The US House on Friday passed a bill that would remove gray wolves from the Endangered Species List opening them to state hunting and trapping. The lame-duck house voted 196-180 along party lines to approve H.R. 6784 that would take wolves off the endangered list nationwide.
This may be the last chance for a wolf bill to advance as the incoming House in January, with a newly elected democratic majority isn't likely to be favorable.
Wolf supporters say the House bill goes too far, allowing extensive hunting and trapping in places like MN, WI, and MI's Upper Peninsula. Wolf supporters say there aren't enough wolves in place to consider them safe from extinction.
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore showed House members a chart showing that 74 percent of cattle losses are due to health issues, 7.8 percent due to weather and just 0.2 percent due to wolves. Of a rancher that lost a calf to wolves, DeFazio said, "It's sad that that calf didn't get to grow up and go to the slaughterhouse".
One of the supporters is recently elected, Rep. Collin Peterson, a democrat who represents a large swath of farming country in western MN. He actually introduced the bill. In a House speech, Peterson said, "I have to say in my 28 years in this body I have never seen so much nonsense, misinformation and propaganda put out on a bill as being put out on this one. We followed the Endangered Species Act. We did what was said, the scientists said we recovered and they delisted the wolves. You had a group out there, these extreme environmentalists and others who have captured our party, went to a judge in Washington, D.C. that has no idea what's going on at all and convinced that judge that the wolves had not recovered because they had not been re-established all the way to Des Moines, IA."
The MN DNR estimated that last year the state had 2,856 wolves. Seems strange to me since about 25 years ago I attended a meeting where the state estimated the wolf population at 3700. A predator with no real natural enemies, only a couple years with a quota season of 400 (which was filled almost the first week), and now the number has decreased to 2,856? Really? Then they must be dying off with disease due to overpopulation. This is a possibility, as I heard from two trappers who caught wolves during that season that had mange. The other possibility is that the DNR doesn't have a clue when it makes it's estimated figures. It may be a combination of both.
