Star Tribune
Video of wolf killing deer in northern Minnesota becomes political fodder
A lone gray wolf bolted past a logger last week, on the edge of a clear cut forest in northern St. Louis County. The wolf ran past a giant industrial saw and leaped over felled trees in pursuit of what was either a young doe or an antlerless buck. Seconds later, the wolf killed the deer on the other side of a neatly stacked pile of freshly cut logs, oblivious to the logger, who captured the chase on video.
U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., posted the video on several social media sites along with a warning.
“As you can see, wolves lost any fear of humans and are increasingly dangerous to livestock and pets and decimating our deer here,” Stauber wrote.
The video was seized by deer hunters and their political allies seeking to remove Minnesota’s wolves from the Endangered Species list. In a letter last week, Stauber asked House leaders to make removing the animals a priority in any spending bill passed this year. He and some grass-roots organizations have held crowded public meetings across Minnesota over the past several months to raise support for reducing the wolf population.
“All the science tells us that they have recovered and we should celebrate that,” Stauber said.
He said he was taken aback in watching the video by how close the wolf got to a person while chasing down the deer.
“Years ago wolves wouldn’t come near a human being,” he said.
Minnesota is the only state in the Lower 48 that did not kill all of its wolves. They were poisoned, shot and trapped out of the rest of the continental United States by the early 1900s, but a few hundred survived in northern Minnesota. After wolves were put on the Endangered Species list in the 1970s, their population here spread and grew over the next 20 years. By 1998, wolves had returned to about half of the state and the population reached around 3,000.
It hasn’t changed much since then.
Stauber is correct in that scientists believe wolves in Minnesota have recovered. The state has nearly as many of the predators as the rest of the Lower 48 combined. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources says packs have moved into every part of the state that can handle them. But the population has not significantly grown in more than 25 years. Reports of wolf attacks on livestock and pets haven’t risen much either.
Wolves are one of the most intensively monitored and longest studied animals in Minnesota: Consistent records and population counts go back to the 1970s. Several federal and state agencies, universities and tribal governments have tracked dozens of wolves every year with trail cameras and radio and GPS collars. The U.S. Department of Agriculture keeps a running list of all complaints of wolves injuring pets or livestock. Scientists with the Voyageurs Wolf Project trek thousands of miles every summer in the woods to document everything their collared wolves eat. The state conducts aerial surveys of wolf packs each winter to estimate pack sizes and territory. Records are kept of every dead wolf found.
All evidence shows that roughly the same number of wolves have been living in Minnesota, eating roughly the same number of animals, since the late 1990s.
In 2022, there were 139 reports from ranchers and pet owners of a wolf killing at least one of their animals. The Department of Agriculture was able to confirm that wolves killed 77 animals – cattle, sheep and dogs — in the state that year. That was below the 10-year average of 82 confirmed loses to wolves.
“If there was any big expansion in wolf range or significant increase in population or conflicts or mortalities, that would be identified by the methods we use,” said Dan Stark, a wolf expert for the Minnesota DNR. “But it’s not the case.”
Stauber is not alone in his push to return wolf management to the state. Four presidential administrations representing both parties — Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton — tried to declare wolves in Minnesota recovered. Lawmakers from both parties have supported bills that would do the same. Each attempt was overturned by the courts, which ruled that either federal agencies did not follow proper protocol, did not consider how removing protections in Minnesota would affect wolves nationwide or that wolves have not recovered in enough of their historical range outside of Minnesota to return management to the state.
Stauber said that the only way to get around these court setbacks would be through congressional action.
Anti-police brutality activists interrupted a Minneapolis City Council meeting Thursday to call for Police Chief Brian O’Hara’s firing, saying his department failed a Black man who begged police for help for months, to no avail, before he was finally shot in the neck by his white neighbor.
John Sawchak, 54, is charged with shooting Davis Moturi, 34, even though three warrants had been issued for his arrest in connection with threats to Moturi and other neighbors.
Activists showed up at the council meeting and asked for time to talk about the case. Instead, the council recessed and activists took the podium and castigated the city for failing Black people, even as state and federal officials are forcing the police department into court-sanctioned monitoring because of past civil rights violations.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network, said O’Hara needs to be held accountable.
“This is not the first time instance where the community has raised concerns about his poor judgment, poor leadership, blaming the community and excuses. It’s completely unacceptable for him to get away with it,” she said. “How many Black people’s doors have they kicked in for less?”
On Thursday the council voted to request the city auditor review the city’s involvement in and response to the matters between Moturi and Sawchak.
Mayor Jacob Frey released a statement in response saying he supports the council’s call for an independent review of the case, but O’Hara “will continue to be the Minneapolis police chief.”
Protesters also questioned why the public hadn’t heard from Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette, who called a news conference within hours to say he’s not going to fire O’Hara and the city leadership supports him.
A Girl Scout from Troop 58068 told the Woodbury City Council recently that they should allow backyard chickens in the city: They cheer people up, she said.
It turned out that chickens were on an upcoming agenda and, perhaps pushed a bit by the scout’s lobbying, the Woodbury City Council at their next meeting passed a new ordinance allowing for backyard hens.
The new ordinance went into effect on Oct. 23, the night of the council meeting, and will allow people who live on property zoned R-2, a “rural estate” district, to have backyard chickens. A typical city lot is zoned R-4 and those areas still cannot have chickens, the council said.
The city has received requests “here and there” for the last several years about backyard chickens, City Council Member Andrea Date said.
Backyard chickens come have home to roost — and never leave — in a host of other Minnesota cities that allow them, from Hopkins to Thief River Falls. It’s long been allowed in both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and new cities started approving backyard coops during the pandemic, when interest spiked.
In Woodbury, it wasn’t until the question was included on the city’s biannual survey that city staff knew how people felt. The survey found less support for chickens on a typical city lot — just 13% of respondents said they strongly approve of the idea while 43% percent strongly disapproved — but a majority approved of backyard chickens on lots of 1 acre or more.
The city’s rules until recently only allowed chickens on “rural estate” properties of five or more acres.
The new ordinance allows up to six hens, but no roosters, on property less than four acres that meets the zoning requirements. Larger properties can have an additional two chickens per acre above four acres. The ordinance also sets a height limit for chicken coops of 7 feet. No license or permit is required in Woodbury for backyard chickens.
Star Tribune
Anonymous donor pays overdue bill for Fergus Falls home where town’s first Black resident lived
A $10,000 overdue special assessment bill threatening tax forfeiture of a historic Fergus Falls home was paid off this week thanks to an anonymous donor.
Prince Albert Honeycutt lived at 612 Summit Avenue East, renamed Honeycutt Memorial Drive in 2021. Not only was Honeycutt the town’s first Black resident — settling there in 1872 from Tennessee — he was the state’s first Black professional baseball player, first Black firefighter and first Black mayoral candidate.
He was an early pioneer and prominent businessman who owned a barbershop in town. Missy Hermes, with the Otter Tail County Historical Society, said Honeycutt and his wife were likely the first Black people in Minnesota to testify in a capital murder trial of a man who was convicted and hanged in Fergus Falls.
“In other places, you would never have a Black person testifying against a white person, especially a woman, too, before women could vote even,” Hermes said. “Obviously he was respected enough.”
Nancy Ann and Prince Albert Honeycutt with their children inside the now-historic Honeycutt house in 1914. Photo from the collections of the Otter Tail County Historical Society.
When dozens of people from Kentucky moved to Fergus Falls in April 1898, known as “the first 85,” Honeycutt helped integrate them into the community.
He died in 1924 at age 71 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fergus Falls.
Up until 2016, several owners lived in the Honeycutt home. But the city bought and sold the house to nonprofit Flowingbrook Ministry for $1 to take over the tax-exempt property and operate the ministry.
Ministry founder Lynette Higgins-Orr, who previously lived in Fergus Falls, moved to Florida several years ago and little activity has been going on in the historic home since. But she said there are plans to make it into a museum.
