Perception is one of the biggest issues facing wolves today.
UPPER PENINSULA -- Wolf tracking is one of Nancy Warren's favorite activities. It involves finding wolf tracks and markings near her Ewen home.
A volunteer with the Timberwolf Alliance and the Defenders of Wildlife, she said the biggest issue facing wolves today is perception.
"People who just randomly kill wolves, the illegal killing of wolves, all show that those negative attitudes towards wolves still exist," said Warren. "That is what caused wolves to be put on the Endangered Species List to begin with."
Warren said the key to solving the wolf problem is education and making decisions based on science, not playing to people's fears, which she feels the state legislature has done.
Warren supported removing wolves from the Endangered Species List until the Michigan State Legislature changed the language of the management plan. Now wolves can be killed if they are preying on animals or livestock. That, she said, is too vague.
What Warren hopes to see are wolves being assigned federal threatened status, giving the state more, but not total, control.
"Take it off the Endangered Species List, place it at threatened, and leave it at federally threatened the way it is in Minnesota," Warren stated. "This would give the state the control to take care of problem wolves."
As a wolf predator consultant and a Minnesota resident, Karlyn Berg has seen the threatened status at work firsthand. She said it usually solves problems without significantly affecting the population.
"Unless you kill the depredating animal, the one that's actually causing problems--and that can be single animals or pairs--if you go in and take those, you've ended the problem," said Berg. "But if you kill 1,000 animals that aren't involved, you haven't solved anyone's problem."
Another major disagreement between activists and DNR officials is this: can wolves regulate themselves?
Warren said the environment can support around 1,300 wolves based on space and available food, and that's evidence that wolf numbers will level off.
"They're not going to explode, we're not going to have 10,000 wolves," Warren added. "We probably aren't even going to reach the 1,000 mark anytime soon; they're a slow growing animal."
Until middle ground can be reached, it's unlikely wolves will be delisted anytime soon.
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