The Michigan Department of Natural Resources wants the gray wolf removed from the federal endangered species list.
The DNR recently released its latest wolf management strategy and made it clear that transferring more management responsibilities back to the state will benefit gray wolves.
"When they're back on the endangered species list, it makes it very difficult for us to mitigate some of those wildlife conflicts that we have with wolves," said Brian Roell, a wildlife biologist with the Michigan DNR. "Yes, we have non-lethal tools that we can use...we don't automatically jump to some kind of lethal control."
Roell added that one of the biggest challenges with managing the gray wolf population is finding a balance between maintaining the population.
The goal is to not have so many that the predators causes problems while also preserving a healthy population.
Roell emphasized the DNR’s latest wolf management plan doesn’t have a specific number of wolves they want to be inhabiting the state.
"One of our main tenants of this plan was not picking a number or some artificial number of this is how many wolves will be in Michigan, we really want to minimize those conflicts or those negative aspects of wolves," said Roell.
According to the DNR, the gray wolf population is not growing or shrinking. But it’s consistently around 700 wolves across the state, with the largest population in the upper peninsula.
The Michigan DNR is now accepting public comments on its gray wolf management strategy.
Editor's note: in the interest of transparency, we note that the Michigan DNR is a financial supporter of WCMU.
