Great Lakes wildlife Alliance Asks Wisconsin DNR to Protect Bears From Being Run in Dangerous Heat and Wildfire Smoke

As wildfires spread through Minnesota and smoke blankets our region, the Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance is asking the state to adopt an emergency rule pausing bear-dog training during declared heat, air-quality, and fire conditions — and to move on it now, while the danger is here.

📄 Read the full emergency petition filed with the Wisconsin DNR

With wildfires now burning across northern Minnesota and hazardous smoke settling over the Upper Midwest, the Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance (GLWA) is asking the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the Natural Resources Board to adopt an emergency rule protecting black bears from being pursued by hounds during dangerous heat, air-quality, and wildfire conditions.

What We’re Asking For

This is a narrow, common-sense request: pause the running of bears by dogs when a heat advisory is in effect, when air quality reaches unhealthy levels, or when temperatures climb into the range that’s dangerous for bears. We’re also asking that the distance a bear may be pursued be limited in warm conditions, so a frightened bear and her cubs can’t be chased mile after mile until they overheat and collapse. Right now, hound hunters can simply swap in fresh dogs when their current ones get too hot to continue. The agency hands out advice to bear-dog trainers — it does almost nothing for the bears.

We are not asking to end the activity. We are asking the state to pause it during the specific windows when conditions are hazardous, and to keep any chase within limits an animal can actually survive.

This activity is also almost entirely unregulated. No license is required to run dogs on bears during training season, and the rules governing it are minimal — meaning virtually anyone in Wisconsin can participate, and the state has no reliable way to know how many are doing so, or where. The most recent count, from 2014, put more than 14,000 dogs on the landscape during the season. That data hasn’t been collected since. If the state can’t say who is out there, how many, or how the animals are faring, it cannot assume this is safe — and on days it has declared hazardous, the only defensible move is to close it down.

What the Science Shows

Black bears are physiologically unable to cope with these conditions. Unlike people, bears cannot sweat — their only defenses against heat are shade, water, and rest, exactly what a sustained chase takes away. Heat stress in black bears begins at roughly 68°F, and in northern Wisconsin the average summer day already sits above that threshold.

• Prolonged pursuit in heat can trigger exertional (capture) myopathy — muscle breakdown that leads to collapse and death, often a full day after the chase ends, when no one is there to count it.
• Wildfire smoke causes measurable respiratory harm in wildlife; a running, panting bear pulls far more smoke and fine particulate deep into its lungs (Sanderfoot et al., Environmental Research Letters, 2021).
• Severe wildfire has been linked to major black-bear population decline — a study of Lassen Volcanic National Park after a large fire documented a 63 percent drop in bear density, with females down 51 percent (University of California).
• Dependent cubs, on the landscape during the July–August season, are the most vulnerable of all — immature lungs, limited stamina — and they are run alongside the adults.

“It really is simple,” said Melissa Smith, Executive Director of the Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance. “If this air and heat are unsafe for us and for our pets, they are even more dangerous for a bear being chased for miles with no way to cool down.”

Imagine, for a Moment, That You Are the Bear

“I want people to actually feel what we’re asking the state to stop,” Smith said. “This is an activity that requires no license — anyone can do it, and no one even tracks how many are out there. So imagine, for a moment, that you are the bear. You’re locked in a car in ninety-six-degree heat. You’re put on a treadmill and made to run three miles. The windows are up, and you’re made to breathe smoke like you’ve had seven cigarettes. And then — add the terror of six trained dogs chasing you, and your cubs running for their lives beside you. That is what a bear endures out there right now. We’re simply asking the state to say: not in this heat, not in this smoke.”

A Regional Emergency

The wildfires burning through Minnesota’s Boundary Waters and Superior National Forest — one of the last great wildernesses in the Midwest — are a reminder that neither smoke nor wildlife respects state lines. Wisconsin has been in drought, and our Northwoods is the same fire-prone forest. This is the moment for the state to protect wildlife already under stress, not to keep permitting a practice that adds to it.

About the Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance

The Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance is an all-volunteer Wisconsin nonprofit dedicated to science-based protection of wolves and wildlife through advocacy, research, and public education. Learn more at speakforwildlife.org.