Calls for five-year wolf hunting & trapping moratorium continue
Post date: Apr 19, 2013 5:40:13 PM
Wolf experts and advocates continue to call for a moratorium on recreational wolf hunting and trapping.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MN DNR) opened "experimental" recreational wolf hunting and trapping seasons last Fall, but the hurried process they used--neglecting science and public input--is still being challenged, and rightly so.
A good series of MPR News articles has been written about all of this. I've added my two cents in a comment titled "Not enough public input" on the MPR reader forum. Here are some links to those articles and related information:
- MPR News, Stephanie Hemphill, 9/19/2012: Conservation groups challenge wolf hunt in court.
- MPR News, Stephanie Hemphill, 4/3/2013: Minnesota wolf hunt lawsuit gets hearing in appeals court.
- MN Legislature, bill SF 666 / HF 1163: Wolf hunting moratorium reinstatement.
- MN Legislature: Rep. Jason Isaacson's amendment for a wolf-trapping moratorium reinstatement (brought to the House floor on 4/18/2013 but immediately withdrawn).
- Minnesota Voters for Animal Protection: summary and position on the wolf-season moratorium.
The people of Minnesota deserve to have reasonable public input and peer-reviewed scientific input into this process of setting statewide policies for wildlife management. Unfortunately, we seem to have a system in which the only discussions are in court (where the arguments are focused on the law rather than on the needs of wildlife management). We need to be able to discuss, develop, and maintain quality programs of wildlife management that simultaneously control wildlife populations and assure the humane protection of wildlife.