Gray wolves protected stay on the Endangered Species Act of 1973 may be coming to a permanent end. A forced Minnesota hunting season could follow. The ESA aimed to protect the apex predator from hunters, crafting a safe environment to allow its recovery after being hunted to near extinction in the lower 48 states. Gray wolves’ status on the ESA has been strenuously challenged in recent years with 2025 as no exception. Certain federal legislation threatens to strip gray wolves of their federally protected status while Minnesota legislation, if passed, would force a hunting season if federal protection is lost. With these rapid changes that could impact the Minnesota gray wolf population, some questions beg to be answered: what is the gray wolf’s role in the Northland; what is the driving factor behind the legislation; and when would changes take place, if at all? Rapid change The Minnesotan gray wolf has been listed as a threatened, rather than an endangered, species since 1978 — a unique status among the lower 48 states only held by Minnesota until 2011. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has held the preservation of the gray wolf paramount with many years of wolf management plans detailing its effort. Because of this, Minnesota bolsters the largest mainland gray wolf population today at around 2,500 to 3,500 with small packs scattered throughout the northeast. The estimated population has remained steady since the mid-1990s. “Wolves are a native species in Minnesota; we’ve always had wolves here,” said DNR Large Carnivore Expert Dan Stark. “The wolf was listed and that was intended to help recover the species so that they were no longer endangered. It’s been a successful recovery and wolf populations have come back. “It’s a species that a lot of Minnesotans appreciate and want to have on the landscape and it’s important, from a conservation standpoint, to maintain a healthy population.” The DNR says a healthy wolf population is between 2,200 and 3,000 with hunting permittable at a threshold above 1,600. “It’s not a management objective; we’re not intending to manage the population down to that level (of 1,600 wolves),” Stark said, “but if it was ever at or approaching that level, we’d want to make sure that we understand what’s influencing that to change management, to turn it around.” Since the ESA, Minnesota has only offered one wolf hunting stint, three years between 2012 and 2014. This resulted in 923 total wolves killed by hunters and trappers. Afterward, the state has not offered another season despite a federal delisting by President Donald Trump at the end of his first term in 2020 — this was later overturned by a federal judge in 2022. This narrative could rapidly change. The Pet and Livestock Protection Act of 2025 aims to remove wolves from the ESA by way of Trump’s 2020 ruling and disallow judicial review — meaning a federal court cannot overturn the bill — which would leave wolf management up to each state. If this happens, the Minnesota DNR would contemplate and facilitate a hunting season yearly based on years worth of data. However, congruent state legislation, Requiring an Open Season for Wolves, aims to join neighboring Wisconsin in forcing an annual wolf hunting season if the animal is federally delisted. “Let’s have a season that’s managed properly,” Minnesota Sen. Nathan Wesenberg, District 10, R-Little Falls, said in favor of the bill during a February Hunters for Hunters meeting in Bemidji. “We take that money and put it back into management; we can do it the right way, rather than people just going around shooting wolves because that’s going to happen.” A symbiotic relationship Influencing such politics, groups like Hunters For Hunters have formed to lead in the discussion of a wolf hunting season in Minnesota. HFH has held various meetings throughout the state, including a February meeting in Bemidji honing in on wolf legislative concerns. HFH is a group comprised mainly of hunters and landowners who feel the wolf population is “out of control,” as spokesperson Steve Porter put it at the meeting. This perception bleeds into a few different things. One is the relationship between gray wolves and the environment — namely the white-tailed deer, a wolf’s main source of protein. HFH worries the wolf population negatively affects the white-tailed deer population which then affects a hunter’s ability to find deer. According to the DNR, a gray wolf in the Northland downs an estimated 15-20 white-tailed deer per year, mainly fawns. This adds up to around 37,500 to 70,000 deer per year which hardly chips at the deer population estimated from 800,000 to 1 million within the last decade. Of course, various things like weather alter this tally. Gray wolves are better equipped to traverse through deep snow than white-tails. Wolves are native to the Northland while white-tailed deer are not — they traveled further north as the environment began to change and eventually outnumbered native deer species such as elk, caribou and moose over time. Thus, during long, harsh winters, white-tailed deer become more susceptible to the hunt; wolves likely kill more deer during these winters than the average of 37,500 to 70,000, the DNR estimate. Milder winters like the previous two seasons give deer populations a chance to balance out, however. In comparison, Minnesota’s most abundant predator, the coyote, is known to kill white-tails, mainly fawns, yet no clear estimate is available for how many per year. Conversely, Minnesota’s second most common predator, the black bear, is an omnivore that does not have a meat-reliant diet. Therefore, it is estimated that a black bear kills an average of just 1.4 deer per year, again mainly fawns, for a total of around 18,200 to 25,200. Finally, car accidents result in an average of 35,000 to 36,000 deer deaths in Minnesota per year. Wolves may be the deer’s No. 1 natural predator but humans fell more deer per year during the deer hunting season. For example, the 2024 deer hunting yield clocked in at just over 170,000 for reported successful hunts. These facts suggest a symbiotic relationship between wolves and the Northland ecosystem as no correlation has been drawn to suggest wolves negatively impact the white-tailed deer population or the ecosystem as a whole, according to the DNR. Wolf depredation program Another HFH justification for a hunting season is for livestock killed by wolves, which does happen throughout the year to ranches and farms in the Northland. Current law does not allow anyone to kill a wolf unless it directly threatens human life, meaning no landowner can kill a wolf to protect livestock. Thus, the state offers a wolf depredation program to compensate landowners for lost livestock due to wolf kills. The program is busy each year. Between 2018 and 2022, Minnesota paid out $621,022 with 2018 as the most costly year at $165,912. Initially, the funds were strictly used for livestock losses due to wolves with a budget of $175,000 per year from the state’s general fund. However, in 2020, part of the funds began being allocated to the University of Minnesota Extension office for staff time spent assigning monetary value to lost animals. Beltrami County residents were awarded $55,930 in this time frame, the third most in the state behind Kittson and Pine Counties. Clearwater County, Beltrami’s western neighbor, was fourth in received payments at $47,000. Federal trappers kill an average of 200 wolves in Minnesota each year due to these reports and in 2024, there were 252 claims with 136 confirmed. Despite the program’s implementation, HFH believes it could be better. Sen. Wesenberg offered a legislative change for the program during the HFH meeting in Bemidji, Modifying the Wolf Depredation Compensation Program. It increases funding to the wolf depredation program and considers compensation for house pets lost due to wolves. He also offered a new legislative idea which has yet to be drafted into a House file. This idea gives the ability of each county sheriff to investigate a livestock kill to determine if a wolf was involved and if the landowner should receive compensation. This change is tied to a case in Clearwater County that saw a landowner lose livestock. The sheriff investigated and corroborated the landowner’s claim, suggesting the state award the landowner compensation for lost livestock due to wolves. The claim was rejected, according to HFH members. The depredation program has strict steps that must be followed for each claim and if the steps are not followed, the claim can be rejected. This includes reporting the incident within 48 hours followed by the investigation from a DNR conservation officer or USDA trapper. It was unclear if the case presented by HFH followed the state’s protocol and if the landowner followed the DNR’s non-lethal preventative wolf measures to keep livestock safe. Either way, Wesenberg and HFH hope legislative changes, combined with a hunting season, would lower the amount spent on depredation problems as they would likely become less frequent. Legislative timeline Whether Minnesota is ready for a wolf hunting season or not, legislation could force it sooner rather than later. The Pet and Livestock Protection Act of 2025 aims to reissue a 2020 Trump-era delisting rule of the gray wolf at the federal level, giving each state a chance to craft their wolf plan. This bill is currently being reviewed by the House Committee on Natural Resources and could be ready to move through the legislature later this year. The two Minnesota bills discussed by Wesenberg, Requiring an Open Season for Wolves and Modifying the Wolf Depredation Compensation Program, could be passed before May 19, the end of the 2025 Minnesota legislative session. All of these moving pieces in both the state and federal legislature create a blurred outlook on wolf hunting in the state. Perhaps no legislation passes or it all passes. Either way, hunting groups and conservationists will continue to question the best course of action for the Northland gray wolf. Related Articles Sports | NCAA Frozen Four: Gophers, Badgers ready for Chapter 6 Sports | Gophers football: Quarterback Drake Lindsey will need to earn starting spot Sports | Gophers gain commitment from Arizona prep receiver Rico Bassingame Sports | How is Jordan Mason approaching his opportunity with the Vikings? Sports | Post-suspension, Wild forward Ryan Hartman making the most of his return ...read more read less