Wisconsin conservationist Aldo Leopold once wrote about what he called “the green fire” in the eyes of a dying wolf. In his essay, “Thinking Like a Mountain,” Leopold wrote, “I was young then and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.” After the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisted the Gray Wolf as an endangered species in January and a Jefferson County judge ordered the Wisconsin DNR to begin a hastily organized wolf hunt, Wisconsin hunters will have a chance to scratch that trigger-itch once again. The DNR is offering 4,000 permits to legally take no more than 200 wolves in the state between February 22 and February 28. Is hunting nature’s top predator essential to the health of the deer population, or is it just another trophy to hang on the wall? Ecologist Adrian Treves founded the University of Wisconsin Carnivore Coexistence Laboratory in 2007.
Photo of Gray Wolf by Christian Mehlführer, User:Chmehl, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.
