Bleats of newborn lambs filled the springtime air as Rudyard-area farmer Eric Wallis looked over every fuzzy, little creature, added a numbered ear tag and sent each slightly wobbly life into a pen with its mother.
On a different farm on the other end of the Upper Peninsula, the brays of donkeys mingled with bellows of cattle in a pasture owned by farmer Cliff Lindberg in Bruce Crossing.
Both farmers have lost livestock to wolf predation. Both have ideas on solutions.
The farms are not only on opposite ends of the U.P., but also opposite sides of the debate about Michigan’s wolves: Wallis wants to be able to kill wolves that threaten his sheep and supports a state wolf hunt, while Lindberg believes humans should learn to live with wolves and can minimize conflicts with the apex predator.
“If I got a wolf here that’s hassling or in up close and going to hassle shortly, let me take it down and be done with it and not have an issue with it. That’s what I want,” Wallis said.
But Lindberg said his solution was the introduction of donkeys, which managed to keep the wolves away from his cattle ever since their arrival.
“You wouldn’t even notice a difference. They don’t eat that much,” Lindberg said.
Livestock in wolf country
Wolves remain protected by the federal Endangered Species Act so pet owners and farmers like Wallis and Lindberg cannot kill a wolf, even if caught in the act of killing animals.
It’s been that way for years, save for last year when the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service de-listed the species. The move spurred talks of reinstituting a wolf hunt in Michigan until a federal judge reversed the decision early this year.
Four attempts to de-list wolves dating back to 2004 all faced legal challenges, which makes for a long history of unsettled legal status for the species.
Gray wolves steadily recovered their population in the Upper Peninsula where the species was thought to be bounty-hunted to near extirpation by the mid-20th century. State wildlife officials now estimate about 700 wolves roam the 16,000 square miles of Michigan’s wilder peninsula.
That means more opportunities to hear the haunting, eerie howl of North America’s top wild canine pierce the nighttime stillness. But it also means there are more mouths to feed on wild prey like snowshoe hare and white-tailed deer, as well as opportunistic meals made from pets and livestock.
Some argue there is no need to kill wolves, that there are abundant ways to keep them at bay and live in balance with the top predator – sharing the up-north habitat that still supports the iconic species.
Others, though, want state officials to pull the trigger on a wolf hunt just as soon as the legal opportunity arrives again, citing predation conflicts and hard-to-verify accounts of close encounters with humans.
Wallis has no intention of participating. But he does want to “lethally take care of them if I need to. I don’t have time nor the desire whatsoever to go hunting, but if I have a problem, let me take care of it. And I don’t want somebody breathing down my neck trying to find me and take my guns and jail me and all the rest of that nonsense,” he said.
Each of the farmer’s sheep and its young lamb would be sent out to pasture for the summer grazing season, where Wallis said they face the risk of being killed and eaten by Michigan’s wolves. He will know exactly how many are lost come September.
Last year his missing lambs numbered 46. The year before that it was 94, which amounted to a $25,000 profit loss.
Wallis believes only wolves – maybe a cougar – are big enough to make so many lambs completely disappear without any trace.
Other farmers, though, have found a way to raise their livestock without losses to wolves.
Last month in Ontonagon County, Lindberg’s two donkeys lounged in the tall grass, their eyes trained on a nearby herd of beef and the tree line beyond them.
The donkeys arrived 11 years ago, paid for with federal funding for non-lethal techniques to keep wolves away from livestock and pets. Lindberg said no calves have been lost to wolf depredation since then.
Before the guard donkeys arrived on Lindberg’s farm, he said wolves did kill a yearling even after being chased away earlier in the night. They even came back to feast on the buried carcass the next day, he said.
Donkeys are among the many methods in the toolbox federal agricultural authorities use to help farmers and ranchers keep wild predators from attacking their livestock.
Brett Huntzinger, U.S. Department of Agriculture specialist in non-lethal predation prevention, said U.P. farms with donkeys have fewer livestock losses to wolves and coyotes.
“They’re a lot more vigilant than cows and even horses at times. So, they’re more protective and they will go after coyotes and wolves,” he said.
“I have a neighbor not far away from me that has two or three now and he has some cows and calves and he said even if there’s a deer in the field across the road, the donkeys are, you know, they’re just watching it. And they’re just kind of on it; they’re a lot more alert.”
The donkeys will loudly bray at predators and even chase and try to kick at them; donkeys don’t take kindly to canines of any sort, wild or domesticated. That character trait has led to them being used more frequently by ranchers out West to deter wolves and coyotes.
Lindberg encourages other farmers to use donkeys. He contends a hunting season is unnecessary because there are other ways to live in wolf country and avoid conflicts. Wolves are just being wolves and it’s up to people to take better care, he said.
“They’re a wild animal. They don’t know any better. They’re just working things, instinct. If they’re
hungry, they’re going to take down the first thing that comes on,” the farmer said.
Huntzinger said more farmers have had success with other non-lethal methods to scare wolves away, including electric fences, tying colorful flags along fence lines called fladry, and installing motion-sensor flashing lights and loud noises. These methods work better when farmers properly dispose of animal carcasses when they do have livestock deaths, he said.
In tough cases, Huntzinger will even sit outdoors with night-vision gear to watch for lurking predators and set off a type of firework to scare them away – something he may try at the Wallis farm.
The USDA official said he has not yet found any evidence wolves are to blame for killing lambs at the Rudyard farm. He currently suspects a combination of predators that also includes coyotes and even owls and eagles.
Hunting pressure and the food web
Wolves are federally protected as an endangered species in Michigan and can only be shot and killed if a human life is in danger, not when livestock or pets are attacked.
Despite those federal protections, interest in hunting wolves remains strong in the Upper Peninsula; a citizen advisory council recently completed its recommendations to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, which included making plans for a wolf hunting and trapping season across the U.P. should federal protections again be dropped.
Hunters argue the U.P.’s abundant wolf packs have driven down deer numbers, and wolves are killing hunting and sled dogs. The DNR tracked 48 reported attacks on domestic dogs since 2012 across all but three U.P. counties; the latest reported wolf-dog conflict happened in January in Delta County when one hunting dog was killed and another injured.
Gary Gorniak of Moran, president of the Straits Area Sportsman’s Club, said he believes wolves are responsible for the loss of a lot of wildlife. He said nighttime wildlife surveys his group does turns up little these days.
“We do them at night because you pick up eyes real quick. And we can go for miles, spotlight blazing out both sides of the vehicle and not pick up one eye – nothing. Everything is gone. The wolf has depleted a lot of the wildlife up here,” he said.
Gorniak said hunters do not want to exterminate wolves from the U.P., but instead to reduce their numbers to minimize negative impacts on wildlife and domestic animals – even bad run-ins with humans that prove hard to confirm with authorities.
One Indigenous Michigan man said the diminished deer herd means fewer natural resources for those who most depend upon them.
John Rickley of St. Ignace, an enrolled citizen with the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, believes wolves have caused a shortage of available venison for subsistence hunters, including those with treaty rights to those resources. He argues managing wolf numbers through a regulated hunt would lead to the deer herd rebounding.
“There are a lot of people out there that depend on the ability to harvest deer for subsistence, right? Now wolves are unchecked, not being managed. They are impeding our ability to go out and exercise our treaty rights and that’s a big deal.”
Many Upper Michigan residents do not bother with deer camp anymore, Rickley said – a major cultural indicator of how the natural environment has changed.
Rickley’s opinion differs from that of the Anishinaabek Caucus of the Michigan Democratic Party, which has publicly objected to the return of what it characterizes as “trophy wolf hunting and trapping.”
Some Upper Michigan residents appreciate wolves and embrace their existence in the state’s Northwoods.
Wolf educator Nancy Warren of Ewen said Yoopers should learn to live in harmony with wolves, animals which she said do not statistically cause huge problems. There is no need for a wolf hunt, she argued.
“I don’t believe there’s any science to support a wolf hunt. Before you hunt any species there has to be a good reason and for most species it’s an overpopulation of animals … Well, in Michigan, our wolf population has remained stable for over 10 years,” Warren said.
In fact, there are known scientific benefits of apex predators and their growing absence from habitats around the world has raised concerns about biodiversity loss among scientists. Changes caused by the loss or return of predators at the top of the food web is called trophic cascade – considered an indicator of climate change when apex predators disappear.
Warren contends wolves in Michigan are not killing all the deer, but are picking off the weakest, oldest and sickest from the herd, even helping control the spread of harmful chronic wasting disease. She said harsh winters and deep, northern snow harms more deer than wolves.
There are more benefits than drawbacks to wolves, Warren argued.
“In areas where there are wolves, there is greater plant diversity. And what happens is that wolves keep deer moving,” she said. “By keeping the deer on the move, wildflowers are able to grow. And so, research has shown that there is greater diversity of wildflowers. Wildflowers bring in the birds and the bugs.”
Warren said Michiganders should appreciate the positive benefits of wolves on the ecosystem, pointing to the well-studied example of introduced wolves in Yellowstone National Park.
“They pose little risk to humans,” she said.
While the debate continues over the possibility of a wolf hunt in Michigan, DNR wildlife experts are amid an update to the state’s wolf management plan. Input from the advisory council and other public feedback will be considered as the plan is revised, said Ed Golder, agency spokesperson.
He confirmed the goal is to have the updated wolf plan available for public review in time for the state’s Natural Resources Commission’s September agenda, followed by possible adoption in October by the DNR director.
State officials have not said whether wolf hunting and trapping goals will be included in the updated management plan for the species – goals that could only be pursued with another reversal in the wolf’s federal protection status.
The last legal wolf hunt in Michigan happened in 2013.
And while state wildlife officials continue to consider the wolf-hunting debate, Lindberg remains unbothered by the wolves in the western reaches of Upper Michigan – as do his cattle.
Lindberg’s not really sure how the donkeys keep the wolves away, but they’ve certainly done the trick.
“I really couldn’t tell you how they do that,” he said. “But they, they’re doing their job.”
MLive environment reporter Garret Ellison contributed to this article.
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