JUNEAU (AP) - State wildlife officials have reported that 68 wolves were taken by trappers in 2020 on or near Prince of Wales Island. Conservationists had unsuccessfully attempted to block the 21-day wolf trapping season from November to December.
Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials had ruled that trapping would not pose a danger to the overall wolf population. Conservationists had argued that state and federal officials were allowing unsustainable killings.
“If you can catch 68 wolves in three weeks,” Schumacher told CoastAlaska public radio, “I think that means you still have a pretty robust population of wolves.”
Schumaker said last week that state biologists do not know the exact fall 2020 population yet, but that he is “pretty confident” there were between 150 to 200 wolves.
The state agency released a report in fall 2019 estimating there were 316 wolves in and around Prince of Wales Island. That figure did not include the record 165 wolves reportedly killed by hunters and trappers later that year.
Conservationists have argued that the wolf population near the island is threatened and that some hunters and trappers do not report their kills.
“This level of carnage shows that wolves in Southeast Alaska desperately need the protections of the Endangered Species Act or they’ll become another statistic in the wildlife extinction crisis,” Shaye Wolfe, a staff scientist in Oakland, California, wrote in a statement for The Center for Biological Diversity.
Island residents have testified at hearings that the trapping season is warranted because too many wolves prey on deer.
Conservation groups counter that decades of commercial development on the island’s forests are to blame for thinner deer herds.
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