Marcella Hadden, the public relations manager for the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, said management of wolves is unnecessary and works against some core beliefs of the Tribe’s culture.

“There are clan systems. They are a way for us to identify with the animal world,” Hadden said.

Clans are groups of people, usually related by descent, within a larger tribe like SCIT. Some of the clans include the eagle, crane, turtle, bear and wolf. Each clan represents a different set of traits and characteristics the people who belong to them will display.

Each clan also traditionally plays a different role in the overall tribe and has its own set of colors to represent it. They help to designate tasks and organization of all tribe members.

“Your clan comes through you from your father,” Hadden said.

Clans are such an important part of the Native American culture that members are expected to abstain from consuming the meat of whatever their particular clan representative might be.

“If there’s a feast, you wouldn’t eat your clan. A bear clan member would not eat the bear and if you were of the fish clan then you wouldn’t eat the fish,” Hadden said.

The wolf plays a role in the Tribe’s creation story, and therefore holds an honored role in their culture and society.

To hunt and kill an animal that represents much of the Tribe’s history and tradition, she said, is unnecessary and should be stopped.

“(The wolf) plays a big role in our culture, so it’s more than anything you would eat,” Hadden said.

Whether the Michigan Department of Natural Resources will hold a second wolf hunt after they have the power to do so in March remains to be seen. Brian Roell, a DNR wildlife biologist based in Marquette, said the issue lies with the integrity of both groups arguing their side.

“Both sides of this issue are just as guilty as each other of using half-truths and myths, so I really ask folks to become informed,” he said. “They tend to use the word science like it’s a sword and there’s nothing scientific about turning this over to voters. It really is up to the voter to become informed.”

The decision

Two proposals appear on the November general election ballot that, if voted down, would overturn laws establishing the rules for wolf hunting. Roell said there will be no hunt in 2014 because the DNR’s ability to conduct one was suspended when groups like Keep Michigan Wolves Protected gained enough signatures to put Public Act 21 on the ballot.

Proposal 1 is a referendum seeking to overturn Public Act 520, a piece of legislation signed by Gov. Snyder in 2012 that established wolf hunting seasons in Michigan.

Proposal 2, another referendum, seeks to overturn Public Act 21, which was signed by Snyder in 2013 and gave the sole power of deciding which animals will be declared game species to the Natural Resources Commission.

In the past, game species had to be declared by the legislature.

Public Act 21 superseded Public Act 520, suspending it or making it ineffective. Critics of the proposal campaign claim that even if anti-wolf hunt campaigns are able to convince voters to vote no on Proposal 1, it will have no practical effect on whether there are wolf hunts in Michigan.

A “no” vote on Proposal 2 will also be ineffective in practice due to the work of Citizens for Professional Wildlife Management, a pro-wolf hunting group that collected enough signatures this year to push through a citizens initiative in August. The Natural Resources Commission Initiative extends the power of naming games species and deciding how wildlife will be managed to the commission.

Even if Proposals 1 and 2 are shot down by voters, the initiative supersedes them by shifting the power to name game species from voters to the commission.

Drew YoungeDyke, secretary for Citizens for Professional Wildlife Management, said the commission already had the power to designate hunting seasons and most other aspects of hunting.

“What our law will do is make that option available to biologists in 2015 and beyond,” YoungeDyke said. “When they did the first hunt they had everything ready by early spring.”

YoungeDyke said the group’s goal in pursuing the initiative was to take the ability to decide gaming species out of the hands of voters and put it into the hands of qualified experts. Under the new law, the NRC will be required to take into account the testimony and advice of DNR professionals like Roell when making a decision about a game species.

“It makes sure that the decision's based on scientific management,” YoungeDyke said. “They really sit like a jury, and they’re required to listen to the scientific evidence.”

Roell said his knowledge as an expert is sometimes overlooked, and leaving decisions about game species up to voters might not be the best idea.

“What bothers me the most about this whole thing is that we are attempting to do resource management through uniformed voters,” he said. “I often ask myself, ‘When do I become an expert?’ I’ve been studying wolves for 16 years.”

While some may rejoice at the Natural Resources Commission Initiative and its reassigning of power, others, like Hadden, fail to see the validity of hunting wolves for management purposes. In 2008, for example, Michigan passed two laws protecting the rights of farmers or livestock owners to protect their animals from wolf attacks.

The laws are Public Acts 290 and 318, and give owners the power to remove wolves from their property, capture them or kill them if the wolves are “in the act of preying upon” the owner’s livestock or dogs.

In 2013, hunters in three regions of the Upper Peninsula took in 22 wolves, roughly half of the state’s limit of 43, Roell said.

Roell said last year’s hunt, while controversial, was conducted as a way to manage the wolf population that would prevent the entire population of under 700 from being greatly affected,

“We’ve looked at the results,” he said. “Twenty-two animals were harvested, so we looked at sex ratios and where they were harvested in terms of conflicts and things like that.”

Wolves for the hunt were targeted in three areas of the Upper Peninsula. In Gogebic County the target was 16 wolves. In portions of Baraga, Houghton and Ontonagon counties the target was 19 wolves. In portions of Luce and Mackinac counties the goal was eight wolves. These target numbers were only met by about half when the hunt closed on Jan. 1, 2014.