Speak for Wildlife · Urgent · June 2026

He Tried to Poison the Wolves.
On Our Public Land.
We Have to Talk About This.

A 78-year-old man — a lifelong “conservationist,” community foundation namesake, Wisconsin DNR partner — trapped ten beavers on public land, poisoned their carcasses, and dumped them in a state forest to kill wolves. Scientists have been warning the agency about this for years. The agency keeps looking away. We can’t.

By Melissa Smith, Executive Director · Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance / Friends of the Wisconsin Wolf & Wildlife

In February 2026, someone walking their dog on a public access road to McNaughton Lake Boat Launch in the Northern Highland–American Legion State Forest spotted beaver carcasses coated in a blue substance and contacted the DNR. Wardens set up a trail camera.

On March 24, the camera caught him. A pickup truck backed up to the site. The truck belonged to Bruce Wendt, 78, of Lake Tomahawk. Photographs showed him removing a beaver carcass from his truck and pouring what appeared to be QuikStrike fly bait — an imidacloprid-based poison — over it.

When wardens confronted him, he denied it. Shown the trail camera photos, he admitted it.

“He was hoping the poisoned carcasses would ‘take care of some predators over there’ and ‘the ones that are coming here.'” — Bruce Wendt, to Wisconsin DNR wardens, April 2026

He faces ten charges. Watch the original news report:

WJFW Newswatch 12, Rhinelander · June 8, 2026 · Read the full article →

This Happened on YOUR Public Land

Let’s be clear about what this man did on land that belongs to all of us.

He trapped and killed ten beavers — animals with their own role in Wisconsin’s ecosystem, animals that belong to the public trust — on public state forest land. He loaded their carcasses into his truck. He drove to a public forest. He doused them in poison. He came back and did it again. This was not a moment of rage. This was a project, carried out on land paid for by Wisconsin taxpayers, managed in trust for all of us.

QuikStrike doesn’t know it’s supposed to kill wolves. It kills everything that feeds on a carcass. Here is what was at risk on that public forest floor:

That is what a $2,500 dog depredation check — which Wendt was almost certainly eligible to receive and almost certainly did receive, because nearly 99% of eligible claimants file — bought in retaliation. Not just wolves. Every scavenger in that forest.

Did that $2,500 build tolerance? Or did it build a poacher?

A Pillar of the Community

Bruce Wendt is 78 years old. He has been involved in Wisconsin’s conservation and hunting community his entire adult life. He is not someone who didn’t know the rules. He is someone who has lived inside them for decades — which means he knew exactly what he was doing, exactly what the consequences were likely to be, and exactly how much goodwill he had accumulated to cushion the landing.

His name is on a plaque. The Bruce and Jean Ann Wendt Endowment, managed through the Rhinelander Area Community Foundation, was established in memory of his late wife Jean Ann, who died in 2018. The endowment has partnered with the Wisconsin DNR itself — funding nearly five miles of new trails and ADA-accessible boardwalks at Lost Lake, ceramics kilns for Rhinelander schools, and emergency housing support for Northwoods veterans.

He is not a bad apple. He is the barrel.

Scientists Have Been Warning the Agency for Years. The Agency Keeps Looking Away.

What happened in that state forest is not a surprise to the researchers who study wolf mortality in the Great Lakes region. They have been telling the Wisconsin DNR this for years. The agency has not listened — and then it hands management of wolves back to the very communities producing these outcomes.

Bruce Wendt is exactly the person these researchers have been describing. A lifelong participant in Wisconsin’s conservation and hunting establishment. A man who knew the rules well enough to break them deliberately. A man who collected a depredation payment — almost certainly — and then went out and poisoned a public forest anyway.

The agency that cut him that check is the same agency whose land he poisoned. The same agency whose trails his wife’s endowment helped build. The same agency that continues to manage wolves as though the science doesn’t exist.

This has to stop. And it won’t stop without a fight.

It Is Getting Extremely Bad Out There

I want to be honest with you about where things stand.

The Wisconsin DNR denied our gray wolf state endangered species petition on June 4, 2026 — after more than 350 days without a substantive response. We are now in active legal rebuttal with our attorneys at Greenfire Law, building the case that the agency failed to make an independent scientific finding as required by state statute, that it relied on a self-refuting logic, and that it managed wolves by politics rather than science.

Bear hounding season opens July 1. Hundreds of packs of dogs will be turned loose in wolf territory — with no pursuit time limits, no independent monitoring, and a compensation system that writes checks to nearly everyone who files, regardless of their record.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement is being gutted. Wisconsin DNR warden capacity is shrinking. The people who want wolves gone from Wisconsin know this. They are emboldened. They are acting on it. Bruce Wendt acted on it.

We are fighting on every front simultaneously: the wolf petition legal rebuttal, the NRB strategy for wildlife killing contest reform, the bear policy white paper, and the ongoing work of documenting what is actually happening to Wisconsin’s wildlife on our public lands. It is a lot. And we cannot do any of it without resources.