Michigan’s first ever wolf hunt begins Nov. 15.

Casperson  shifted the listing of “game species”, animals hunted in our state, to a politically appointed committee.  The Natural Resources Committee cannot be reviewed by the voting public, so the 250,000 citizens who signed the ballot initiative calling for a vote on the wolf hunt, were disenfranchised, told to keep quiet, and take a hike.

While hiking in Michigan there is one thing you need not fear; a wolf attack. There has never been in Michigan’s history an attack by wolves on humans. Of course Capserson’s fairy tales tell of children being cornered by wolf packs at school. Casperson has made numerous bogus claims on the floor of the State Senate in Lansing, though admittedly,  he is not sworn to tell the truth while speaking.

Worse, professional Department of Natural Resource biologists now confess to falsifying testimony to the State Senate.  The Legislature resolved that wolves should be de-listed from the endangered species act, and then included wolves on the schedule of game species in Michigan.

If the DNR had enforced its own regulations requiring farmers to bury within 24 hours the carcasses of  dead animals then many of the wolf attacks on cattle could have been avoided in the first place.

Cattlemen have every right to kill wolves that are attacking their herds. That is the law and always has been. The DNR pays farmers and ranchers for the loss of their livestock killed by wolves.

The upcoming wolf hunt is not designed to manage wolves in the wild; but it could make wolf attacks worse.  Wolves are pack animals, they depend on an intricate social network to survive. If an alpha wolf is slaughtered the pack disintegrates, turning the survivors into rogues.

Only one biologist sits on the NRC, which listed the wolves as “game species”, and hers was the sole committee vote against the wolf hunt.

Other respected northern Michigan scientists have argued against the wolf hunt. With the deer population holding steady in the U.P., and wolf populations slightly declining, an ecological balance in the forests of northern Michigan is served by the apex predator, wolves.

Many sportsmen also oppose the new wolf hunt.

Hunting ethics written by Teddy Roosevelt, the North American Wildlife Conservation Model, warned against “frivolous hunts” like Michigan’s wolf hunt.

Michigan’s wolf hunt ignores the science of wildlife management. Michigan wolves do not need “management,” they are management.

Sen. Casperson has snatched the constitutional right of citizens to petition their government. The DNR has failed to enforce its own rules. Michigan’s wolf hunt will do more harm than good, leaving Michigan’s forests weaker.  Put the wolf hunt to a vote of the people next year.

— Mark Muhich lives in Summit Township and is the conservation chairman of the Central Michigan Group Sierra Club.

Licenses for Michigan’s first managed wolf hunt sold briskly today, with 900 of the 1,200 available snatched up in 30 minutes.

As of 5 p.m. Saturday, only about 100 of the 1,200 licenses were still available, said Ed Golder, public information officer for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Licenses cost $100 for residents, $500 for non-residents.

“It went excellently,” said Golder of the first-come first-served sale that began at noon. The effort had been delayed to ensure proper procedures were in place to handle high demand online and at 1,400 retail outlets.

Even if there is a sellout, he urged hunters to check back as licenses may be returned if the buyer is ineligible, there are payment issues or cancellations.

While the Nov. 15 hunt will target just 43 wolves total in three Upper Peninsula locations, it has become highly controversial. Those on both sides of the issue accuse each other of spreading misinformation and half-truths.

Generally there are about five wolves in a pack dominated by an alpha male, though packs can be larger. Douglas Smith/National Park Service

The state says the hunt is a necessary tool to reduce wolves in areas where they have entered communities and to manage wolf numbers in areas where cattle and dogs have been killed.

There have been 155 such predation reports from 2010 through this week, some involving more than one animal. That’s about the same number as for the previous 14 years.

Critics say those numbers are grossly exaggerated, particularly by one farmer’s actions and his failure to properly use state-provided deterrents. They say the effort is little more than a trophy hunt, and that lethal and non-lethal means already exist to manage wolves.

“The facts speak for themselves and it just shows this is all politically motivated and has nothing to do with science,” said Nancy Warren, a resident of the western Upper Peninsula town of Ewen and the Great Lakes regional director for the preservationist National Wolfwatcher Coalition.

DNR wildlife biologist Brian Roell, a wolf specialist in Marquette, says critics “cherry pick facts and leave out facts.”

“This is another control for minimizing wolf conflicts, a very conservative approach for taking away 43 animals,” Roell said.

Gray wolves essentially disappeared from Michigan by the time they received endangered species status in 1978.

It would be a decade before the state counted just three wolves in 1988-89. Their numbers grew exponentially, peaking at 687 in 2010-11. The current census puts their number at 658.

The resurgence here and in Minnesota and Wisconsin led the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to lift protections for the gray wolf in January 2012.

Minnesota and Wisconsin allowed hunts last year. This will be the first controlled hunt in Michigan.

Critics hope it will be the last.

The ballot group Keep Michigan Wolves Protected is gathering signatures to put a referendum on next year’s ballot. The effort seeks to throw out a law that allowed the Natural Resources Commission this summer to designate wolves as a game animal.

The Legislature shifted that authority to the commission, essentially to get around a successful petition drive by the group that would have stopped this year’s hunt.

The group hopes to have enough signatures by March to support the new ballot measure.

The upcoming hunt will be limited to three areas in the Upper Peninsula. The areas and the number of wolves that can be killed are:

• Zone A: A portion of Gogebic County including the city of Ironwood, 16.

• Zone B: Portions of Baraga, Houghton, Ontonagon and Gogebic counties, 19.

• Zone C: Portions of Luce and Mackinac counties, 8.

The hunt will run from Nov. 15 until Dec. 31, or until the target harvest for each area is reached.

Hunters will be required to report any wolf kills by phone on the day it occurs. Once the target number of wolves are killed in a specific hunting area, that unit will be closed to hunting. License holders will be required to check daily by phone or online to determine whether any zones have been closed.

When licenses go on sale at noon today for the state’s first wolf hunting in more than four decades, Lester Livermore plans to be among those in line.