Sustainable Harvest Sit-Along

Food for Thought

Wolves were once a top predator in the Midwest, filling an important niche that kept deer populations at healthy levels, benefitting the habitat for other species, reducing the spread of ticks and disease, and maintaining the health of the deer population themselves. This vital role has historically been shared by only a handful of other species, and one of those species is . . . . humans! That's right, humans and especially indigenous people have been part of this natural ecosystem since the Midwest was under glaciers more than 10,000 years ago. But wolves have been all but extirpated from the region, and the numbers of human hunters are declining even as we artificially inflate deer populations to dangerous levels by providing easy foraging through commercial agriculture. Habitats and hundreds of other species are suffering from deer over-browsing, ticks are exploding in numbers, and deer are becoming increasingly…