Tom Tiffany likes # of Native American cabinet members kept at zero

Wisconsin's Northwoods GOP US Cong. Tom Tiffany - 

kicked off his Congressional service with a sedition-hugging election overthrow vote, but apparently felt that didn't make a big enough splash in the Republican rightwing sewer.

So Tiffany is raising his commitment to exclusionary 'governance' by signing a going-nowhere-public letter/dog whistle written by House Representatives who have no say in the matter that urged Pres. Biden to withdraw his nomination of Cong. Deb Haaland as Secretary of the Interior. 

President Biden:

January 26, 2021

We write today urging the withdrawal of the nomination of Representative Deb Haaland (D-NM) as Secretary of the Interior. Nominating Representative Haaland is a direct threat to working men and women and a rejection of responsible development of America’s natural resources.

If approved by the Senate, Cong. Haaland would be the first Native American to serve in a Presidential cabinet.

But that single, simple step towards a more representative US Government is unacceptable to Tiffany and 14 other members of Congress - including Colorado's unstable GOP Cong. Lauren Boebert - all of whom are finding new ways to shame their home states while cashing salary checks of nearly $15,000 month collected from all taxpayers of all political parties, races, ethnicities, et al.  

As to Tiffany, regrettably we say - what's new?

He accumulated a long, dreary record as a state legislator reliably ready to do business's most reactionary bidding.

* He sandbagged climate science at the Department of Natural Resources. Some additional history, here.

* He led the failed fight to mine the Penokee Hills - regardless of the damage it would have caused to Native American land, waters and treaty rights - all at then-Gov. Walker's behest.

* And he later wrote a broader bill that has opened up land and water resources statewide to destructive sulfide mining:

Gov. Scott Walker signed into law on Monday a bill lifting the state's effective moratorium on sulfide mining, a move supporters say will clear the way for an economic boost to depressed areas of the state. But opponents say the environmental risks are too great to allow such activity. 

The bill's authors, Sen. Tom Tiffany, R-Hazelhurst, and Rep. Rob Hutton, R-Brookfield, say it allows conversations about mining to occur that cannot happen under current law. 

"Conversations?" 

It's a little more consequential than that, as we learned just three days ago:

Natural Resources Board Approves New Rules For Sulfide Mining

State Regulators Must Notify Tribes Near Any Proposed Sulfide Mine.

The changes are part of proposed new permanent rules for nonferrous metallic mines that extract sulfide minerals like gold, zinc and copper. The rules aim to comply with changes as part of a 2017 law that repealed the state's decades-old mining moratorium. 

Final thought: I have no first-hand knowledge of how school districts in Northern Wisconsin, and in Tiffany's Congressional district, teach local and state history.

But as a tourism business owner who had run a boating firm for 20 years, I wonder if he and others in Northern Wisconsin understand that without land, water, wildlife and timber taken under duress from the indigenous people whom Tiffany is 'representing' - while having worked in the Legislature to further degrade the small territory they have left - he and other business owners in the Northwoods would have had nothing to offer to customers at all. 

Shorter summary: Does Tiffany have a clue about his own entitled white privilege?

Vos reaches out to Evers by calling him a 'dictator...czar'

Nothing says "work with us" more sincerely than labeling the other party a "dictator" and "czar."

Vos says Evers ‘acting like a dictator’ in issuing health emergencies without Legislature’s support 

The Rochester Republican said in a WisPolitics.com virtual event Thursday the guv’s decision to keep reissuing emergency orders every 60 days without getting approval from the Legislature was illegal. 

He said the Legislature has been asking “since last June, to be able to work with us and do it in the process that’s legal, as opposed to one where you kind of take the law into your own hands and act like a dictator.” 

Remember that Vos, his Senate GOP colleagues and then-Gov. Walker began their 'work with us' outreach to Evers prior to his inauguration in late 2018 by stripping him of powers Walker had routinely enjoyed.  

Having botched emergency mask ban, WI GOP triggers emergency circular firing squad

Wisconsin Republicans are having themselves a messy Thursday. 

After the State Senate had moved precipitously to overturn Gov. Evers' COVID19 mask prevention order without knowing the dumb move would cost the state and unemployed workers nearly $50 million a month in related emergency food aid, Assembly Speaker Vos had to also precipitously yank the measure and blast his GOP Senate 'colleagues' for sloppy work:

"Our job is to guarantee when we pass legislation we know what the ramifications are," he told reporters. "Unfortunately our Senate colleagues passed it, they didn’t necessarily do the same due diligence."

No doubt this about-face on Vos's big day of partisan achievement was disappointing, but the good news for the Assembly Speaker was there were even dumber scapegoats to blame.

Who and where, and how dumb might they be? 

Why, look no farther than Vos's 'colleagues' in the GOP-run State Senate with whom the Assembly shares a State Capitol.

And that GOP-led Senate today tried to paper over its blunder by quickly a passing a make-up replacement measure - a sort of 'ban lite' - that would tolerate some Evers' issuance of a limited measure so the Federal government could pretty-please send the food aid funding anyway.

Mind you, the food aid funding is available to seriopus-minded states which employ emergency COVID19 prevention measures like the one the GOP-led Senate had just blocked and was now trying to pretend they really hadn't. 

Sort of, but questions arise:

* Will grudgingly allowing Evers to pass a half-baked  emergency order pass a federal smell test?

* 'Does COVID19 abide by insincere partisan half-measures,' asked more than 6,300 dead Wisconsinites?

* Would a parallel and limited reduction in food aid funding mean there would be only new limited hunger here?

I guess we'll see.

But asking for the money after blocking Evers' masking order reminds me of the ridiculous and failed move then-Gov. Walker made in 2011 when he asked the Federal government pretty-please to send Wisconsin $150 million in Amtrak upgrade financing after he followed through on his long, loud and politically-inspired, slam-Obama campaign pledge and permanently blocked the larger and fully-funded Amtrak construction upgrade between Madison and Chicago.

Feds turn Walker down on passenger rail funding request

So we ask again today, as we did when Walker wrecked rail transit in Wisconsin for his own partisan advancement - and then asked for a bailout:

In what world of cavalier denial do these so-called Republican 'leaders' live and work in?

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on the lookout for his guy at the airport last year. Today he just spotted a State Senate full of scapegoats who can help him - for now - avoid making a $50-million-a-month blunder. 

Robin Vos is having himself a signature (dooms) day

The GOP-led WI Legislature should just declare Friday, January 28th "Robin Vos Doomsday" throughout the land, as no Assembly Speaker will ever lay claim to having spread so much ill wind and literal illness statewide in a 24-hour period, by:

* Pushing across the finish line an end to the Governor's statewide masking order while the COVID19 pandemic is still spreading, and;

* In the process throwing away nearly $50 million in related federal funding, bringing the WI GOP legislature's federal funds forfeitures through COVID19 mismanagement to $75 million - details here.

WI GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos in protective equipment while claiming in April that it was "incredibly safe" to go out into the pandemic and cast an in-person April election ballot.

* Appointing himself to WEDC, the state development agency board, which is trying to salvage something from the failing Foxconn fiasco which Vos, Walker et al foisted on taxpayers for partisan purposes, and;

* Now being able to keep a closer eye on a few things, as I noted a couple of years ago:

WI GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos managed in a state without two spare potholes-filling nickels to rub together to steer to and through his district a quarter of a billion federal and state road-and-interchange widening dollars that will trigger sprawl beyond bulldozed Mount Pleasant farms even if Foxconn never diverts a gallon of Lake Michigan water to produce a single big screen LCD TV.

Look at it as an adjunct to the gerrymandering Vos helped create that serves his own interests - - interests his caucus wants to protect through litigation, voter suppression and power-grabbing lame-duck legislating.

* Using his taxpayer-paid perch to help rewrite completely the entire Foxconn fiasco with statements like these:

“I strongly supported getting rid of the old Department of Commerce and creating a new and more nimble economic development agency, that’s what WEDC is, and I want to make sure it stays that way and does not become a political operation with different values than we had when the bill was originally passed....” 

“I think we need to do everything we can to make sure it’s successful so that the folks that I represent don’t end up, because of the actions of the governor or the WEDC, getting stuck with the bill,” Vos said.  

And by "Governor,' Vos means Evers, though the record shows he should have said "Walker," as Bruce Murphy so succinctly put it, here:

WISCONSIN’S $4.1 BILLION FOXCONN BOONDOGGLE

Gov. Scott Walker promised billions to get a Foxconn factory, but now he’s running away from it

* And, finally, proving that the Wisconsin gerrymander receiving national attention which has allowed dim bulbs like Fitzgerald, Tiffany and Grothman to shine in Congress while giving Vos power statewide beyond a modicum of rationality or fair play is a permanent obstruction to Wisconsin ever recovering its long-lost progressive heritage.

Which was the plan which began with Walker's corporately-driven ascension, has deeply strengthened the right's strong ideological grip statewide and now is producing Vos's permanent, pandemic-heightened malfeasance.

Surprise! WI GOP's mask ban forfeits $49 million in food aid

Because they rushed a purely partisan power-grabbing masking ban bill through the State Senate without elementary research or a hearing, Wisconsin Republican Death Cultists got to make a bonus addition to an agenda of angst - creating more hunger - that through inertia and obstruction has sped the pandemic's spread across the state.

How can the GOP-led State Assembly convert this found opportunity to make life here even more difficult for low-income residents whom Republicans reflexively diminish, scapegoat and otherwise repress?

By voting Thursday to wipe out Gov. Evers' emergency COVID19 masking order knowing the move would end $49 million in food assistance awarded to states under a federal program that supports states which use emergency powers to fight pandemic-related job losses: 

A COVID-19 package Congress passed last year gave states additional funding for food stamps if they have emergency health orders in place. Republican state lawmakers plan to end Wisconsin's health emergency order on Thursday, which would prevent nearly 243,000 households from collecting $49.3 million in assistance, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau. 

Will Republicans in the Assembly do the right thing and decline to take such a nasty vote knowing that their horribly-drafted bill could remove food from the kitchen tables of families in Wisconsin whose breadwinners lost their jobs during the pandemic?

Let's look at the record:

* The GOP-led Legislature delayed passing a COVID action plan last year, and that deliberate stall by small minds in the name of small government cost Wisconsin citizens $25 million in COVID19-related unemployment payments.

* Yes, that's the same program which Republicans hamstrung with insufficient budgets and archaic technology for years - read all about that, here - because they don't believe in using government to actually help people.

And because a government that doesn't work well boosts the GOP's self-fulfilling anti-public sector gloat that, as their icon Ronald Reagan put it in his first inaugural address: 'Government isn't the solution to our problem. Government IS the problem.'

But now they are gleefully using the under-performing unemployment compensation program politically - and accountability free - to bash the Evers' administration with yet another partisan cudgel - a pattern they've used since 2018 - to keep hammering a Governor they recognize only when scheming to weaken his credibility and hijack his authority.

* And do not forget that Wisconsin Republicans during the Walker years used a variety of mean-spirited drug testing mandates, along with punitive work requirements and flat-out arbitrary, cold-hearted take-backs to use food as a weapon against people with the fewest resources to make ends meet.

Or course, Wisconsin's Republican legislative leaders are not above raising their own daily taxpayer-paid, no-receipts-necessary expense account limits whenever their tummies start growling, as they did in 2016:

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos last week quietly expanded a taxpayer-funded perk for state legislators in a move that could increase an Assembly lawmaker's annual pay by more than $1,000, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin has learned.

The decades-old perk, known as per diems, allows legislators to claim daily allowances on top of their $51,000 salaries for each day they work in Madison on state business. Assembly members may claim up to $69 for single-day trips or up to $138 for overnight business.

And this 2018 story shows those limits had been raised again: 

Most Assembly legislators could claim up to $157 per overnight visit to Madison last year and up to $78.50 per single-day visit. Senators could claim up to $115 per day regardless of lodging needs. 

Bottom line: The Wisconsin GOP-led Legislature will always put itself first.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on the lookout for his guy at the airport last year. Now he's got the state's poor and unemployed in his sights.

 

WI about to unmask itself as failed, GOP-run state

Wisconsin is at a failed-state threshold because the power-crazed GOP Death Cultists running the Legislature are interested only in undermining the Democratic Governor  -

Wisconsin Senate votes to end Gov. Tony Evers' statewide face mask mandate

- regardless of the cost in lives, and at the expense of basic knowledge about blunting the still-spreading-and-shape-shifting pandemic:

...mask wearing is known to provide crucial protection agains spreading or acquiring the highly contagious and fatal virus.

Wear Masks To Protect Yourself From The Coronavirus, Not Only Others, CDC Stresses

* COVID19 deaths here have already passed 6,000 according to New York Times-gathered data.

That number was no doubt boosted by the WI Supreme Court which, at request of the same GOP legislators, prematurely ended Evers 'Safer-at-Home' order last year without an alternative COVID19 action plan in place.

And the threshold will be crossed from failed state to pandemic punchline through Legislative action because Wisconsin is now only a follow-up vote away from a COVID19 embrace engineered by Assembly Speaker and power addict Robin Vos. 

The partisan power-grabbing that began in Nov., 2018, is about to hit an irrational and dangerous bottom. 

To WI GOP's COVID19 nonchalance, add tolerance for known water-borne toxins

Since Monday we're on the COVID19-inspired theme of Wisconsin's rightwing policy-makers as a Death Cult, let's add this unnerving contradiction about toxins in Madison's waters to the evidence:

Place side-by-side the fresh data showing that all of Madison's lakes are contaminated with toxic chemicals known as PFAS, or 'forever chemicals'-

PFAS found in all Madison Lakes; DNR testing fish before issuing consumption warning

- with this action just five weeks ago by the GOP-led Wisconsin State Assembly showing what Republicans intend to do about the PFAS threat -   

Republicans Block Tougher Enforcement of PFAS Chemicals 

Republican lawmakers have blocked the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources from enforcing new regulations designed to keep PFAS out of the environment.

I had noted that anti-science, anti-public-health dismissive action, and put it into context with other examples of long-standing water contamination statewide enabled as a matter of policy by Republicans and special interests, here. 

GOP continues to leave Wisconsin waters contaminated and unsafe

As I noted more than once, state waterways with known impairment jumped 20% during Walker's tenure. 

More technical information about PFAS is here, per the DNR. 

And also, there is more about WI GOP standard operating water polluting policy procedures (stall, minimize, enable, deal-in-special-interests-deal-out-the-public), here.

WI COVID deaths are now 6,000+, and GOP aims to ban Evers' masking orders

This is why the Wisconsin GOP has become a death cult:

* Republican lawmakers in the Legislature, after taking most of the pandemic year 2020 off at full pay and sitting out any leadership on COVID19 prevention, are now poised through a measure Gov. Evers cannot veto to end his state masking orders.

Even though mask wearing is known to provide crucial protection agains spreading or acquiring the highly contagious and fatal virus.

Wear Masks To Protect Yourself From The Coronavirus, Not Only Others, CDC Stresses

* COVID19 deaths here have already passed 6,000 according to New York Times-gathered data.

That number was no doubt boosted by the WI Supreme Court which, at request of the same GOP legislators, prematurely ended Evers 'Safer-at-Home' order last year without an alternative COVID19 action plan in place.

* A plan the GOP legislator-litigants told the Court was forthcoming, but which they have not passed despite overwhelming majorities in both the state Assembly and Senate.

(Note that state's official death count at just under 5,700 is consistently under-reported, but both data sets represent huge numbers of our fellow citizens.)

* And the right in Wisconsin has consistently been coddling COVID19 since the virus first struck.

So let's be clear: The Wisconsin GOP is a havoc-wreaking death cult that puts a higher priority - on playing partisan power games - 

Beginning in Nov., 2018, still continuing...

- than protecting public health - and the result is a COVID19 body count in Wisconsin that now exceeds 5,700, or 6,000. 

Like I said, it's a big and unacceptable number either way.

 

WI GOP death cultists unveil new COVID-spreading strategy

Just as COVID-battling science regains a foothold lost to a year of madman politics which oozed out of the White House, the power-hungry 

GOP death cultists at the State Capitol in Madison are maneuvering to forbid a masking mandate in Wisconsin:

The move comes as deaths from COVID-19 are spiking in Wisconsin despite new cases being at their lowest level in four months, albeit much higher than they were last summer. Republicans have also introduced a series of bills to take more control over the response to the pandemic, including requiring that everyone in the state be eligible for the vaccine in mid-March regardless of whether supply can meet demand.

To date, 5,643 people have died from COVID-19 in Wisconsin and more than 530,000 have tested positive, according to the state Department of Health Services.

The maneuver employs a joint resolution of the Legislature which Gov. Evers cannot veto. This is the same maneuver through which the GOP could enact another decade of democracy-strangling gerrymandering that has given them more power than is deserved by their statewide vote totals.  

WI Natural Resource Board votes against immediate wolf hunt

The Wisconsin Natural Resources Board at its special meeting Friday voted 4-3 against establishing an immediate wolf hunt that would have begun no later than February 10.

What sank the motion was the board being told by staff and its legal counsel that an immediate hunt with quotas established without required consultation with Wisconsin's native tribal bands would likely not comply with a controlling Federal court ruling known as the Voight decision that affirmed tribal rights established by treaties with the US government.

Below is a running blog post I'd been updating for a couple of days:

FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 2021

WI Natural Resource Board is now considering immediate wolf hunt

1:45 p.m. update - the Board is poised to open the hunt in February, but DNR staff is saying it has not yet had the required consultation on kill quotas with the native tribal bands required by a controlling federal court ruling.

12:25 p.m. update - the Board has closed public testimony which began at 8:30 a.m. and will reconvene its discussion at 12:40 p.m. 

It can take a range of options, from no action to approval of a wolf hunt that could begin before the end of this month.

--------------------------

I am Zoom-watching the Wisconsin Natural Resource Board's meeting on gray wolf hunting -

- as I noted this week, but I failed to emphasize that what is on the agenda is implementing an immediate wolf hunt.

Even though Wisconsin state law mandates a single annual hunt beginning in November, as was the case when previous hunts were legal between 2012 and 2014.

The entire matter is back before state regulators because the federal government removed in the closing days of the Trump administration the gray wolf from protected status.

The board oversees the DNR - and the agency does not support an immediate hunt, so it remains to be seen whether the agency position or the oversight board position will carry the day.

Walker appointees still make up the Board's majority. 

Testimony so far reflects long-standing differences in positions between hunting interests and legislative backers, like now-US Cong. Tom Tiffany, (R), and opponents from environmental organizations, and native tribal bands which consider wolves to be their brethren.

Since Wisconsin created its original wolf management plan decades ago there have been advances in awareness of the benefits wolves' bring into the wild.

These benefits have been made more relevant by climate change pressures on forests, water and wildlife, and also by wolves ability to control the spread of deer sickened by naturally removing diseased animals.

It has been pointed today by opponents that holding a rushed hunt right now with little advance notice and based on an outdated plan would trigger litigation a) by disregarding the tribal bands' treaty rights, and b) by disrupting and endangering wolf packs during breeding season.

All of which could fuel pressure on the Biden administration to renew protections for wolves by proving that states would implement wolf hunts based on outdated science and rushed and inadequate public input.

Further 1/22/2021 update:

I am pleased to add this statement by Atty. Jodi Habush Sinykin on behalf of Midwest Environmental Advocates:

To:          Wisconsin Natural Resources Board

From:  Jodi Habush Sinykin, Of Counsel, Midwest Environmental Advocates

Date:  January 20, 2021

Re:          Statement in Opposition to Mid-Winter Wolf Hunt 2021

Thank you for the opportunity to submit written testimony outlining the consequences of Wisconsin authorizing a rash and unsound 2021 wolf hunting and trapping season.  

With wolves only recently returned to state management, Wisconsin would be wise to take it slow and smart with respect to management of this iconic species.

Rushing to establish a wolf hunting and trapping season in the absence of an updated state management plan and wide public support will accomplish little, other than invite heightened controversy and litigation. 

In order for state governments like Wisconsin to prove their capability to manage wolves in the absence of federal protections, our state must first demonstrate a strong commitment to science-based and representative wildlife management in keeping with Wisconsin’s public trust obligations.

At the present time, our state is in no position to meet this threshold. The biological and social science underlying Wisconsin’s 1999 Wolf Management Plan is critically outdated. Wisconsin citizens and our state’s scientists have yet to be afforded the opportunity to provide substantive input. Consultation with the Tribes, required by law, has not been done. 

Indeed, state decisions pertaining to wolves, particularly state-authorized hunting and trapping seasons and management plans, must be the product of a democratic and transparent process to ensure that a range of representative viewpoints are recognized. 

We need only look to Minnesota, who has wisely invested the time needed to conduct an inclusive, science-driven, and transparent process to update their 2001 wolf plan before initiating a wolf hunting season. Wisconsin should do no less.

Act 169’s wolf harvest mandate already compromises the state’s and Tribes ability to manage wolves in a sustainable and socially acceptable manner. A premature move to reinstate wolf hunting and trapping season in Wisconsin underscores these actionable shortfalls and effectively disenfranchises Tribal nations within Wisconsin’s borders and non-consumptive wildlife users—a course of action that is sure to invite legal challenges at the national and state level.

Accordingly, we ask that members of the Natural Resources Board act judiciously, mindful of good governance and best science, and refrain from backing an immediate wolf hunting and trapping season in Wisconsin.

------------------------------

WI resource board is now considering immediate wolf hunt

1:45 p.m. update - the Board is poised to open the hunt in February, but the DNR is saying it has not yet had the required consultation on kill quotas with the native tribal bands required by a controlling federal court ruling.

12:25 p.m. update - the Board has closed public testimony which began at 8:30 a.m. and will reconvene its discussion at 12:40 p.m. 

It can take a range of options, from no action to approval of a wolf hunt that could begin before the end of this month.

I am watching the Wisconsin Natural Resource Board's meeting on gray wolf hunting -

- as I noted this week, but I failed to emphasize that what is on the agenda is implementing an immediate wolf hunt.

Even though Wisconsin state law mandates a single annual hunt beginning in November, as was the case when previous hunts were legal between 2012 and 2014.

The entire matter is back before state regulators because the federal government removed in the closing days of the Trump administration the gray wolf from protected status.

The board oversees the DNR - and the agency does not support an immediate hunt, so it remains to be seen whether the agency position or the oversight board position will carry the day.

Walker appointees still make up the Board's majority. 

Testimony so far reflects long-standing differences in positions between hunting interests and legislative backers, like now-US Cong. Tom Tiffany, (R), and opponents from environmental organizations, and native tribal bands which consider wolves to be their brethren.

Since Wisconsin created its original wolf management plan decades ago there have been advances in awareness of the benefits wolves' bring into the wild.

These benefits have been made more relevant by climate change pressures on forests, water and wildlife, and also by wolves ability to control the spread of deer sickened by naturally removing diseased animals.

It has been pointed today by opponents that holding a rushed hunt right now with little advance notice and based on an outdated plan would trigger litigation a) by disregarding the tribal bands' treaty rights, and b) by disrupting and endangering wolf packs during breeding season.

All of which could fuel pressure on the Biden administration to renew protections for wolves by proving that states would implement wolf hunts based on outdated science and rushed and inadequate public input.

Further 1/22/2021 update:

I am pleased to add this statement by Atty. Jodi Habush Sinykin on behalf of Midwest Environmental Advocates:

To:          Wisconsin Natural Resources Board

From:  Jodi Habush Sinykin, Of Counsel, Midwest Environmental Advocates

Date:  January 20, 2021

Re:          Statement in Opposition to Mid-Winter Wolf Hunt 2021

Thank you for the opportunity to submit written testimony outlining the consequences of Wisconsin authorizing a rash and unsound 2021 wolf hunting and trapping season.  

With wolves only recently returned to state management, Wisconsin would be wise to take it slow and smart with respect to management of this iconic species.

Rushing to establish a wolf hunting and trapping season in the absence of an updated state management plan and wide public support will accomplish little, other than invite heightened controversy and litigation. 

In order for state governments like Wisconsin to prove their capability to manage wolves in the absence of federal protections, our state must first demonstrate a strong commitment to science-based and representative wildlife management in keeping with Wisconsin’s public trust obligations.

At the present time, our state is in no position to meet this threshold. The biological and social science underlying Wisconsin’s 1999 Wolf Management Plan is critically outdated. Wisconsin citizens and our state’s scientists have yet to be afforded the opportunity to provide substantive input. Consultation with the Tribes, required by law, has not been done. 

Indeed, state decisions pertaining to wolves, particularly state-authorized hunting and trapping seasons and management plans, must be the product of a democratic and transparent process to ensure that a range of representative viewpoints are recognized. We need only look to Minnesota, who has wisely invested the time needed to conduct an inclusive, science-driven, and transparent process to update their 2001 wolf plan before initiating a wolf hunting season.  Wisconsin should do no less.

Act 169’s wolf harvest mandate already compromises the state’s and Tribes ability to manage wolves in a sustainable and socially acceptable manner.  A premature move to reinstate wolf hunting and trapping season in Wisconsin underscores these actionable shortfalls and effectively disenfranchises Tribal nations within Wisconsin’s borders and non-consumptive wildlife users—a course of action that is sure to invite legal challenges at the national and state level.

Accordingly, we ask that members of the Natural Resources Board act judiciously, mindful of good governance and best science, and refrain from backing an immediate wolf hunting and trapping season in Wisconsin.

------------------------------

More later. 

Friday WI wolf hunt meeting has 8 a.m. Thursday comment deadline

[Updated, 6:45 p.m.] Heads-up, Wisconsin conservationists: The Wisconsin DNR's oversight Natural Resource Board is holding this Friday an online hearing about the reintroduction of a wolf hunt.

The country's gray wolves recently had their federal protections stripped away and states were freed to bring back wolf killing under their own rules

Below is Zoom meeting registration information for the hearing, and please note that the official notice establishes an 8 a.m. Thursday morning deadline - that's tomorrow! - for the submission of comments, as this notice circulated by a coalition of wildlife preservationists points out:

We have just learned that the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board will be holding a meeting on Friday of this week to discuss a potential wolf hunting and trapping season–as soon as this month. 

This condensed rule-making process shuts out public input, ignores science, and could result in wolf hunting and trapping during breeding season. 

Please attend the meeting online and speak out in opposition if you are able.

Please contact Laurie Ross, NRB Liaison, at 608-267-7420 or by email at laurie.ross@wisconsin.gov to register to testify at this meeting. 

If you cannot attend in-person, please submit a written comment opposing this rushed effort to begin killing wolves in Wisconsin.

Submit your comment online

Thank you for your commitment to Wisconsin's wildlife and wild places. 

Sincerely, 

The Endangered Species Coalition 

------------------------------------------------------------

Recent items from this blog with history about these issues are here, and here:

Good to see a coalition of organizations challenging the outgoing Trump administration's heavy-handed, heavily-ideological and science-free removal of endangered species protection for the country's grey wolves.  

The action was in response to the Jan. 4 delisting of the species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which allowed state agencies to resume management of wolves, including the possibility for hunting, trapping and other lethal control measures. 

-------------------------------

Update:

Here is a statement of opposition posted by Midwest Environmental Advocates, which reads, in part:

In order for state governments like Wisconsin to prove their capability to manage wolves in the absence of federal protections, our state must first demonstrate a strong commitment to science-based and representative wildlife management in keeping with Wisconsin’s public trust obligations. 

At the present time, our state is in no position to meet this threshold. 

The biological and social science underlying Wisconsin’s 1999 Wolf Management Plan is critically outdated. Wisconsin citizens and our state’s scientists have yet to be afforded the opportunity to provide substantive input. 

Consultation with the Tribes, required by law, has not been done.

------------------------------

Below is a letter in opposition to a wolf hunt sent January 12, 2021 by the Timber Wolf Alliance to the Wisconsin Legislature's Assembly and Senate Committees on Sporting Heritage: 

Re: Senate Joint Informational Hearing on 2021 Wolf Harvesting Season

The Timber Wolf Alliance (TWA) would like to comment on the potential to hold a wolf harvest in Wisconsin this winter. TWA has been a supporter of wolf conservation in Wisconsin since 1987. TWA has supported the federal delisting of wolves, and has not opposed the public harvest of wolves. But TWA believes any wolf harvest should be based on sound science, be done in a representative and open process, and be sensitive to cultural concerns, including addressing concerns of Native Americans.

The recovery of the gray wolf has been a very successful wildlife conservation program for the state. We are proud to be part of that successful conservation effort, and hope all future management including public harvest of wolves, continues to build on that success.

Rushing into a premature harvest without taking all the steps that are normally used to set harvests for other wildlife species such as bears, deer, and bobcats, would undermine sound conservation of wolves.  Such harvest plans would not allow adequate use of sound biological and social science. We need to demonstrate sound conservation of the Wisconsin wolf population to avoid the back and forth federal listing/delisting that has plagued wolf management in Wisconsin for the last 18 years.

Starting a wolf harvest in mid-winter would potentially disrupt breeding activity, precipitate pack dissolution, and increase the negative effects that a harvest could have on the wolf population. These mid-winter disruptions to wolf behavior might also disrupt the ability of wolf trackers to obtain reasonable counts of wolves.

There is no logical and scientifically sound reason to start a wolf harvest this winter. Depredation control trapping by USDA-Wildlife Service will be the main tool to control wolves depredating on livestock and pets.  There is little scientific evidence that harvests have any impact on levels of hound depredations, which vary from year to year. The deer herd is doing well across northern and central Wisconsin, and there is no scientific evidence a wolf harvest would increase deer hunting opportunities.  

TWA recognizes and accepts that a public harvest of wolves will occur in fall 2021, and encourages a careful and scientifically sound quota setting process to establish a wolf harvest for the state.  Unfortunately the state wolf plan that should inform such a quota setting process is now 22 years old. Until a new plan is developed, the Timber Wolf Alliance encourages a conservative harvest system to maintain the wolf population near current levels.

Starting a pre-mature wolf harvest this winter represents poor use of this public trust resource. TWA hopes the legislature supports Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources efforts to carefully plan a fall wolf harvest and update the state wolf plan to represent the best available science.  Sound conservation of wolves in Wisconsin needs to be carefully planned and should not be rushed.

For more information and please go to our web site Timber Wolf Alliance - Northland College

Sincerely,

Alan Brew                       

Director                                       

Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute  

Adrian Wydeven

Chair of Advisory Council  

Timber Wolf Alliance             

WI GOP-run legislature plays 'gavel-in/gavel-out/do-nothing' fun game again

For the 4th time since he took office two years ago, WI Gov. Tony Evers called a special session of the Legislature...and its GOP leaders convened and dismissed themselves quickly without taking any action.

Tuesday's session was to take up repairs to the state's unemployment compensation system which Republicans had deliberately monkey-wrenched to get benefits to fewer recipients. 

Republicans have been blasting Evers for benefit disbursement problems during pandemic joblessness but today declined to do anything about it.

* Just as they did with Evers' calls of special sessions on police accountability and gun violence, and election calendar changes when the pandemic began to surge.

Intentional overtly-partisan actions similar to the Legislature having remained on vacation for most of 2020 while the pandemic raged statewide. 

WI GOP Assembly Speaker Robin has regularly dawdled, slow-walked and frozen Legislative action for partisan purposes, but as you can see here did move quickly when Pres. Trump's plane was landing in Milwaukee last winter.

Because playing partisan power games they have rigged in their favor through blatant gerrymandering is more important to Wisconsin GOP legislative leaders than is actual problem-solving and governing.

Do real work? Please. Work is for the suckers whose pockets are about to be picked again by careless, contemptuous Republicans. 

And when the Legislature finally returned a few days ago after their long, long fully-paid recess, the GOP-led Assembly controlled by Robin Vos first balked at passing a COVID19 action bill proposed by Gov. Evers, then threw together its own long-promised/never-delivered COVID19 bill which was so full of irrelevance and deal-breakers that the GOP-run State Senate declined to take it up.

It was another variation on 'gavel in, gavel out, taxpayers lose' GOP do-nothingness.