Zone 4 holds the thinnest packs in Wisconsin. The Department of Natural Resources puts the average there at 2.54 wolves, against 4.34 in Zone 1, the far north and northwest. Both figures come from the agency’s 2026 winter estimate, presented on June 25.
The record shows a statewide total of 1,162 wolves in 321 packs for late winter 2026. Lydia Margenau, a DNR wildlife research scientist, took the Wolf Advisory Committee through the numbers at a virtual meeting led by Randy Johnson, the agency’s large carnivore specialist. Last year’s estimate was 1,225. The 2024 estimate was 1,311. Against last year that is a drop of 5%, and the total sits 3% under the five-year mean.
Margenau read the change as ordinary wobble around a long-run mean, evidence that wolves have filled the habitat the state can carry. Earlier DNR research put that ceiling at 1,242 wolves. “Overall the population has been stable and nothing drastic to note here,” she told the committee.
Where the wolves are
Zone 1 carries the bulk: 511 animals. Zone 2 had 273, Zone 3 had 126 and Zone 5, the central forest, had 191. Zone 4 had just 54, spread over the northcentral and northeast. Seven more could not be assigned to a zone.
Territory size splits the same way. Across Zones 1 through 4 a typical territory covers 54 square miles. In Zone 5 it shrinks to 32, which Margenau tied to richer prey in that forest, and which the agency says matches earlier years.
The estimate has limits. It leaves out wolves that live outside packs and those that have dispersed beyond the core range. The confidence interval puts the population somewhere between 1,026 and 1,307 wolves, and the pack count between 287 and 359.
How the count is built
The field work happens in winter, when the population is at or near its annual low and tracks show best in snow. For the 2025-26 period the DNR ran 503 carnivore tracking surveys over 17,771 miles of roads. Ninety-seven percent of survey blocks got at least three passes, the minimum recommended. Danielle Deming, a DNR research scientist, said 45 GPS collars were active as of June 2026, 15 of them put on this year. Since 2020 the agency has fed that data into an occupancy model.
“We’re tracking, like, two-thirds of the state multiple times,” Johnson said. “A lot of effort goes into the model.”
He offered a reason for two years of slight decline: mild winters. Low snowfall favors deer and makes hunting harder for wolves, and the effect lags. “We expect to see the impacts of a given winter in the following winter’s estimates,” Johnson said, pointing to reduced pup survival from winters two or three years back. He added that the number could swing up again but is held in check by available habitat.
Federal protection and conflicts
Wolves in Wisconsin have carried federal Endangered Species Act protection since February 2022, and no hunting or trapping has taken place since February 2021. Several delisting efforts are under way. The Fish and Wildlife Service is appealing, and a bill the House has passed waits in a Senate committee. The DNR files its annual wolf report partly to meet a requirement from that federal agency, and Johnson said the full 2026 report would go up on its website within days.
Livestock losses have eased. Payouts to owners dropped to $200,864 in 2025 from $322,970 the year before. This year Johnson counted 19 conflicts that were verified, and 15 verified losses of livestock, compared with 32 and 22 for 2025. No wolf has ever attacked a person in modern Wisconsin, the DNR says.
Sources
- Wolf population down slightly in Wisconsin for 2nd straight year
- What's the Wisconsin wolf population? DNR issues latest estimate (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
