Nine Wolves Are Dead. Wisconsin’s Governor Must Act

An entire wolf pack has been killed in northern Wisconsin.

According to the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, the nine wolves included two adults, three yearlings, and four pups. 

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources says it determined that the pack posed a threat to human safety. Yet no person was attacked — and despite wolves living across large parts of the United States, attacks on people are extraordinarily rare. In Wisconsin specifically, DNR says it has never documented an attack on a person by a healthy wild wolf.

The scale of the killing deserves more than a passing glance. An entire wolf family — including four pups who had barely begun their lives — was destroyed in a single government action.

Wolves are not disposable wildlife management problems. They are intelligent, deeply social animals with individual lives and relationships. Wolf packs are typically families: parents and their offspring cooperate, communicate, defend territory, and help raise young. To reduce them to a population number is to ignore the lives within that number.

Officials say these wolves had become increasingly accustomed to people and less responsive to efforts to scare them away. 

Protecting people matters. But perspective matters, too. Familiar animals like dogs and cattle kill far more people in the United States each year than wolves do. Yet we do not respond to those risks by treating entire families of animals as expendable.

Killing an entire wolf pack — including four pups — should therefore be an extraordinary last resort, surrounded by the strongest possible safeguards.

And serious questions remain about how this decision was made. The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission objected to the killing of the pack and says DNR did not consult GLIFWC or its member Ojibwe Tribes while officials considered lethal action, even though the wolves lived within the 1842 Ceded Territory. GLIFWC is calling for meaningful Tribal participation in future wolf-management decisions.

Wisconsin should learn from their mistakes here and make changes.

Gov. Tony Evers is nearing the end of his time in office, while the future of wolf protections remains uncertain. One candidate seeking to succeed him, Rep. Tom Tiffany, has repeatedly pushed to remove federal protections for gray wolves.

Evers should act while he still can to protect gray wolves in the state.

He should direct DNR to strengthen safeguards for wolves, including meaningful consultation with GLIFWC and affected Ojibwe Tribes, transparent criteria for lethal-control decisions, and documented use of every feasible nonlethal alternative before wolves are killed, except when immediate action is necessary to protect human life.

​Please sign the petition to ask Governor Evers to act to protect Wisconsin's wolves before he leaves office.

The petition to Gov. Tony Evers reads: Before leaving office, direct the Wisconsin DNR to strengthen protections for wolves and ensure that killing these remarkable animals is truly a last resort. Wolves have a right to exist on the landscape alongside us. Wisconsin should protect people without treating the lives and families of wild animals as expendable.

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Sources:

https://www.weau.com/2026/10/05/glifwc-objects-recent-euthanasia-wolf-pack-price-county/

https://defenders.org/sites/default/files/publications/MX-wolf-attack-data-infograph.pdf