DNR Stonewalls Hunters: Buried Reports, Zero Deer Research, and $680,000 in Wolf Spending

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 A Guest Column on Transparency and Accountability

The Minnesota DNR’s July 30 response to a May data request on wolf-allocation funds exposes a pattern of evasion, contradiction, and mismanagement that should alarm every hunter, taxpayer, and wildlife advocate.

When asked for research reports, phase reviews, and expenditures under Minnesota Statutes § 97A.075 for FY25–26, the agency claimed the final 2024–2025 wolf survey was “still being finalized.” That is false. The completed report was already delivered months earlier. The DNR further admitted it keeps no list of published versus unpublished reports and does not formally document phase reviews—directly contradicting Director Kelly Straka’s April 2025 assurance that “protocols are prepared and phase reviews

are performed and maintained for all research and are readily available.” Reports the public is not meant to see are simply labeled “non-published” and buried.

Asked for plans and specific budgets for the coming year, the DNR produced none. Instead, it listed three bear projects totaling more than $212,000. Deer research from deer-license revenue? Zero. Roughly a quarter-million dollars in hunter money redirected to bears while the agency admits it ran no deer population model for the 2025 deer season because of “staff vacancies.” Expenses are presented as budgets; actual planning

documents do not exist.

On wolf monitoring the picture is equally thin. Data on 42 packs show only 23 active collars. Ten of those belong to the Voyageurs Wolf Project, which the DNR says receives no agency funding. That leaves the state’s wildlife agency tracking just 13 wolves. Movement data were withheld under a location-privacy statute, yet no written explanation was provided as required by law—another violation.

Meanwhile, USDA Wildlife Services data reveal 203 wolves killed in depredation control in 2025 alone, concentrated in Kittson, Pine, and St. Louis counties. Compensation claims totaled nearly $198,000. Combined with the DNR’s own wolf-related spending, more than $680,000 appears to have gone toward killing wolves, producing a delayed survey, and collaring a handful of animals. Funding sources remain opaque.

Minnesota hunters pay for science and stewardship. What they receive is stonewalling, contradictory statements from leadership, vanished phase reviews, zero deer research, and a monitoring program that barely exists. The DNR’s response does not demonstrate capacity. It demonstrates the opposite. The legislature and the public should demand a

full accounting—before another dollar is spent or another report is buried.

(full request, response and data available upon request)

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Randall Tlachac

The author is a wildlife management consultant and longtime Minnesota hunter with nearly three decades of service on Minnesota DNR citizen oversight committees.

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed by the guest author in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Hunters for Hunters.