Testimony : Natural Resources Board



Natural Resources Board Hearing – Act 169 – Public Wolf Harvest Bill

17 July 2012

Testimony of Richard P. Thiel

Citizen, Tomah, WI

Greetings, and thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. My name is Richard P. Thiel. As a brief background / disclosure I was employed by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources from 1977 until I retired in March 2011 after 33 years of service as a wildlife biologist working in both the Bureaus of Endangered Resources and Wildlife Management.

I have authored or co-authored 22 peer-reviewed publications on Wisconsin’s wolves and authored 2 books on the same subject. I am one of 5 people who served on both the DNR’s 1989 Wolf Recovery Plan, which I chaired, and the 1999 Wolf Management Plan. I am keenly familiar with the scientific topics, the many team discussions, dialogue with the public as well as the politics, and the crafting of both documents. Emotions have always run high with mention of the word “wolf”. The task of scientists over the past 30 years has been to make science-based information a significant part of these plans. In order for science to drive wolf management decisions members of the Wolf Technical Science Committee constantly had to counter misinformation regarding wolves. This task is made more arduous when having to confront disinformation that vocal individuals and Stakeholder groups banter about in public arenas. In my opinion Act 169 is an example of legislation based upon twisted misinformation controlled by special self-interests.

Our peers in other states, other governmental agencies, and staffs in NGO’s throughout the Nation have regarded the Wisconsin DNR’s handling of wolf recovery and wolf management over the past 30 years with utmost respect. The Department has displayed great integrity in handling management of this controversial species. Sadly – with the passage of Act 169 – many of our peers are left wondering whether that track record is at risk. The Agency’s future actions rest with the guidance of the Natural Resources Board.

Act 169 is written from the perspective of individuals, parties, groups that have a single objective in mind: to drive our state’s newly recovered wolf population back in the direction of endangerment. The “authority” is based upon the DNR’s existing Wolf Management Plan. A Plan that is presently 13 years old, is based on antiquated science, and guides DNR policy despite a growing body of knowledge that has replaced much of the science the 1999 plan was based on.

Yes, Act 169 is law. However there is one important thing the NRB can and should do:

direct the DNR to immediately commence the timely revision of the 1999 Wolf Management Plan.

Why?

I wish first to address some basic flaws in Act 169 by addressing some of the flaws that guided legislators in producing these public wolf hunt statutes. This background will aid in understanding why a new Wolf Management Plan is a necessity.

(1) AB 502’s authors, Reps. Suder and Rivard testified that they relied on the 1999 Wolf Management Plan during the Assembly Natural Resources Committee’s public hearing, held at the Capitol on 1 February, 2012. Rep. Suder asserted, “...We have been working very hard in conjunction with the DNR with this legislation....”, claiming, “... we have incorporated much of that plan into our bill...”.

(2) Both representatives emphasized numerous times that they had consulted with Department “experts”. I wish to address this issue as it is critical to determine whether Act 169 – the public harvesting of wolves – is based on sound science. And this depends in large part on whether the crafters of this legislation actually had contact with Department “experts”.

By most standards an expert is a person having lengthy experience working with – in this case - wolves afield. To ascertain who within the Agency is considered a wolf expert I received responses from 9 nationally and internationally recognized wolf biologists from Minnesota, Michigan, Montana, Alaska and Canada, having asked them to list by name Wisconsin DNR staff having expertise working with wolves (Appendix 1). Consistently the names Adrian Wydeven, Ron Schultz, and Dick Thiel are listed. These experts are the DNR’ experts.

Another potential pool of experts could be drawn from among members of the Agency’s Wolf Science Technical Team. All one has to do is read the list of names of Team members who created the 2 previous Agency documents and one addendum. Five individuals served on both Agency planning committees. Thus the Department had available 2 lists of experts with which to supply the legislators.

Were any of the DNR’s 3 wolf biologists contacted or consulted by legislators who crafted AB502? I personally was not contacted by anyone but since I was newly retired this should be no surprise. The Natural Resources Board could determine whether Adrian Wydeven and Ron Schultz, who remain as Agency employees, were contacted by members of the legislative body when Suder et al. were crafting Act 169. It is a matter of public record in the Assembly’s public hearing that both Reps. Danou and Clark specifically asked where Wydeven was. He was conspicuously absent from both legislative public hearings.

We do know as a matter of public record that the DNR supplied a Division Adminstrator and a staff lawyer at both the Assembly and Senate’s public hearings. It will be argued in defense that this is standard operating procedure. But with such a sensitive task at hand – moving a species that was considered federally endangered a mere 5 days earlier – to a hunted species with a near-term goal of cutting that same population by nearly 2/3rds (viz. 850 to 350), any reasonable citizen may seriously question what the Agency’s top administrators really had in mind when all they supplied to those public hearings were a Division administrator and a staff lawyer to answer questions. Let me be clear here because I professionally know and worked with these two individuals, the administrator and staff lawyer the DNR supplied are not wolf experts. And I know they did not adequately answer the questions of the Assembly and Senate committee members because I attended – in person – both hearings.

As a final observation, having sat through and gone through transcripts of the testimonies at the two public hearings in the Legislature, it is no coincidence that in their testimony both Reps. Suder and Revard did not identify, by name, the Department experts they consulted with.

I ask whom did the Agency supply to legislators as “experts”? And when did they consult with legislators?

I now address the matter of the 1999 Wisconsin Wolf Management Plan (and it’s 2007 Addendum). Why is the 1999 Wisconsin Wolf Management Plan inadequate to drive wolf harvest management in Wisconsin?

(1) At numerous points in the Assembly public hearing Reps Suder and Rivard announced that they relied on the Department’s experts to provide information on the 1999 Wolf Management Plan. They repeatedly mentioned they were assured by DNR that 350 wolves was, “...the proper number...” In response to questioning along these lines at the Senate’s Natural Resources Committee Public Hearing held on 28 Feb 2012, DNR’s Division Administrator, Kurt Thiede stated “...There was a lot of blood sweat and tears that went into the management plan that established the 350 number. That’s the Plan that was adopted by our Natural Resources Board. And that’s the Plan that we are currently operating under...”

And importantly, he added, “... so until that would change through a new process, that is the number we are using.”

There is no reason for Thiede to have said that. He is aware (see especially point 4, below) that some in the DNR or the Wolf Science Technical Team have acknowledged or expressed for some time that the existing Plan is out-dated. Had Wisconsin’s wolf experts been asked might they argue that the Plan needed major revisions (assuming they could be candid)? I –for one –would have so instructed the Agency and Legislators. Today I am taking advantage of that opportunity.

(2) The 1999 Wolf Management Plan document is 13 years old. DNR plans generally have a ten-year horizon. The Department’s own 1999 Wolf Management Plan emphasizes this several times, and I quote:

i). Page 4 – “A public review of the plan and management goals will be conducted every five years by the Department of Natural Resources.”

ii). Page 28 – “at 5-year intervals, a thorough review should be made of the state wolf population status...” including a public review.

And finally...

iii) Page 8: ‘This plan provides guidelines for managing wolves in Wisconsin for the next 10 to 15 years.”

A 5-year review was conducted by the Team and its addendum was approved by Administration in August of 2007. It substantiated much of the 1999 plan, made a few changes, and among other things suggested that the population goal should be refreshed. .

(3) Our culture is dependant on science and technology and relies on the assumption that science is up-to-date and its benefits are implemented in a timely fashion. To demonstrate the state-of-affairs of the existing DNR Wolf Plan, I did a quick review of the Literature Cited sections of the 1989 Wisconsin Wolf Recovery Plan, the 1999 Wisconsin Wolf Management Plan, and articles on Wisconsin’s wolves that appeared within a technical regional wolf book, Recovery of gray wolves in the Great Lakes Region of the United States published in 2009 edited by Adrian Wydeven and UW professor Tim Van Deelen. The percent of new citations in each succeeding document was used as a measure of the growth in knowledge of wolves between documents. Please note: the time span between each of the 3 documents is exactly ten years. The growth in new information – as measured by the percent of new citations (i.e. published after the date of the preceding Agency document) in each of the 3 publications, range between 38 and 63 percent (Appendix 3). I did not include the 2006-7 Addendum because its review was not extensive and in critical sections on population goals, management, etc., I saw only a few new documents cited.

To sum, the DNR’s Wolf Management Plan lacks crucial updates in both habitat parameter projections and population management profiles published in the 2009 book and made available since that time. Clearly the Department of Natural Resources is using outdated information from an antiquated plan to guide wolf harvesting in a state with no previous experience doing so.

(4) In the winter of 2011, the DNR’s Wolf Science Technical Committee began, among other things, a review of the population goal. At that point in time the actual population was more than double the existing Wolf Management Plan’s goal. Goal revision options were circulated amongst Stakeholders. One option replaced the numerical goal with a human-conflicts focused management approach (Appendix 2). Under this approach, conflicts would control wolves at the population level. Wolf removal by government agents, removals via landowner shoot permits, and some as-yet-to–be prescribed public harvest were collectively envisioned in such “take”. Unfortunately the administration called off this exercise and the 1999 Wolf Management Plan goal remains in place.

(5) How was the 350 wolves goal formulated and was it based on pure science as asserted by some?

The 1999 Wolf Management Plan provides some insight: from page 16: “This management goal falls about half way between the delisting level (250 wolves) and the perceived biological carrying capacity (500 wolves) for the state. During the review of the second draft of the wolf plan, of persons commenting on the population goal, 38% supported the goal, 38% felt it was too low, and 24% felt it was too high. Therefore, the goal seemed a reasonable compromise between population capacity, minimum level of viability, and public acceptance.” [emphasis added] The science in this section refers to the figure, 500, not 350.

How was the 500 figure calculated? Wolf population demographic data from Wisconsin’s radio telemetry work was applied to a GIS program used to extrapolate and predict where wolves might additionally occur. It was based on assumptions up-to-date at that time. Data input mined demographic behaviors of the wolf population during the recolonization phase of population recovery. At that time much suitable wolf habitat within the state remained unoccupied. The data was powerfully predictable in determining the spacial patterns and growth curves during that population phase.

But our wolf population is beyond the recolonization phase today. Using 1990’s era data without modification has less predictive power and does not address the fact that wolves are adapting to the presence of people (Heilhecker et al. 2007). For instances during the recolonization phase the wolf population exhibited (a) larger average territory sizes, and (b) slightly smaller average numbers of wolves per pack. These, among other things, lead to an under-representation of wolf numbers, densities, distribution and the predictive powers of calculating carrying capacity. These short-comings are noted by Wydeven et al. (2009) and acknowledged in Mladenoff et al. (2009).

As Van Deelen (2009) stated on page 151 in his article entitled, Growth characteristics of a recovering wolf population in the Great Lakes Region “Wisconsin’s management goal of 350 wolves ...was established before there was empirical data on how the recovering wolf population would respond to unique ecological and human sociological landscapes of the SLS [South Lake Superior] region. Hence, re-evaluation or re-validation of state goals with respect to population growth and estimates of carrying capacity of wolves, as well as the management effort needed to stabilize a wolf population below carrying capacity, may be needed.” [emphasis added].

How ironic is it that 3 papers just cited from the2009 book, Recovery of gray wolves in the Great Lakes region of the United States, on the one hand counsel against shortcomings within the 1999 Plan, and yet do not factor into DNR management because the existing Plan does not include these recent works?

(6) Could a harvest subject the population to a crash and thus return it to a protected status.? The Plan is definitely not silent: On page 16: “The 350 level was intended to be the minimum level at which proactive control and public harvest would occur.” On page 43 in Appendix B: Wolf Viability Analysis, the Plan clearly warns: “...we cannot exclude the possibility that a population of 300 to 500 wolves may decline to the point that relisting as endangered will be necessary in the future. In fact, with only moderate environmental variability and a 5 percent chance of catastrophic events 10 to 40 percent of simulated populations declined below 80 wolves.” This was corroborated in the Team’s 2006 - 2007 Addendum to the Plan.

(7) Why was the concept of a harvest not discussed in the 1999 Wolf Management Plan? From page 74 states the Natural Resources Board directed the Team to draft “statutory language necessary for implementing a hunting season...”. Further on the 1999 Wolf Management Plan explains: “The Board at its October meeting deleted the public harvest language form the plan ... [and] directed staff to retain ...material for further study.” Subsequent start-ups have occurred and have been prematurely terminated by administration.

The limitations and inconsistencies that led to the current situation stem from a plan that obviously does not include any substantive discussion on public harvest. I respectfully urge the Natural Resources Board to direct the DNR to revise the Wolf Management Plan immediately with a goal of integrating the first year’s experience in wolf harvest management into the plan. To expedite this process the Wolf Science Technical Committee should modify the following topic areas:

Wolf Population Goals

Wolf Management Zones

Population Monitoring & Management

Potential & Favorable Wolf Habitat

Wolf Depredation Management

They should integrate into the above framework harvest management. The remaining topic areas within the 1999 Plan do not require extensive revision, and can be done during the 5-year review period.

Citations:

Wisconsin Eye video, 1 February 2012.

Heilhecker et al. 2007. Wolf, Canis lupus, behavior in areas of frequent human activity. Canadian Field-Naturalist 121: 256 – 260.

Mladenoff et al. 2009. Change in occupied wolf habitat in northern Great Lakes region. Pages 119 to 138 in Wydeven, Van Deelen and Heske (Eds.) Recovery of gray wolves in the Great Lakes region of the United States. Springer, New York.

Ruid et al. 2009. Wolf – human conflicts and management in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Pages 279 - 295 in Wydeven, Van Deelen and Heske (Eds.) Recovery of gray wolves in the Great Lakes region of the United States. Springer, New York.

Van Deelen. 2009. Growth characteristics of a recovering wolf population in the Great Lakes region. Pages 139 to 153 in Wydeven, Van Deelen and Heske (Eds.) Recovery of gray wolves in the Great Lakes region of the United States. Springer, New York.

Wydeven et al. 2009. History, growth, and management of wolves in Wisconsin. Pages 107 to 117 in Wydeven, Van Deelen and Heske (Eds.) Recovery of gray wolves in the Great Lakes region of the United States. Springer, New York.

Appendix 1.

Peer evaluations of wolf experts within the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

|Contact Name |  |

|Last |First |Affiliation |

|  |  |  |

|Bangs |Ed |USF&WS Montana (retired) |

|Boyd |Diane |Montana |

|Hart |John |WS -USDA Minnesota |

|Hayes |Robert |Yukon Wolf Biologist (retired) |

|Mech |Dave |USGS |

|Meier |Tom |NPS - Denali NP, AK |

|Paul |Bill |WS -USDA Minnesota (retired) |

|Peterson |Rolf |MTU - Isle Royale |

|Burch |John |NPS - Alaska |

| | | |

|Wisconsin DNR Experts Mentioned |

|Last |First |Occurrence |

|Wydeven |Ade |8 |

|Thiel |Dick |9 |

|Schultz |Ron |5 |

Appendix 2.

Timber Wolf Information Network (T.W.I.N.)

“To increase public awareness and acceptance of the wolf in its natural habitat and its ecological role in the environment”

April 16th, 2011

TWIN strongly supports immediate federal delisting of the Great Lakes Region wolves, and in the permanent implementation of each state’s wolf management plan. In anticipation of that transition, TWIN appreciates the opportunity to have a voice in shaping the Wisconsin Wolf Management Plan.

TWIN is in favor of Wolf Management Goal Alternate 1, which is based on resolution and minimization of wolf and human conflicts, rather than management to a numerical goal. Managing a species to a numerical goal is a difficult undertaking – made even more complex when the animal is as intelligent and cryptic as the wolf. Disagreement over the estimated number of a particular species on the landscape is a given – and this disagreement often becomes irrational when a polarizing animal like the wolf is the subject.

The goal of wolf management in Wisconsin should be ensure long-term viability of the animals, while minimizing negative impacts on human interests. TWIN feels that an ongoing focus on timely response to existing and potential conflicts is the best means to achieve this goal, and will ultimately result in the achievement of a “social carrying capacity” and greater acceptance of wolves on the landscape.

As long as the over-winter population of wolves remains at least 375 individuals, a number of control actions can be employed to address depredation and habituated or bold behavior. Control actions should be citizen-based whenever possible in order to minimize expense – landowner shooting permits, a civilian trapping corps, and public hunting and trapping could be employed in areas with existing conflicts, or with the potential to develop conflicts. In addition to lethal control techniques, landowners who choose to attempt non-lethal methods should be assisted in exploring these methods, possibly by a civilian volunteer group working under WDNR guidance.

Control actions should be applied most liberally in areas of fragmented habitat, where the potential for depredation or habituation is greatest – generally Zone 3 of the proposed wolf management zones. Zones 1 and 2, with large blocks of desirable habitat, would be subject to a lower level of control, with the exception of areas around scattered agricultural lands. The management plan should give consideration to blocks of wild land that might be exempted from control actions, especially corridors that provide connectivity between Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan, and between Wolf Management Zones 1 and 2.

Even though management would not be based on a numerical goal, the annual census should be continued both in order to understand the impact of the control actions, and to monitor long-term population trends. Radio telemetry should also continue to be deployed as a tool to understand wolf population dynamics and dispersal behavior.

Appendix 3.

|Citations as Measure in Growth of Science of Wolves over Time |

| |

1989 WI Wolf Recovery Plan |  | |1999 WI Management Plan |  |  | |Wydeven et. Al. 2009 | |No. Citations |After 1988 | |Total |New |% New Since 1989 | |Article  |Total |New |% New Since 1999 | | | | | | | | | | | | | |46 |1 | |58 |29 |63 | |  |  |  |  | | | | | | | | |Mgmt of Wolves in WI |34 |11 |32 | | | | | | | | |Disjunct Wolf in Central WI |28 |8 |28 | | | | | | | | |Changes in Occupied Wolf Habitat |41 |18 |44 | | | | | | | | |Growth of Wolf Population |41 |20 |49 | | | | | | | | | | |Ave= |38 | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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