A second ballot drive to outlaw wolf hunting in Michigan is underway.
As we hear from The Michigan Public Radio Network’s Rick Pluta, that’s after a new law circumvented the first referendum to challenge a wolf hunt in the Upper Peninsula.
The organizers don’t think they can gather the necessary 225 thousand signatures in time to suspend the wolf hunt this coming November. But they do hope to make it Michigan’s first and last wolf hunt since the gray wolf was removed from the endangered species list.
This would put a second referendum on the ballot next year after the Legislature and Governor Rick Snyder approved a new law to allow the wolf hunt to go forward.
Jill Fritz is with the group Keep Michigan Wolves Protected.
“It’s very sad that legislators have stepped on the voters like this and introduced and passed this language that’s basically an end run around the democratic process,” she says.
A group of Indian tribes is also asking the state to justify the wolf hunt under the terms of a hunting and fishing treaty. The state Department of Natural Resources says the hunt will help address wolves attacking pets and livestock in the western UP.