Groups sponsor rally against Minn. wolf hunt

Wolf hunt protest
Members of the group Howling for Wolves protest the Minnesota wolf hunt in front of the Department of Natural Resources headquarters in St. Paul on Friday, Nov. 2, 2012.
MPR Photo/Elizabeth Dunbar

Opponents of wolf hunting planned to hold a rally on the Iron Range on Saturday to protest the state's first ongoing managed wolf hunt.

Reyna Crow of the Northwoods Wolf Alliance said they have a lot of support in northern Minnesota. The rally, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., was being sponsored by the Northwoods Wolf Alliance and Howling for Wolves.

"It continues to be our belief that, if you will," Crow said, "the spin that's been put on this, that it's a handful of city people who want to protect wolves versus all kinds of rural residents, is simply incorrect."

Crow, who is Ojibwe, said wolves are sacred to her people and an integral part of their creation story.

"The persecution, as we see it, of the wolf in northern Minnesota is of great concern to the Anishinabe people," she said. "Policy that's not friendly to the wolf tends not to be friendly to the Anishinabe people, either."

The two groups were dispatching eight semitrailers around northern Minnesota bearing a message opposing wolf trapping.

Hunters killed nearly 150 wolves in the early hunting season, and have so far killed 43 in a second season.

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