Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance

I Can’t Live Through Another Wolf Hunting Season. Our Wolves Can’t Either. Can You Help?

In February 2021, Wisconsin hunters killed 218 wolves in three days.

The quota was 119. Hunters blew past it before the state could react. Poachers killed roughly 100 more that same year. Wisconsin’s wolf population dropped by a third in twelve months — and almost nobody outside our state ever heard about it.

We were there. GLWA was part of the coalition that got a judge to block a second hunt planned for that same November — the only reason it didn’t happen twice in one year. Since then, we’ve fought to keep federal protections in place, and today, wolves are still listed.

That’s about to be tested again. President Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to begin the process of delisting gray wolves nationwide. Wisconsin’s own Tom Tiffany — now running for governor — wrote the bill this order is built on. If delisting goes through, Wisconsin’s mandatory-hunt law kicks back in automatically. No new legislation needed. No new vote. Just a hunt, on the same broken rules that gave us 2021.

Here’s the clock nobody’s talking about. Even if this administration followed every rule in its own delisting process — and its record on the Endangered Species Act gives us no reason to expect that — a final decision could land within months, not years. The moment it does, Wisconsin’s hunt law triggers automatically. Zones could open before the end of this hunting cycle. That is not a distant threat. That is roughly six months away. And we already know exactly what happens next, because Hunter Nation showed us in 2021: they sued to force the hunt, then blew through the quota by 82% in three days.

Here’s what’s different this time: we may not be able to count on the courts to save us. Federal litigation only works if the other side follows the rules. This administration’s broader attacks on the Endangered Species Act and on environmental regulation generally mean we can’t assume that anymore. That makes state-level protection — a real Wisconsin threatened listing, not a promise that federal courts will fix it later — more important than it has ever been.

Right now, the DNR and its stakeholder table — environmental groups and hunting groups alike, alongside USDA Wildlife Services and the Forest Service — are already deciding how many wolves should die next and where. They call it science. It isn’t. Look at the rule itself.

“The number of permits issued to reach a harvest quota will be based on several factors including in part on the trends of hunter and trapper success rates, timing of past zone closures and hunter and trapper satisfaction and opportunity.”

— Wisconsin Administrative Rule CR 23-047, NR 10.14(2)(c), effective November 1, 2025

That’s not our characterization. That’s the rule, in the state’s own words. “Hunter satisfaction” is a written legal factor in deciding how many wolves die. Biology isn’t mentioned. The Wolf Advisory Committee can call its process science-based all it wants — you cannot write hunter satisfaction into the permit formula and still claim the numbers are driven by wolf biology. And this is the same process trusting the same people who blew through a 119-wolf quota to kill 218 wolves in three days in 2021, while poachers killed roughly 100 more on top of that — and were never held accountable for either one.

We’ve read this whole thing before. It ends with wolves like this one.

Gruesome necropsy findings — irrefutable evidence of animal cruelty, including gut-shot wolves suffering for hours, intestines dragging, and desecrated carcasses being dumped on porches.

86% of wolves were killed by hound packs — running without limits, without mandatory GPS tracking, without landowner consent, and completely unsupervised by licensed handlers.

200–300 complaints in just three days, including reports of armed standoffs on private property and children being chased by hounds at bus stops.

— from GLWA’s white paper on the Feb. 2021 hunt, backed by 23 sworn affidavits and necropsy evidence

This isn’t rhetoric. This is what the necropsies showed. This is what’s coming again if we don’t get ahead of it.

We wrote up exactly who’s funding this and why — Koch-network operatives, timber industry lobbyists, and a hunting group president who used to run Americans for Prosperity.

Read the full investigation: Follow the Money →

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Melissa Smith
Executive Director & Founder
Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance
msmith@wiwolvesandwildlife.org

Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance is a 100% volunteer, all-donor-funded 501(c)(3).