They Brought Ted Nugent. We’re Bringing a Stamp.

A few weeks ago, a photo started circulating from a Wisconsin campaign event. Four men, all smiles, standing in a sunny field. One is wearing a hat that reads “Rob Stafsholt, State Senator.” Another’s shirt says “Severson for Senate” — Erik Severson, running in the Republican primary for Wisconsin’s 25th Senate District. Standing between them, a man in a Hunter Nation t-shirt that reads, in big block letters: “Keep Calm and Hunt Wolves.”

That’s not a fringe group at a county fair. Hunter Nation is the same organization that spent over $1.8 million on a hunter-focused voter activation campaign featuring Donald Trump Jr., Ted Nugent, and Brett Favre to help elect a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice. It’s the same group that testified before the Wisconsin Senate against CR 23-047 for not including a numeric wolf population goal — in other words, against the very rule that already gives hunters and trappers a “satisfaction” standard written into wolf policy. This isn’t grassroots concern. It’s a funded, national political operation, and it has decided that Wisconsin’s wolves are useful enemies.

Here’s what they don’t want you to notice.

While Hunter Nation flies in celebrity spokespeople to manufacture outrage, the Wisconsin DNR quietly runs the state’s actual endangered species fund — the Endangered Resources Fund. It’s a good program. Donations are matched dollar for dollar by the state, turning $1 into $4 or $25 into $100. But right there on the DNR’s own website, in their own words: “Your donation is not used for wolf management purposes.”

Read that again. The one funding mechanism built to protect Wisconsin’s rarest species has a wolf-shaped hole cut right through the middle of it — the same year the DNR denied our petition to protect wolves under the state endangered species list.

So we built our own.

Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance created the Wildlife Stamp — a numbered, collectible conservation stamp, wolf-forward by design, with proceeds going straight to wolf protection, coexistence work, and the full list of species Wisconsin’s official fund won’t touch. No exclusions. No fine print. When you buy a stamp, every dollar goes to work for the species Hunter Nation wants you to fear instead of understand.

🐺 Our goal: 25 Wildlife Stamps by the end of July.

We just launched the Wildlife Stamp, and three are already claimed. Now we want to hit 25 — before July closes out — and here’s what makes that number exciting: every single stamp is matched dollar-for-dollar. Twenty-five stamps doesn’t just fund wolf protection and coexistence work. It doubles.

This isn’t about tearing anything down. It’s about building the one thing Hunter Nation’s playbook doesn’t have: a real, growing group of Wisconsinites who want wolves protected, not persecuted, and who are willing to put their name and their dollars behind it. Every stamp claimed between now and July 31st moves us closer to 25 — and closer to proving that this movement is bigger than a t-shirt and a photo op.

It costs $87.50 to hunt a wolf in Wisconsin.
It costs $87.50 to protect one.

Every Wildlife Stamp starts at $87.50, and thanks to a matching gift, your support goes twice as far.

Claim Your Wildlife Stamp

Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance is an all-volunteer 501(c)(3) working to protect wolves and wildlife across Wisconsin through litigation, policy, and public education. Learn more at speakforwildlife.org.