Match ends Monday · Up to $500 doubled
New month. One month out. There will be no repeat of 2021.
We hope you had a happy, safe Halloween. Keep the candy away from your pets, since chocolate and sugar-free candy can be dangerous to dogs. And wildlife will eat your pumpkins. Deer especially love them.
We are about one month from a likely U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision on delisting gray wolves. The president’s 90-day order runs out in early December.
We are meeting with our legal team to weigh every option. Another 2021 wolf hunt cannot happen, and it won’t on our watch.
Remember 2021
- 218 wolves killed in under three days. The quota was 119.
- 86% killed with packs of hounds. Wisconsin is the only state that lets hunters run dogs on wolves.
- Traps, snares, bait and night hunting are all legal here.
- The tribes were disrespected. The Ojibwe hold the wolf sacred and claimed 81 wolves to protect them. State hunters blew past their own share anyway.
- Roughly 100 more were killed off the books in the same period, UW-Madison researchers estimated.
They’re already planning the next one
Wolves are still federally protected, and the DNR is already planning zones and quotas. The hunt rules are written and waiting.
The wolf management plan won’t stop them. The State’s own lawyers told a judge it binds no one, and we’ve already watched the DNR walk away from it.
This summer, agencies killed an entire family of nine wolves, pups included, after they were seen near a bear hunter’s bait. The DNR’s own rating was Level 3: natural behavior, near-zero threat. The tribes were never notified.
If this is how they treat wolves while they’re protected, imagine what happens when they’re not.
After delisting, expect lethal control to explode, driven by power and politics, not science. Expect poaching to go through the roof.
Wisconsin even had to write a rule against killing wolf pups in their dens, because someone argued there was no rule against it. You don’t write that rule unless someone was doing it.
This is what they call wolf management: running dogs on wolves and killing pups in their dens.
Cranes could be next
This year the Wisconsin Assembly passed a bill ordering a sandhill crane hunting season, the first time a crane hunt bill ever cleared a house of the Legislature. It died only because the Senate never voted on it. Crane hunting groups say they’ll be back in 2027.
Whoever wins on Tuesday, it will be a challenge. So we will organize, and the voices of wildlife advocates will out-howl them. That’s a promise we can make.
Kick off November with us
In 2021, our lawsuit stopped Wisconsin’s second wolf hunt. We’re getting ready to do it again.
We’re 100% volunteer and take $0 from corporations or government. You are how we keep going.
Match ends Monday
Double your gift for wildlife.
Every gift is matched, up to $500. Let’s not leave a dollar on the table.
Checks: Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance, 117 Ardmore Drive, Madison, WI 53713. Please put your phone number in the memo line.
For the wolves,
Melissa Smith
Executive Director and Founder
Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance
Friends of the Wisconsin Wolf & Wildlife
msmith@wiwolvesandwildlife.org · (608) 234-8860
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Sandhill Cranes should never be hunted. Please stop upsetting the balance of nature and allow it to return to a healthy state. There is no challenge in hunting wild animals or birds. It’s cruel and heartless to kill innocent sentient beings. All birds and animals are sentient and deserve to live their lives in peace under the protection of humans who are caring enough and intelligent enough to understand how important they all are to the ecosystem, to the planet.