Montana, Minnesota to Open Wolf Trapping Seasons

Recent developments within the Minnesota legislature and the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Commission will allow the public to trap for wolves in the two states for the first time in decades.

Wolf management was transferred from the federal government to the state of Minnesota in January when the population was removed from the Endangered Species List.  The state is now setting rules to govern how a trapping/hunting season will operate.

In Montana, the state has instituted a wolf hunt for a couple of years now, but harvest objectives have not been met, so the state is looking for ways to increase opportunity to harvest more wolves, including allowing trapping.

See the two stories below:

With Minnesota wolf hunt a reality, DNR is working on logistics

FWP gives initial OK to wolf trapping

Minnesota Ponders Wolf Hunting, Trapping Seasons

After a successful recovery of the gray wolf population in the Great Lakes area, wolves have been removed from the Endangered Species List by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  With delisting, management of the wolf population becomes the responsibility of each state’s fish and wildlife department.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is considering opening a wolf hunt to reduce the wolf population, but hunting success for the species is questionable.  A recent article in the Star Tribune highlights statistics from the recent wolf hunts in Idaho and Montana, which show that hunters have had difficulty harvesting wolves.

Another wolf management option for the department would be to allow wolf trapping.  Doug Smith’s recent article further discusses this option.

Minnesota trappers could be more effective in killing wolves than hunters.

At least initially.

But there may not be much of a market for Minnesota’s wolf pelts, and it’s uncertain how much interest Minnesota’s 6,000 trappers will have.

Click here to read the full article.

Pennsylvania Man Successful in First Fisher Trapping Season

This year, Pennsylvania instituted its first trapping season on fisher in 90 years.  The five day season provided a great opportunity for trappers who were willing to work for it.

Gary Blockus of The Morning Call wrote an article about one of those trappers – Ron Weller of Macungie, PA.  Weller worked hard setting and tending his traps during the five day season, and it paid off with a nice fisher.

Read the full story here.

Minnesota Coyote Trapper Catches Wolf

A southeastern Minnesota trapper recently found a surprise while checking his coyote traps.  A gray wolf, somewhat rare to that part of the state, was waiting for him in one of the traps.  After contacting officials with the Minnesota DNR, the wolf was released unharmed.

Read the story here.

The fact that the wolf was released unharmed, while not a surprise, is what can be expected with more wolves moving into areas where they’ve been long since gone.  And it’s also what we can expect from trapping in the New Mexico gray wolf recovery area, which was temporarily banned to complete a study on trapping impacts on wolves.

Wolves have become common in Minnesota, but according to the story, this wolf likely came from a pack in neighboring Wisconsin.

Minnesota has about 3,000 gray wolves, but they typically live and breed in the northern third of the state in the forested region. In 2009, animal welfare groups successfully petitioned a judge to put Midwest gray wolves back on the endangered species list. The Minnesota DNR recently petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to have the animals removed from the list, and the federal agency has until March to make a decision.

Research Underway in New Mexico Trapping Ban Area

A while back, I reported on a trapping ban instituted by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in the state’s gray wolf recovery area.  The ban was placed and extended with the a stipulation that a study would be performed to evaluate trapping’s potential impacts to wolves.

That study is now underway, with research being conducted by the University of New Mexico.

Most trappers and wildlife researchers should already be aware that impacts due to trapping are minimal, especially given the fact that professional biologists use the foothold trap to capture and release wolves for research purposes and introduction into new areas.

If the study is done in an unbiased manner and results are interpreted correctly, I suspect it will show that most current trapping methods would have no impacts to the wolf population.

Otters Return to Indiana

After many decades of extinction, river otters have returned to the state of Indiana.  The Indiana Department of Natural Resources re-introduced otters beginning 15 years ago in hopes to re-establish the species.  About 300 individuals were introduced, and otters are now found in over 70 counties throughout the state.

“We started by releasing 25 otters at the Muscatuck National Wildlife Refuge (near Seymour) early in 1995,” said Scott Johnson, a Nongame Mammalogist with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. “A total of 303 were released at a variety of watershed areas around Indiana over a five-year period.”

The otters used in the Indiana reintroduction were wild and caught in Louisiana by cooperative trappers. Since the reintroduction began, river otters now are found in more than 70 counties, including Lake and Porter.

“This has been a tremendous success,” Johnson said. “We kind of expected it though. Other states had already completed reintroduction programs, and we followed their strategies. We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel with otters.

In recent years, populations of river otters have been expanding throughout the United States.  I’ve covered several articles about otter population comebacks, with the most recent stories coming from Texas, Missouri and West Virginia.  The pattern is similar across all of these states.  Otter numbers were historically depleted during periods of heavy hunting, trapping and expanding development.  Otter populations are likely more susceptible to overharvest and habitat alterations than other furbearing species.  There are other potential reasons for this decline that I’ve heard from other trappers, but most of the biologists seem to believe that unregulated harvest played a large role.

As Indiana DNR’s Scott Johnson noted:

“Unregulated trapping and hunting was the main reason otters disappeared,” Johnson said. “Back then there was no Department of Natural Resources. There were no limits, regulations or laws. It was a trapping and hunting free-for-all. This combined with a loss of habitat to farmland and subdivisions led to the otter’s demise in Indiana. They succumbed to the pressure.

With the advent of regulated trapping in its current form and more targeted wildlife management, otter numbers started to come back.  Many states that completely lost otters in most areas started programs to re-introduce the species.  This new wildlife management strategy has proven extremely successful.  I suspect we’ll continue to see stories that relay the successful recover of otter populations in other states.  Hopefully we’ll see future controlled trapping seasons in places where otter populations have recovered and can be responsibly harvested.

Click here for more otter recovery stories from Trapping Today.