Commission sets rules and quotas for wolf hunting season; units near Yellowstone adjusted • Idaho Capital Sun
Under pressure from Yellowstone National Park and residents living north of the park boundary, the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission on Friday unanimously approved a change to the wolf and fur-bearing animal regulations for the upcoming hunting season. According to this, Wolf Management Unit 313 – directly north of the park boundary – will be divided into two units again, and only three wolves may be killed in each.
The commission also approved another amendment that again prohibits the use of telemetry and motion tracking devices in wolf hunting. This was prohibited until the 2021-22 wolf hunting season, when the commission again allowed the practice of wolf hunting, as well as the use of bait and night hunting on private lands.
Both amendments were introduced by Region 3 Commissioner Susan Kirby Brooke, who said they were the result of a year of meetings with residents and business owners in Montana’s Park and Gallatin counties, as well as with Yellowstone National Park leadership.
Park Superintendent Cam Sholly sent a letter to commissioners in June directly requesting the two changes and outlining a number of reasons why the commission should adopt the changes. Those reasons were cited by several speakers during Friday’s public hearing.
“I think the public has expressed in a big way that they don’t approve of the concentrated hunting so close to the town of Gardiner and the impact of the hunting on businesses – so many wolves in close proximity to their businesses,” Brooke told the commission. “And a lot of these people bring tourism to these areas, and it hurts their business to have so many wolves driven out of such a small area.”
Impact of hunting on the wolf population in Yellowstone National Park
Wolf Management Unit 313 will again be split into two units, 313 and 316, for the 2024-25 season as before, and each will have a wolf quota of three for the season. Wolf Management Unit 313 had a quota of six wolves last season, which was reached on Dec. 25 of last year. In 2022, the quota of six wolves was reached on Feb. 6. Commissioners and others said at Friday’s meeting that 316 is a more difficult and remote area to hunt, while 313 drives the animals into the valley, making them easy targets.
In his June letter, Sholly said 13 wolves were killed from Yellowstone packs last winter, including eight that were killed legally in Montana. That represents about 10% of Yellowstone’s wolf population. Six of those eight were killed in WMU 313 and came from three different Yellowstone packs. Two more Yellowstone wolves were captured in Region 3 near the border of WMU 313, and another Yellowstone wolf was poached in WMU 313 in February, Sholly said.
He added that two other collared wolves died from gunshot wounds last winter. The park believes the wolves sustained those gunshot wounds in the WMU 313 area, but has not been able to confirm this.
“In total, these deaths resulted in the dissolution of three Yellowstone packs that were part of the park’s 2023 population,” Sholly wrote to commissioners.
He said 20 years of radio-collar data showed that packs in Yellowstone National Park spent at least 96 percent of the year within park boundaries, and that the deaths of wolves and alphas killed by hunters in Montana and other states have multiple impacts on packs and reproduction.
“Based on this information, there are relatively few resident wolves in WMU 313, aside from the cross-border movements of some Yellowstone packs,” Sholly wrote. “The state’s population count methods, which rely on the (Integrated Patch Occupancy Model) to estimate the wolf population and make harvest recommendations, are unable to provide detailed wolf population metrics in the WMU adjacent to the park.”
Sholly said that in some cases, human-caused wolf deaths lead to a decline in pup production, while in others, such as in the 2021-22 season when an alpha female from the 8-Mile pack was captured in WMU 313, three subordinate females began reproducing and 18 pups were born in 2023.
He also asked the commission to ban the use of telemetry in wolf hunting, saying it violates fair chase ethics. And he told commissioners that there have been fewer than 10 wolf-caused livestock depredations in Park County in the past decade, meaning one of the state legislature’s main reasons for setting a goal of declining Montana’s wolf population has not happened.
In addition, he said, the state’s elk population in District 313, Region 3 and statewide is at or above targets, and more bull elk have been harvested in District 313 in the last decade than in the decade before.
“These data suggest that elk are thriving statewide and locally despite living in a landscape with numerous predator species, including wolves, cougars, grizzly bears, black bears and human hunters,” Sholly wrote.
In his letter, and many others mentioned during Friday’s meeting and in public comments this summer, he said wolf watching in Yellowstone brings about $80 million to the local economy in Gardiner and the surrounding area. They said that’s important money for the region that could be at risk if the wolf population declines too much or people see wolves being killed near the park, towns and villages.
Brooke Shifrin, wildlife program manager for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, told commissioners at Friday’s meeting that the group and others in the region are grateful for the changes and that they feel their voices have been heard by Brooke and the other commissioners.
“She has demonstrated truly impressive leadership skills in listening to and understanding the views of her local constituents,” Shifrin said. “…I would also note that it’s just not realistic to assume that social issues don’t matter when we’re talking about an area that’s right outside of an iconic national park that’s garnering global and international attention.”
Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission increases statewide wolf quota for season to 334
The commission also agreed to increase the statewide wolf quota for the upcoming season to 334, up from 313 last year. Hunters and trappers killed 286 wolves last season, falling short of quotas in Regions 1 and 2. However, it was the first season in which wolf trapping in Regions 1 through 5 was limited to Jan. 1 through Feb. 15 because a court order said trapping outside that period poses a danger to endangered grizzly bears that may still be outside their winter dens.
During the full license year, which runs Sept. 2 through March 15, another 21 wolves were killed through controlled removals, the lowest number in the past five years. The total harvest last season was 307, six more than the previous season but 70 wolves fewer than the five-year high of 377 wolves killed in Montana in the 2019-20 season, according to data from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
The Commission was also presented with data based on the Integrated Patch Occupancy Model (iPOM), which Montana uses to estimate the wolf population, showing how different quota variations could affect the wolf population over the next five years.
The state estimates there were 1,096 wolves in Montana as of Dec. 31 of last year, the day the state conducts its annual wolf counts. That number is also strongly disputed by some conservation groups who do not believe the model captures the true population and believe it is actually much lower, perhaps even half that.
The data presented to the commission presented eight scenarios for Montana’s wolf population based on different hunting quotas combined with 53 removals per year. The model closest to the quota set for 2024-25 examined how the wolf population would respond if 331 wolves were killed each year.
This model found that the state estimates the wolf population could decline to nearly the lower limit of 450 wolves by 2028, which would support 15 breeding pairs under the state’s wolf management plan. However, because the iPOM’s range of estimates increases each year after 2024, the range for that year is somewhere between 0 and about 1,250 wolves.
“The iPOM has the best forecasting quality in the next year, and with each year beyond that it becomes really, really conservative. To the point where it says that the forecast in five years could be high or low, so for almost the entire population,” said Patrick Tabor, Commissioner of Region 1. “And that’s how it works. iPOM works in such a way that it has a substantial built-in conservatism.”
But several speakers, including Stephen Capra, executive director of Bold Visions Conservation, said Montana’s efforts to protect wolves in the face of a steadily declining population would jeopardize Montana’s wolf management stewardship, as well as the state’s hopes of delisting a grizzly bear in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems, a decision the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to make by the end of January.
“There’s an election coming up in November, and everything has to get done here in Montana, and then the government comes along and says, ‘We’re putting wolves back on the list,'” Capra said. “Because you, Idaho and Wyoming, have shown no ability to control wolves, and now you have the courage to demand grizzly bears. We say no.”
The Commission did not set the dates for the wolf trapping season or its place of application at its meeting on Friday; these will be determined at the Commission’s meeting on October 10. The Federal Court’s decision to limit the wolf trapping season last year was limited to the 2023-24 season, but the reasons for the interim injunction must again be considered by the Commission when setting the dates.
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