Decision now up to Evers to mandate state wolf population

Wisconsin Republicans sent a bill to Gov. Tony Evers on Thursday that would mandate state wildlife managers set a cap on the state’s wolf population, forcing the governor to choose between pleasing conservationists who want to protect the wolves and farmers who say they are destroying their livestock.

The Assembly passed the bill with no debate. The Senate approved it back in October. Evers will have to decide whether to sign it into law or veto it.

The state Department of Natural Resources adopted a wolf management plan in October that didn’t include a hard cap. The plan instead recommended keeping the population at around 1,000 animals. Decades of hunting rendered wolves all but extinct in the state by the 1950s. Today the population stands at around 1,200 wolves, according to DNR estimates.

Residents and farmers across northern Wisconsin maintain that wolves have become so abundant that they’re attacking their livestock and menacing children and pets causing them to demanded a hard population cap in the new management plan.