Michigan wolves
Farmer John Koski pulls back a blanket covering the carcasses of a couple beef cattle that he says were attacked by wolves over the winter and spring on his property in Matchwood, Michigan in the Upper Peninsula, May 13, 2013. "There's just too many. If they don't start killing them the wolf herds are going to keep increasing," Koski said. (Ryan Garza/Detroit Free Press/MCT)
Posted: Sunday, May 26, 2013
IRONWOOD, Mich. — John Koski grips the old blanket in knobby
hands weathered from a lifetime of farming. He pulls it back to reveal
the carcasses of two cows, or what's left of them. More than half of
each is picked clean, the spine and rib bones almost a polished white,
with no traces of flesh. Some of the rib bones are snapped and show
evidence of being gnawed upon.The mutilated cattle, found this spring on Koski's 1,000-acre farm in the tiny community of Matchwood in Ontonogan County, are the latest casualties in his ongoing war with wolves. The 68-year-old farmer has had more cattle killed or injured by wolves than any farmer in the state, 119 in the past three years, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Government-paid sharpshooters and trappers for years have killed dozens of the wolves who've taken a liking to Koski's cattle.
"I think this is the last year I'm going to keep cattle here because I'm losing so many," Koski said, adding that he may move them to his other farmland in Bessemer, about 35 miles away.
There are no records of a human ever being killed by a wolf in the wild in Michigan. But Koski thinks that could change.
"Sooner or later, those wolves are going to kill a person, or a kid waiting for a school bus," he said.
In the far western U.P., the wolf debate is not an abstract one. These are the people who've lost cattle and pets, and who've encountered wolves in their backyards.
Hunt set for fall
It's uncertain what will result from Michigan's controversial, first-ever wolf hunt, set by state officials for November and December after a series of meetings statewide that featured dozens of hunt opponents. But nowhere does the future of the wolf and the hunt have more relevance than here, among those living sometimes uncomfortably close to them.
Over the last few years, the city of Ironwood, about an hour west of Koski's farm, has seen the nearby wolf population increase, as well as encounters between wolves and people, city manager Scott Erickson said.
"There's a wolf problem in the area — I think everybody understands that," he said. "I've never heard anybody say they want to eliminate wolves, but just manage them in an appropriate manner."
Impact on deer feared
David Bolen ate breakfast at the Breakwater Family Restaurant in town, recalling his wolf encounter from last fall.
"I live in a senior apartment complex by a Little League baseball field," he said. "I watched a wolf come from an area we call The Caves right across the field — on Vaughn Street, right in town. It was probably 20, 30 yards from the senior apartments."
The 73-year-old has lived in the Ironwood area his entire life. "That was no coyote," he said.
Bolen supports the wolf hunt.
"If they are impacting the local deer herd or endangering local people here in Ironwood, I think it's proper for the DNR to regulate it," he said.
Lifelong Ironwood resident Al Clemens said the wolves have "decimated" the local deer population, affecting the popular — and economically important — local deer hunt. In recent years, hunters at his deer camp south of town have seen only about one-sixth of the deer they used to see, he said.
Ironwood hunter Jim Mildren noted wolves are opportunistic hunters that will kill deer in the dead of winter and store their bodies in snow almost like a refrigerator.
"If they can kill all of the deer in a deer yard, they will," he said.
"I love to hear the wolf's howl; I love to see their tracks. But I want there to be a better balance, and I want them to be afraid of people."
Numbers bounce back
Wolves have been a part of Michigan since at least when the last glacier melted over the land mass that would one day become the state, about 15,000 years ago.
Wolves were all but eradicated in much of the U.S. by the 1930s. Michigan and other Great Lakes states lost almost all of their wolves by the end of the 1950s.
In 1973, Congress enacted the Endangered Species Act and officially protected the wolf that same year. It sparked a resurgence in the wolf population. Michigan's Upper Peninsula was known to have three wolves as recently as 1989. The population today stands at an estimated 653 wolves. The wolves have made an even more substantial recovery in Wisconsin (834) and Minnesota (3,000).
"The reason they became able to thrive were the protections they were given," said Nancy Warren, a resident of the small western Upper Peninsula community of Ewen and the Great Lakes regional director for the National Wolfwatcher Coalition, a nonprofit dedicated to wolf conservation. She opposes the wolf hunt.
"Yes, they've done well. But the reason they've done well is we've stopped killing them."
Wolves were officially delisted as an endangered species in January 2012. Minnesota and Wisconsin quickly established hunts for that fall. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder last December signed into law a bill designating wolves as a game species, leading the way for the Natural Resources Commission's May 9 approval of a hunt for later this year.
"We're looking at a targeted harvest in areas where we've had continuing problems — depredation of cattle, people encountering wolves," said Adam Bump, the DNR's bear and furbearer specialist.
"The department's recommendation is not based on providing recreational opportunities; it's to resolve conflicts."
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