last
“Political Matters” column, on Dec. 19, U.S. District Court Judge
Beryl A. Howell, in Washington, D.C., ruled that wolf management in
the western Great Lakes states should be returned to federal control.
Judge Howell’s decision, on a motion
brought by The Humane Society of the United States and other animal
protection groups, upended the regime of wolf hunting and trapping
that ensued after the wolf was removed from protection under the
Endangered Species Act, in April 2011, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service removed protection for gray wolves in the western Great
Lakes, in January 2012.
However, agriculture interests and
hunting groups want to put the wolf back in the gun sights and traps,
so some members of Congress are getting into the act. In January, the
Associated Press reported that U.S. Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.), is
leading an effort to legislatively undo Judge Howell’s decision.
“I am pursuing a bipartisan
legislative fix that will allow the western Great Lakes states to
continue the effective work they are doing in managing wolf
populations without tying the hands of the Fish and Wildlife Service
or undermining the Endangered Species Act,” Ribble said in a
statement, according to AP.
Co-sponsors of the legislation, which
has circulated in draft form, include Rep. Collin Peterson, a
Minnesota DFLer; Rep. Dan Benishek (R-Mich.); and Rep. Cynthia
Lummis, (R-Wyo.).
Regarding Ribble’s assertion that
the states are doing “effective work” in “managing wolf
populations,” both Minnesota and Wisconsin exceeded the wolf
killing targets set for 2014.
“The overage is a reminder that the
State of Wisconsin is still really operating on its learning permit
when it comes to harvesting wolves,” Peter David, wildlife
biologist for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission
said. GLIFWC represents 11 Ojibwe tribes in Minnesota, Wisconsin and
Michigan, which have reserved hunting, fishing and gathering rights
in territories ceded in treaties with the U.S. government (1837, 1842
and 1854).
David was quoted in an article titled
“Wolves take extra hit in WI,” which appeared in a recent edition
of Mazina’igan, which is published by GLIFWC. The article notes
that Wisconsin allowed wolf “kills to exceed harvest goals by
nearly double in at least one zone.”
It looks like there’s a similar
situation in Minnesota. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
Web site shows that the 2014-2015 late season for wolf hunting and
trapping set a “harvest” target of 126 wolves; but 148 wolves
were killed – 17 percent more than the target.
During a phone chat in late January,
David told me that Wisconsin overall kept “pretty close” to its
wolf harvest target, with one zone coming in with a harvest “nearly
double” its quota.
“If the tribe had done that, it
would have been front page news, and it got very little press in
Wisconsin,” David commented, regarding the state allowing an
excessive wolf kill.
David, who alerted me to the draft
legislation on wolves in Congress, could not say if there would be
another wolf season in the western Great Lakes states later this
year.
Another wrinkle in the wolf
controversy, according to David, is that wolves in Wisconsin were
classified as “endangered”; in Minnesota, the wolf species was
listed as “threatened.” When Judge Howell reinstated federal
protection of wolves, under the Endangered Species Act, “legal
depredation control could go forth” in Minnesota; but “even in
cases of verified depredation of livestock, wolves can’t be killed
in Wisconsin.”
In any case, as David noted, the
Anishinabe creation story relates that humans and ma’iingan are
brothers, “and they have an intertwined fate, so what’s going to
happen to the one is going to happen to the other … so you want the
best for the wolf community … you don’t kill an animal for
sport.”
