This year, the long-standing Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Wolf Science and legislatively mandated Stakeholders Committees were wiped out by order of the DNR secretary. In their place, the Wolf Advisory Committee was created, membership "by invitation only" from the DNR Secretary. Twenty-five of the 26 members are wolf removal agents.The result: 202 wolves have been killed by trappers and gun-hunters in less than a month during this hunting season - - up from last year's total of 117, with 251 the goal.
The Wisconsin wolf hunt is a disgraceful, bloody ballot-box sop to conservative GOP constituencies.
The wolf hunt is providing excellent population estimates and is exposing how flawed the previous estimates were. It is very obvious that zones 1 and 2 were grossly underestimated and that zone 3 was grossly overestimated. We can now see that higher quotas in zones 1 and 2 are needed in the future. It doesn’t get more scientific than this, when hypothetical population estimates are tested against observed harvest levels.
ReplyDeleteThe DNR website is now asking for volunteers to locate wolves and other carnivores this winter. They must attend tracking and wolf ecology classes and are then sent out to look for tracks in the snow. Looks like they're already intending to ramp up next years kill. What ever happened to "natural selection?" I guess that went away when the "chamber of commerce" took over the DNR.
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