A video out of northern Minnesota this past week has caused quite the uproar. On its own, the footage of a gray wolf tracking down a deer and killing it can be pretty frightening for some.
And the video launched a political conversation after U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber posted the clip on multiple social media sites, saying that the violent attack was proof that wolves should be taken off the endangered species list. Of course, that’s a pretty bold claim, and before we get too far into it, the context of the video needs to be explored more. A logger was working out in the open when deer that were startled by something chasing them ran by.
Not long after, a wolf went running by the man (who had gotten his camera out at this point) in hot pursuit of the small deer. Only seconds went by before the wolf caught up to the deer, took it down, and started tearing right into it mere feet away from where the logger was standing.
The video was sent to Rep. Pete Stauber, and he posted it everywhere he could with this message attached:
“A logger from northern St. Louis County just sent me this video of a wolf running through his job site and taking down a whitetail deer. As you can see, wolves lost any fear of humans and are increasingly dangerous to livestock and pets and decimating our deer herd. Delist!”
Of course, deer are a cornerstone of the diet for wolves so this shouldn’t come as a massive surprise.
Stauber and others have long campaigned for wolves to be taken off the Endangered Species list. The state representative and those that align with him believe that Minnesota’s wolf population has recovered enough to where they should no longer be protected.
If you didn’t know, most of the wolf population in the United States was wiped out in the early 1900s. Minnesota was the only state (besides Alaska) that didn’t attempt to totally eradicate their wolves, and it’s believed a couple hundred survived in the northern part of the state.
Because of all that, wolves were put on the Endangered list in the 1970s, and protections were put in place to help the wolf population recover.
According to wolf.org, they were delisted from the endangered species list in January 2012. but were re-listed on December 19, 2014. In January 2021, wolves were removed from Endangered Species List protections, and management returned to individual states. In February of 2022, once again, they became a federally protected threatened species. They are currently listed as “Threatened” in Minnesota.
It is believed that wolves had worked their way back to a population of around 3,000 in Minnesota, which accounts for a solid majority of wolves in upper Midwest.
That being said, there will continue to be a battle between animal activists and various state departments who oversee animal population management. More and more lawsuits will get filed, but other than the “no hunting anything ever” argument that comes from animal activists, it’s hard to make the claim that the states shouldn’t be able to manage their own animal populations. Many states enact strict hunting seasons for predators to manage the population and balance the landscape so populations of deer and other smaller mammals cannot be decimated… it’s a science, as should be treated as such.
