Months after Michigan’s first wolf hunt, an anti-hunting group is getting close to finishing collecting signatures for a referendum on the November ballot to ban future wolf hunts.

 The deadline looms on the petition drive for the referendum to spare Michigan’s fledgling wolf population from future sport hunting. Members of Keep Michigan Wolves Protected are in the final sprint to collect enough signatures to put the question on the ballot this November.

A group of conservationists, scientists, and concerned citizens are gathering signatures for a referendum to keep wolves in Michigan protected from hunting.
 
Keep Michigan Wolves Protected is attempting to overturn language in Public Act 21, which gives the Natural Resources Commission the authority to designate animals as game species.
 
That measure went into effect in May 2013.
 

One of the few remaining gray wolves of Isle Royale National Park has been found dead after escaping to the mainland across a Lake Superior ice bridge, a scientist said Tuesday.

 I am writing about a letter that appeared on February 7 regarding the census of wolves in Michigan.

The letter states that "they [the Department of Natural Resources] count Kirtland's warbler chicks to bring that count up; while they fail to include wolf pups, because they want that figure down" is wrong and has the obvious implication that the Department is trying to deceive the public. I worked on many Kirtland's warbler and wolf surveys during my career with the Wildlife Division.

Michigan's wolves, once reduced to less than a handful by the 1970s, are now squarely in the crosshairs of eager hunters and politicians hoping to destroy as many as they can under a thin -- and sometimes fictional -- justification of threats to livestock and humans. Before we take lethal aim at these relatively defenseless and innocent animals, there's good cause for a reality-check, because the reality is: There's simply no good reason to hunt these wolves.

 To the Journal editor: