State Rep. Beau LaFave, of Iron Mountain, today criticized a move by the Michigan attorney general to end controlled wolf hunting in the Upper Peninsula.
“Downstate Dana is literally feeding us to the wolves up here in the U.P.,” LaFave said. “It’s almost as though she wants to create post-apocalyptic conditions for us here – first she tries to freeze us to death by shutting off our heat and energy supply through Line 5. Now, she wants to let wolves run rampant across the U.P just because other states have failed to manage their wolf populations well.”
This week, the attorney general took up a campaign against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, attempting to pressure the agency to abandon its plans to remove the gray wolf from the endangered and threatened wildlife list.
Last summer, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) found wolf numbers in Michigan “remain viable and robust.” DNR wildlife biologists estimated there were a minimum of 662 wolves found among 139 packs across the Upper Peninsula as of 2018.
“I guarantee things would be different if the wolves were living in her backyard,” LaFave said. “But instead of properly managing their wildlife, where Nessel comes from they tranquilize their female deer and rip out their organs because culling is just too cruel. Why is she worried about 300 miles away in the Upper Peninsula, but she doesn’t care what’s going on in her own backyard. Downstate Dana has no idea how things work in Northern Michigan or the Upper Peninsula. Once again, she’s acting more like a policymaker than the state of Michigan’s legal counsel. Her job as the attorney general is to advise on what she thinks is best, but at the end of the day it’s not her decision.”
