Skip to footer

Minnesota allows expanded wolf hunt despite criticism

Minnesota will issue hundreds more wolf hunting licenses this year, three years after the animals came off the endangered species list. The expanded Minnesota wolf hunting season begins in November.

|
Gary Kramer/US Fish and Wildlife Service/AP/File
A file photo shows a gray wolf. Minnesota plans to expand its annual wolf hunt, three years after the animals came off the endangered species list.
  • By Associated Press

| ST. PAUL, Minn.

Minnesota will issue 500 more wolf licenses this year and allow hunters and trappers to kill 30 more wolves than last year's target, the Department of Natural Resources said Wednesday.

The DNR said its latest population estimate is that 470 wolf packs and 2,423 wolves lived in Minnesota's wolf range this past winter. That's 212 more wolves than estimated in winter 2013.

"Estimates show a stable population with no significant change from the 2013 estimate of 2,211 wolves," Dan Stark, the DNR's large carnivore specialist, said in the announcement. "We will continue to evaluate the wolf population annually to ensure the wolf population remains well established across northern and central Minnesota."

This will be Minnesota's third wolf hunting season since the animals came off the endangered list.

The DNR will make a total of 3,800 hunting and trapping licenses available for the upcoming season. The statewide harvest target will be 250 wolves. The bag limit remains one wolf.

The DNR will start taking license applications Aug. 1. The early wolf hunting-only season opens Nov. 8, same as the firearms deer season. It will run through Nov. 23 in in the main wolf range in northern Minnesota, and Nov. 16 elsewhere. The late hunting-and-trapping season opens Nov. 29 and runs through Jan. 31. As in past years, wildlife managers will close hunting zones when their targets are met.

Hunters and trappers killed 413 wolves in the state's inaugural season, compared with a nonbinding target of 400, and 237 last year, which was 17 above the target. Last year's target was lowered following a population estimate showing a 24 percent decline from the DNR's 2008 survey.

Opponents of wolf hunting and trapping were unsuccessful during the past two legislative sessions at enacting legislation to suspend the state's wolf seasons. They argue that hunting and trapping threatens the species' long-term survival in Minnesota and dispute the idea that allowing recreational hunting and trapping is the most effective way to stop wolves from preying on livestock.

"There is no good justification for a recreational wolf hunt in Minnesota," Howling for Wolves founder Maureen Hackett said in a statement. She said hunting and trapping are cruel and disrupt pack structures.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Minnesota allows expanded wolf hunt despite criticism
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0724/Minnesota-allows-expanded-wolf-hunt-despite-criticism
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe