Wisconsin counted 1,162 gray wolves in 321 packs this past winter, the Department of Natural Resources said. That is 5% fewer than a year earlier and 3% under the five-year average.
The DNR released the figures on June 25 at a virtual meeting of its Wolf Advisory Committee. Randy Johnson, the agency’s large carnivore specialist, led the meeting and said the full 2026 monitoring report should be on the DNR website within days.
Lydia Margenau, a DNR wildlife research scientist, called the change a slight fluctuation around a mean. In her reading, the state’s wolf population has reached its biological carrying capacity. She said the mild winters of recent years may explain the small declines, since they favor white-tailed deer and are harder on wolves.
The statistical range is wide: 1,026 to 1,307 wolves and 287 to 359 packs. Wolves living outside packs, and those that have dispersed beyond the core wolf range, are not counted.
By zone
Zone 1, in the far north and northwest, holds the most wolves at 511. Zone 2 in the northeast has 273, Zone 5 in the central forest has 191, Zone 3 in the northwest has 126 and Zone 4 in the northcentral and northeast has 54. Seven animals were not assigned to a zone.
Packs are smallest in Zone 4, averaging 2.54 wolves, and largest in Zone 1 at 4.34. Territories cover an average of 54 square miles in Zones 1 through 4. In Zone 5 they cover 32 square miles, as in past years, probably because prey is denser in the central forest, Margenau said.
How the count works
Since 2020 the DNR has used an occupancy model. It draws on tracking surveys by agency staff, volunteers and others, plus data from GPS-collared wolves, which shows territory sizes and movements. The DNR gets the collar locations by satellite. Danielle Deming, a DNR research scientist, said 45 collars were active in June 2026, 15 of them fitted this year.
Over the winter of 2025-26, crews ran 503 carnivore tracking surveys along 17,771 miles of roads. Ninety-seven percent of survey blocks got at least three visits, the recommended minimum. Winter is when the wolf population is at or near its annual low and the animals are easiest to track. Researchers say numbers roughly double when pups are born in spring, then fall through the year.
A long recovery
Poisoning and bounties wiped out Wisconsin’s wolves, and the species was considered gone from the state by 1960. Protection under the 1973 Endangered Species Act let wolves spread from northern Minnesota back into Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The DNR’s estimates were 25 in 1980, 34 in 1990, 248 in 2000, 704 in 2010 and 1,034 in 2020. Biologists say the count has flattened over the last decade as wolves filled the best habitat. Researchers with the Voyageurs Wolf Project reported a recent decline in the northern Minnesota wolves they study.
The state held four hunting and trapping seasons in the modern era, in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2021. None has taken place since February 2021. A lawsuit by wolf advocates succeeded in state court in October 2021, and in February 2022 a federal district judge returned wolves in Wisconsin and many other states to federal protection. Several efforts to delist the wolf are under way: an appeal of that decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Pet and Livestock Protection Act, which passed the U.S. House and sits in a Senate committee, and a rider on the fiscal year 2027 Interior appropriations bill.
Johnson said Wisconsin has logged 19 verified wolf conflicts and 15 verified depredations on livestock so far in 2026, down from 32 and 22 in 2025. Compensation paid to owners fell from $322,970 in 2024 to $200,864 in 2025. The DNR says no wolf has ever attacked a person in modern Wisconsin history.
