A video showing a gray wolf chasing and killing a deer at a logging site went viral on social media after U. S. Rep. Pete Stauber of Minnesota’s 8th District posted it on his campaign’s X account (formerly Twitter).
“A lumberjack from northern St. Louis County just sent me this video of a wolf running up to his structure and shooting a white-tailed deer,” Stauber wrote in his post. “As you can see, wolves are no longer afraid of humans. “And they’re proving detrimental to livestock and pets and decimating our deer herd. Delete the list! »
The video, which has 5. 5 million views, shows how Stauber continues the fight to remove gray wolves from the list through an act of Congress. Minnesota gray wolves are lately indexed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act after brief periods as a de-indexed species from January 2012 to December 2014 and November 2020 to February 2022. On Feb. 6, Stauber wrote a letter to House leaders requesting that the FY 2024 appropriations package include language removing gray wolves from the list, a popular attempt to legislate wolf control under the auspices. of an annual budget bill. (This strategy of attaching non-financial laws to a package of credits is known as a “rider. “)
“We request that the final appropriations schedule for fiscal year 2024 include language passed by the House last fall, demanding that the Secretary of the Interior reissue the November 2020 final rule delisting [gray wolves],” reads the letter, signed by Stauber and 16 other members. This “language” refers to the “Trust in Science Act,” which was passed by the House in November 2023, attached to some other appropriations bill.
Sens. Jon Tester (D-MT) and Mike Simpson (R-ID) used a strategy in a budget bill in 2011, passing a bipartisan bill that removed Montana and Idaho wolves from the list. Unlike the wolves of the Upper Midwest, the gray wolves of the Rocky Mountains have remained delisted ever since.
White-tailed deer are natural prey for gray wolves in the upper Midwest, Dan Stark, a giant carnivore specialist with the Minnesota Natural Resources Breakdown, tells Outdoor Life. As for whether they’ve lost their fear of humans, Stark recalls a time when two wolves ran after him while chasing a moose in another part of the country, a sign that the wolf’s habit in Stauber’s video, while rare to see, might not be so abnormal.
According to Stark, Minnesota is home to about 2,900 wolves (out of about 4,200 in the Upper Midwest). While some Minnesotans, like Stauber, insist the gray wolf population is well over 2,900, that estimate is well above the federal figure. The purpose is to exclude between 1,250 and 1,400 wolves from the list.
“The MNR recognizes that the wolf population has recovered and we have a wolf control plan in place,” Stark says. “We are in a position to take care of the wolves once they are removed from the list. “
Read next: Investigation of a retired ranger after shooting a collared wolf in Wisconsin. He claims it was in self-defense
On Feb. 2, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the U. S. Department of Homeland Security (FDA) will announce that the U. S. Department of Homeland Security will be able to announce that the U. S. The U. S. Department of Homeland Security announced that it had not uncovered enough evidence to re-include wolves in the Rocky Mountains and the western U. S. The species has recently had no federal protection, despite two petitions to do so. In the announcement, the FWS discussed the progression of the first national recovery plan for the gray wolf, indicating the federal government’s goal to delist wolves in their diversity in the future. The FWS says this plan will emerge in December 2025.
Katie Hill works at Outdoor Life, where she covers news about the outdoors, hunting, and conservation in the West. She was born and raised on the East Coast but moved to Missoula, Montana, in 2019 to earn her master’s degree in environmental journalism. He still lives in Missoula.
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