ANN ARBOR, MI-- The group Keep Michigan Wolves Protected is urging Governor Rick Snyder to suspend a November 15 wolf hunt in the Upper Peninsula.
The group calls the behavior of state officials who support the hunt “shameful”, saying evidence used to validate the hunt is fraudulent.
DNR Furbearer Specialist Adam Bump told Michigan Radio in Ann Arbor in May that U.P. wolves were becoming unmanageable.
“So you have wolves showing up in backyards, wolves showing up on porches, wolves staring at people through their sliding glass doors when they’re pounding on it, exhibiting no fear…” he said.
Bump now says he misspoke.
State Senator Tom Casperson, who led the campaign for a wolf hunt this fall, apologized Thursday for using a fictional story to highlight the need to remove the gray wolf from the Endangered Species List.
In 2011 he sponsored a resolution urging the federal government to de-list the wolf. Casperson included a story about children at a U.P. day care who were threatened by three wolves. He admitted that story wasn’t exactly true.
“Children were not in the backyard as the resolution implied, nor were the wolves killed in the backyard of the day care; rather, three wolves were indeed eventually killed in the vicinity,” he said.
Casperson insists the fictionalized story does not diminish the need for a wolf hunt in the U.P.
State officials hope hunters will kill 43 wolves in the hunt that begins next Friday.