1,924 miles
Apr 2 – Ontonagon
County is in the Eastern Time Zone. This
is surprising to me. It feels
wrong. Surely, I haven’t travelled
(virtually) that far from home! Surely
I’m not that close to my Vermont goal.
The
population of Matchwood Township was 94 in the 2010 Federal Census, down from
115 in 2000. It was named for the
Diamond Match Company, which owned most of the pine forest it the area. The
company founded the settlement in 1888 to provide for logging camps. It was nearly destroyed by a forest fire in
1893. The community was rebuilt, only to be ruined by another fire in
1906. A logging camp for making matches
is prone to fire. Ironic.
Living in
the woods is dangerous. As the
population of rural areas decreases, wildlife can take over. Untended farmland becomes weedy clearings
amid scrubby forest. Hunting in the
upper Midwest becomes more popular than farming. On the Upper Peninsula, wolves have been increasing,
at least since the 1990s, and because they are legally protected from hunters,
they provoke controversy. Wolves in
Michigan have surpassed State and Federal population recovery goals for 15
years.
But frightening
stories have been told about wolf attacks on more than 500 livestock and dogs –
in just the past few years. Wolves have
entered the city of Ironwood in search of deer and been shot by wildlife
officers. How much of the scare is
concocted or exaggerated to win the argument for wolf hunting?
Farmers
don’t want deer eating their crops, of course, or wolves and bears eating their
cattle and household pets. Many want to
shoot predators to protect their farms.
If a farmer can prove that a predator killed livestock, the Department
of Natural Resources will reimburse that farmer for the financial loss and give
them protective fencing and “guard mules.”
(How does this work? Do they
guard & protect or are they meant to be sacrificed to save more valuable
animals?)
 |
| John Koski on farm with cow carcass |
Records show
that one farmer in Matchwood, claimed reimbursement for more cattle killed and
injured than all other farmers in the years the DNR reviewed. Information from the DNR advises: “Do not disturb evidence until a DNR
representative can investigate the site.”
But this farmer left dead cattle in the field for days, if not longer, a
violation of the law and a smorgasbord that attracts wolves. He was given an
electric fence by the state. The fence disappeared. He was also given three
“guard mules.” Two died, and the third
one had to be removed in January because it had been kept in such poor
condition. Wildlife officers again found
dead cattle on his farm, and visiting reporters also saw a months-old cow
carcass in an open barn. The farmer has
received $38,000 from the state to pay for his cattle losses, plus $3,000 for
the mules and fence. That’s more than
all other farmers combined. It looks
very much like this farmer has used his cattle as wolf bait and has defrauded
the State. This Matchwood farmer has
never been cited, nor is the state seeking restitution for the fence or mules.
In 2012, wolves
in Michigan were removed from the Federal List of Threatened and Endangered
Species. On two separate occasions, once in 2012 and again in 2013, wolves were
classified as game animals in Michigan. The
laws that allowed these classifications were repealed by public referendum in
November of 2014. However, in August of
2014, other citizen-initiated legislation again classified wolves as game
animals and gave the DNR authority to declare a hunting season.
Licenses for
the March 2015 wolf hunting season sold out in six days, 1,200 in all. Forty-three wolves were shot in three Upper
Peninsula zones where officials say they have caused the most problems.
But now the
DNR has once again declared wolves to be a protected species. “CAUTION:
Wolves are protected under state and federal law. It is illegal to harm or kill a wolf, except
in defense of human life. Private
citizens are not allowed to kill a wolf during or after an attack on livestock
or pets.”
It seems to
me that during the period of settlement, 100 years ago, when society’s goals were to develop
agriculture and towns in the wilderness, that wolf hunting to extinction was an
accepted part of that civic development.
Now the process seems to be a devolution of the land back to a more primitive
state, with more respect for the wilderness as a place to visit from the
comfort of safe cities and suburbs. But
many modern people expect suburban safety for themselves and their pets, even
when they venture into the wild. More
conflicts are sure to come.
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