It’s not easy being a wolf in northern Minnesota.
Every year dozens of the animals die of starvation, disease, parasites, vehicle traffic and poaching.
But the No. 1 killer of Minnesota wolves may come as a surprise: agents of the federal government, acting with the full force of the law.
In 2022, there were 174 documented wolf deaths in Minnesota, according to the latest state Department of Natural Resources data. Of those, 142 were killed by a relatively obscure arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture called the Wildlife Services division.
Wildlife Services is tasked with mitigating conflicts between humans and wild animals. In Minnesota, the agency’s staffers answer complaints from ranchers who lose cattle and other livestock to wolf predation. The agency documents and verifies those complaints, and looks for non-lethal ways to protect threatened livestock, like wolf-proof fencing.
If those options don’t work, the agency traps and kills wolves deemed responsible for the loss. USDA officers kill more wolves in Minnesota than in all other states combined, according to the program’s annual reports.
That work is effectively a government handout to ranchers, who receive publicly funded protection for their privately held livestock. The ranchers also receive cash compensation from state taxpayers for their lost cattle, which in 2022 totaled $100,000 for 78 wolf predation claims, or an average of about $1,300 per claim.
While individual ranchers can experience significant losses if wolves repeatedly target their cows, the overall impact on the state’s cattle population is negligible. There are about 2.2 million cows in the state, according to USDA data. The five or six dozen documented and verified wolf kills in a given year amount to a few thousandths of 1 percent of the total population.
But the USDA’s actions in response inflict a steep toll upon Minnesota’s wolves. The 142 kills amount to fully 5% of the state’s estimated wolf population.
Hellbound and Down 