The controversy over wolf hunting in the Upper Peninsula is headed back to the Legislature.
A petition campaign has filed an estimated 374,000 signatures. As The Michigan Public Radio Network’s Rick Pluta explains, they’re asking the Legislature to adopt a new wolf-hunting law.
Two other laws to allow wolf hunting are suspended until after referendum votes in November. Those ballot drives were launched by groups opposed to hunting wolves so soon after the animals were removed from the endangered species list.
State Senator Tom Casperson sponsored those two laws, and he says now he has no choice but to ask the Legislature to tackle the wolf-hunting controversy a third time.
“There was a big concern among all the sporting groups that this is just an end run to go after our hunting rights and this is just the beginning if we don’t take a stand here,” he says.
But the anti-wolf hunting groups are pressuring the Legislature to leave it alone and let the question go to the November ballot. If that happens, there would be three separate hunting questions for voters to decide.