Beckie Gaskill

Federal wolf delisting took one small step closer to becoming reality as members of the House Committee on Natural Resources passed the Pet and Livestock Protection Act, H.R. 845, out of committee by vote of 24 to 17 on Wednesday, April 9.
The bill now goes to the full House of Representatives. A similar bill introduced by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is working through the U.S. Senate.

A former Wisconsin DNR furbearer and large carnivore biologist called the Great Lakes Region wolf population fully recovered – and said that recovery occurred years ago.
Nathan Roberts, now a biology professor at the College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, Mo., testified before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee March 25 on a bill that would federally delist wolves.

Researchers have found that humans account for 67% of wolf mortality, with poaching the dominant cause of wolf mortality despite the fact that wolves in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota have been mostly under some level of federal protection.
At this year’s Great Lakes Wolf Symposium at Northland College in Ashland, Wis., Alejandra Perez, a graduate student at Michigan State University’s Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, presented her work on how wolves in the Great Lakes Region are doing and how researchers evaluate changes in wolf survival and mortality over the years.