Minnesota’s wolf management is headed toward a predetermined destination — zero wolf harvest — and the DNR is using two flawed scientific pillars to get there.
The first is the Adams et al. 2008 model, which the DNR uses to set a 28-29 percent human-caused mortality ceiling.
Exceed that threshold, the agency argues, and no harvest can be permitted. But Adams et al. derived that figure as an average across diverse North American wolf populations, including low-productivity interior Alaska habitats with sparse prey and harsh winters. It is a population mean — not a universal ceiling. The research most directly applicable to Minnesota is Fuller et al. 2003, conducted substantially within this state, which showed Minnesota wolves sustained stable to growing populations at total mortality rates approaching 35-40 percent.
Minnesota’s own history confirms it: Our wolf population more than doubled — from roughly 1,200 animals in the 1980s to nearly 3,000 by the mid-2000s — under conditions that almost certainly exceeded the DNR’s 28-29 percent ceiling in multiple years. Applying an Alaskan average as a hard limit for one of North America’s most productive wolf habitats is scientifically indefensible
The second pillar is the DNR’s 2024-25 wolf survey, which reported approximately 2,300 wolves — down from 2,919 in 2022-23. The DNR will use that decline to argue harvest is unjustifiable. But the DNR’s own researchers admitted the drop is largely a survey artifact. Observer participation fell 52 percent — from 192 contributors in 2017-18 to just 92 this past winter. Snow cover was below average, driving track observations to their lowest level since surveys began.
The DNR’s own trail camera data is damning: Cameras confirmed pack occupancy in 13 of 32 surveyed townships near the range edge, while conventional methods confirmed only four — missing 70 percent of documented packs. The DNR’s own report states the decline “may be partly an artifact of reduced survey effort and poor tracking conditions rather than a true population crash.”
Their own authors are saying the numbers aren’t reliable — yet those numbers are being used to foreclose harvest.
Now consider the internal contradiction the DNR cannot explain.
The agency claims current human-caused mortality is at or near 28 percent — their stated ceiling. Yet DNR carcass records document roughly 150-200 wolf deaths annually against a reported population of 2,300, producing a raw mortality rate of approximately 7-9 percent.
To reach 28 percent from that carcass count, the DNR must be applying a substantial multiplier to account for undetected mortality. But here is the problem: If undetected mortality is large enough to push the true rate to 28 percent, then the DNR’s own survey population estimate is also systematically undercounting wolves by the same detection failure.
You cannot selectively apply a detection correction to mortality while ignoring the identical detection problem in your population count. If the DNR’s mortality methodology is sound, the population should not be declining as reported. If the population is genuinely declining, then mortality is being undercounted — meaning the true rate is already above 28 percent, and the threshold argument collapses entirely.
The DNR’s two central claims are mathematically irreconcilable.
Stack these together: An artificially low threshold misapplied from dissimilar populations, a survey the DNR’s own researchers acknowledge is compromised, and a mortality estimate that cannot be internally consistent with the population data the agency simultaneously reports.
The conclusion — no harvest is sustainable — was engineered into the methodology before a single wolf was counted.
Hunters, farmers, and rural Minnesotans bear the direct costs of this approach. They deserve wolf management built on honest science — not a process designed to guarantee a predetermined answer.
Randall Tlachac
Former member, Minnesota DNR Wildlife Oversight Committee
Pine County