(Helena, MT) The Montana House Fish, Wildlife and Parks committee spent nearly five hours on Tuesday evening considering a trio of bills related to Montana’s population of roughly 1,100 resident wolves — far too many according to two legislators seeking to cut the population nearly in half.
Two bills, both brought by freshman legislators, aim to reduce the population of wolves in Montana closer to 450, a number established by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks that would sustain the population without risking the animals returning to the Endangered Species List.
With the state’s wolf population remaining above 1,000 animals, supporters of the bills advocated for more aggressive hunter-led management of the species while opponents decried it as exploitative and overreaching legislative authority.
The third bill, House Bill 101, requested by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, would reclassify wolves as “furbearers” for the purposes of management.
Open Season
The two bills heard in committee to reduce wolf populations by relaxing hunting rules follow up on legislation passed in 2021 that directed the FWP commission to reduce wolf populations “to a sustainable level.”
Under the state’s new draft Gray Wolf Conservation and Management Plan, FWP identified a population of 450 wolves, as determined by the state’s population and distribution model, as a benchmark of sustainability to ensure the statewide population stays above the federal minimum of 150 wolves required to prevent relisting.
House Bill 176, sponsored by Rep. Shannon Maness, R-Dillon, focuses on the 450-animal number and would require an unlimited hunting quota as long as the state population is above the threshold.
According to a 2024 report by FWP, Montana’s wolf population has remained steady in recent years, with a statewide population estimated between 993 and 1,210 in 2023. The population of wolves peaked in 2011, and FWP estimates 10-year average around 1,140.
Under HB 176, a single hunting or trapping license would allow unlimited take of wolves, and maintain the use of bait for trapping and use of artificial light or night scopes when hunting on private land. It also directs the Fish and Wildlife Commission to set a statewide wolf quota instead of regional quotas, but keeps the authority to establish hunting and trapping seasons with the commission.
“The goal is to get the wolf population under control and give FWP more tools to get that done. We want to be more aggressive in reducing the numbers,” Maness said. “Our deer, elk, and moose cannot continue to take this pressure and survive. Our ranchers are also bearing more and more costs and problems with the ever increasing number of predators.”
Lukas Schubert, R-Kalispell, presented as similar, but more extreme law, House Bill 222, which would create a year-round, unlimited-quota hunting season that “must continue” as long as the population is above 600 individual wolves.
Calling wolf overpopulation an “emergency,” Schubert said setting the threshold at 600 allows FWP to have a buffer where the agency can exert control over hunting season regulations before the wolf population gets too close to the 450 range identified in the management plan.
Referencing the 2021 legislation, Schubert said that wolves have not declined fast enough, and more aggressive action should be taken.
“We, the people, acknowledge that the wolf population is too high, as the delisting rule states, and we want that population to go down,” Schubert said. “It is the job of FWP to adhere to the the guidance put forward by the legislature to actually implement that, and they have failed to do so”
Dozens of proponents testified in favor of both bills, while even more opponents testified — to the point where committee chairman Jed Hinkle, R-Belrade, cut off testimony for out-of-state residents after registering their name and statements of opposition.
Marc Cooke, a Bitterroot resident and vice president of Wolves of the Rockies, said the bill is “nothing less than a declaration of war and the beginning of an operational plan to slaughter Yellowstone and Montana wolves.”
Doug Smith, who spent decades as a wildlife biologist in Yellowstone National Park overseeing wolf management, said that typically, management actions for wolves are applied for big game management, livestock depredations, and health and human safety.
“None of those things apply to this management action at all,” Smith said, adding that game populations in Montana are “robust,” and that livestock depredations have declined. He also said that wolves can help address wildlife diseases, such as the proliferation of Chronic Wasting Disease in the state.
Smith also pointed to Canada and Alaska, which never had wolves eliminated, as examples for how to manage the species.
“What they do, by and large, is not get hung up on a particular population size,” he said. “They allow take and they address problems, and the population fluctuates naturally … It’s less complicated, more straightforward. It allows take; it allows problem solving, but if wolves aren’t causing a problem, let their numbers fluctuate as they may.”
Among the proponents, many individuals stated that the trapping and hunting seasons need to be lengthened in order to successfully decrease the number of wolves in the state closer to the 450 threshold, while others reiterated that the Legislature has already passed a law requiring FWP decrease the state’s wolf population.
“What’s been done is not enough to make a significant reduction to the wolf population,” said Keith Kubista, a hunter and trapper from the Bitterroot. “It also creates a threshold to prevent re-listing of wolves, while upholding the legislative intent to reduce wolf populations, which has become more difficult due to litigation and the coercive powers of judicial interference”
“We should be managing by science, by the numbers already established, and not by politics,” added Bill Finch with Safari Club International.
Opponents to the expanded hunting bills outnumbered proponents roughly 2-1.
Much of the committee’s discussion about the two bills focused on the model used by FWP to estimate the population.
Smith, the retired biologist, said the integrated patch occupancy model, or iPOM, was developed “as a population distribution estimator, not an abundance estimator.”
“You’re not getting an accurate population estimation, which is what you’re basing your management decisions on. This is a fundamental problem,” he said.
Many opponents to the hunting bills stated that having a flawed, or overestimated baseline population would create issues when attempting to set a goal number of wolves.
A research paper released in 2023 by a Bozeman-based researcher identified biases in iPOM that led to overestimation of wolf populations. A group of FWP and U.S. Geological Survey researchers rebutted the paper’s findings.
Quentin Kujala, FWP Chief of Conservation Policy, said the iPOM data had been peer-reviewed, and is routinely bolstered by field data brought in by FWP researchers.
While Kujala appeared as an informational witness on behalf of FWP for HB 176, he testified in opposition to HB 222, saying the inflexible, year-round hunting season and unlimited quota would be a “complete loss of flexibility” for the department to manage the species.
Last season, hunters and trappers took 286 wolves, the most since the 2020-2021 season.
This year, the wolf trapping season will for a second season in a row run from Jan. 1 through Feb. 15 in Regions 1 through 5, and from Dec. 2 through March 15 in Regions 6 and 7, as the FWP follows a federal court order handed down to minimize the threat of grizzly bears, which are protected under the Endangered Species Act, from being incidentally caught in traps for wolves or coyotes.
As of Wednesday, 189 wolves have been killed since early September, when the archery-only season opened. That number does not include a fifth wolf shot and killed in a unit north of Yellowstone National Park, which was discovered in November despite there being a quota of three wolves in that unit.
Hunters and trappers can take 145 more wolves before the end of the season, based on each region’s quotas.
Furbearer or big game?
Since wolves were officially delisted from the Endangered Species Act in 2011 following a brief legal battle between Montana and the federal government, the state has classified wolves as a “species in need of management,” ever since.
However, a longtime Montana statute directs the species be categorized as either a big game animal or furbearer after delisting — FWP is proposing the latter.
House Bill 101,brought by Rep. Jamie Isaly, D-Livingston, would put wolves in the same classification as other commonly trapped furbearers including beaver, mink, otter, bobcats and swift foxes.
Kujala said the Fish and Wildlife Commission’s reasoning for opting for the furbearer classification was that they saw wolves “primarily taken for their fur. And it’s not much more than that.”
Calling it a “consistency bill,” Kujala said that many other statutes and restrictions that broadly speak to furbearers clearly apply to wolves as well. And where there are differences, because “wolves are wolves,” there is specific language carved out to make those distinctions.
Idaho manages wolves as big game animals, while Wyoming has dual classifications as trophy animals and predatory animals, depending on the region.
Witnesses testifying on both sides of the bill represented a range of views.
Proponents of the bill, including Footloose Montana and Trap Free Montana, said they were encouraged at the more concise management under a different classification, while many opponents, including the Rocky Mountain Stockgrowers Association, Montana Farm Bureau, Wolves of the Rockies, and Bold Visions Conservation, stating they shouldn’t be lumped in with other furbearers and instead be considered big game animals, or should be kept as a species of management, either to be more aggressively managed or to maintain additional protections.
Isaly, the bill sponsor, said that not passing the bill could result in unintended consequences, and if some protections for the animal are not provided, they could end up back on the Endangered Species List.
“This bill finally does give a clear direction on how the wolf can be properly managed in Montana, allowing for Montanans and visitors of the state to hunt, trap, observe, photograph and enjoy this important keystone species and preserve its existence for many years going into the future,” Isaly said.
The committee took no action on the three bills Tuesday night.
This story fort appeared on Daily Montanan.
