Animal welfare advocates are suing to stop Wisconsin’s new wolf management plan

ByTODD RICHMOND Associated Press

November 22, 2023, 4:03 PM

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/animal-welfare-advocates-file-lawsuit-challenging-wisconsins-new-105113072

MADISON, Wis. — Animal welfare advocates filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to invalidate Wisconsin‘s new wolf management plan, accusing state wildlife officials of violating the state’s open meetings law and disregarding comments from wolf researchers and supporters.

The lawsuit reflects how contentious the debate over wolf management has become in Wisconsin. Farmers in northern Wisconsin have complained for years that the population is multiplying too quickly and preying on their livestock. Hunters argue wolves are devastating the deer population across the northern reaches of the state. Conservationists believe that wolves have yet to firmly establish themselves in Wisconsin and need protection.

The Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance, also known as Friends of the Wisconsin Wolf and Wildlife, filed the latest lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court. The organization describes itself as a statewide group of hunters, farmers, politicians, business owners and animal welfare advocates who support science-based conservation.

The lawsuit alleges that Department of Natural Resources policy board members collected comments on the plan from interest groups it favored even after the public comment period ended in February.

Board members attended private discussions hosted by the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, the Wisconsin Association of Sporting Dogs, and Wisconsin Wolf Facts in February, April and July, the lawsuit alleges. Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance members were not allowed at the April and July meetings, according to the lawsuit. The filing does not say if members were barred from the February meeting.

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The lawsuit alleges that even though a quorum of board members didn’t attend any of the meetings, enough of them participated to influence changes to the plan. Adam Payne, the department secretary at the time, announced revisions were coming after the February talks with the organizations that favor further limiting the wolf population. That all amounts to violating open meetings statutes, according to the lawsuit.

The filing goes on to allege that DNR officials gave little weight to scientific studies questioning the accuracy of the department’s wolf population counts and comments warning that hunting and trapping wolves won’t reduce conflicts with humans. They also failed to evaluate the dangers of overhunting wolves, the lawsuit asserts, and allowed opinions and unverified accounts of wolf aggression against hunters to influence the plan. The lawsuit doesn’t cite any specific instances to back up those claims.

DNR spokesperson Molly Meister said when reached via email late Wednesday afternoon that she couldn’t comment on pending litigation.

The Department of Natural Resources adopted a wolf management plan in 1999 that called for capping the population at 350 wolves. The latest DNR estimates, however, indicate the population currently stands at around 1,000.

Republican legislators in 2012 passed a law requiring the DNR to hold an annual wolf hunting season. Hunters and farmers have pointed to the 350-wolf limit as justification for setting high kill quotas, angering animal rights activists.

A federal judge last year placed gray wolves in the lower 48 states back on the endangered species list, making hunting illegal and limiting farmers to nonlethal control methods, such as fencing in livestock or using guard dogs. The DNR has been working on an updated wolf management plan in case wolves are removed from the list and hunting can resume.

The department’s board finally approved a plan last month that recommends maintaining the statewide population at about 1,000 wolves, but doesn’t set a hard limit. It instead recommends allowing the population to grow or decline at certain numerical thresholds.

DNR officials called it a flexible compromise, but farmers and hunters have criticized the lack of a hard population cap. Republican lawmakers are advancing a bill that would force the DNR to insert a specific number in the plan.

By Domenico Montanaro (NPR)

https://www.opb.org/article/2023/11/20/turkey-pardon-biden/

Nov. 20, 2023 7:45 a.m.

Joe Biden is one year older Monday. At 81, he’s the oldest president in U.S. history.

But some things apparently never get old, notably the strange tradition of presidential turkey pardons, which is happening again Monday as well.

It’s a tradition that ironically features an American president sanctioning an event sponsored by a lobbying group, which advocates the opposite of what actually takes place at said event.

The president makes a few jokes and lets a turkey go free in what became a formalized occurrence in the 1980s. But the turkey lobby’s actual goal, as most likely know, is to get people to eat more turkey.

A long, strange history

This dance between the turkey lobby and presidents started in the 1940s, but back then, it was — a more honest — gifting of a bird for the president and his family to eat at Thanksgiving.

But death is a hard sell.

Most Americans probably don’t know or think about how their food gets to their tables. They really care, as surveys have found, about how it tastes and how cheap it is.

Politicians know this.

Realizing the awkwardness of the whole situation of publicly accepting a live turkey that was destined for his dinner table, John F. Kennedy broke the tradition in 1963.

“I think we’ll just let this one grow,” Kennedy said of the gobbling fowl with a sign around its neck that read, “Good eating, Mr. President.”

He and succeeding presidents would realize, it’s better to be seen as a turkey liberator rather than the one to publicly send ol’ Giblet to the executioner.

There was a close call, though, during the George W. Bush administration when Barney, the president’s plucky Scottish Terrier, almost silenced the gobble of that year’s bird. It took Bush hustling out of a national security meeting to call him off. And remember, this is the same dog that bit a reporter.

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Biden is set to again pardon a pair of turkeys, hailing this year from Minnesota, which is apparently the top turkey producer in the country – though someone better keep Biden’s German Shepherds far away from the event or there might be a real … fowl up.

An expanding tradition … for some reason

The birds get their royal treatment, their own hotel room and, of course, punny jokes. And despite the irony, pointed out by your author year after year, this event shows no signs of slowing down.

In fact, it only seems to be expanding.

Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer brought the tradition to Michigan in 2022, pardoning “Mitch E. Gander” (get it!?). And it’s slated to happen again this year.

Alabama has apparently been doing this for decades. Oddly, the birds also, according to the Alabama Daily News, used to use the same names for the turkey every year for some reason — “Clyde” and “Henrietta.”

That changed this year after an online poll of Alabamans picked Giblet and Puddin’.

“Today, by the powers vested in me as governor of the state of Alabama,” Gov. Kay Ivey said at this year’s event, “I hereby am granting a full pardon to Giblet and Puddin’, so that they can spend their turkey day enjoying a meal of their own.”

Let’s just hope that meal isn’t what everyone else eats for Thanksgiving.

It’s become so embedded in the culture that a town in East Texas this year decided to join in on the strange tradition and let live a turkey by the name of … Dolly Pardon.

“The turkey is named Dolly because she’s a strong female role model,” Lisa Mays-Gonzalez, Van Community Library director. “And it’s a tribute to our Southern roots. And she is a very strong literacy advocate.”

No word on whether the turkey can read.

Dolly is set to live out her days at the “Believe in Vegan” ranch.

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