Dispatch from the Flambeau

Friends,

I’m writing to you from the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, near the Flambeau River, where our team is out in the field this week doing the unglamorous, essential work of wildlife science: counts and surveys along the road, and direct observation of how bears and wolves are using this landscape.

Along the road we confirmed wolf tracks — clean, clawed, oval prints, unmistakable once you’re looking at them in person — at several points on the route. We also picked up bobcat sign in the same stretch, a good reminder of how much is moving through this forest at once.

Over the last few days we’ve also watched hound hunters running their dogs through this same country — a firsthand look at exactly the kind of activity we’ve been working to bring under stronger, science-based rules.

Between survey stops, we’ve been sitting down with tribal members and with local farmers to talk about wolves — what they’re seeing, what they’re worried about, and where there’s more common ground than people expect.

From the past week in the field.

This is the part of the work that doesn’t make headlines: driving forest roads at dawn, reading track in the mud, and listening. But it’s the foundation everything else — the petitions, the litigation, the reports — is built on.

If you can help fund this work, it goes directly toward keeping us in the field and keeping wolves and wildlife protected in Wisconsin and the Great Lakes. And right now, every gift is being matched — so whatever you give goes twice as far.

Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance · Friends of the Wisconsin Wolf & Wildlife
speakforwildlife.org