by Eve Byron, Independent Record
Montana’s inaugural wolf season ended Monday after the state came close to the predetermined 75-wolf quota.
As of Monday, hunters had reported shooting 72 wolves, mainly in the western half of the state, in the first-ever state-sanctioned wolf hunting season, which opened Oct. 25 and was scheduled to end Nov. 29.
“The reason we closed it without reaching all the quotas is we’re trying to err on the side of being conservative,” said Ron Aasheim, chief of communication for FWP. “We wanted to make sure we didn’t exceed the quota.”
Four of the wolves were taken in Lewis and Clark County, Aasheim said. He added that 12 wolves were shot in Flathead County during the regular hunting season, eight in Ravalli county and six each in Lincoln and Sanders counties.
Another nine were harvested just north of Yellowstone National Park in Gallatin County during the early backcountry hunting season.
The early end of the hunting season came as a relief to members of conservation groups that had sued the federal government to keep gray wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming on the list of animals protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Suzanne Stone with Defenders of Wildlife – one of 13 organizations to file a lawsuit saying that wolves can’t be considered a recovered species in Idaho and Montana but not in adjoining Wyoming – said they consider the hunt to be illegal.
“The key issue isn’t about whether wolves should be hunted or not, but when and how that should occur,” Stone said. “Hunting should not take place until there’s a scientifically sound, legal wolf delisting and state management plans in place throughout the region.”
Mike Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, added that this is a “welcome end to an experiment that didn’t work” because the majority of wolves killed in Wildlife Management Unit 3 – generally the southern half of Montana below Highway 200 – were in the backcountry near Yellowstone and were not the ones preying on livestock.
“They killed the wolves that were not the problem wolves that attack livestock,” Garrity said. “Plus, I don’t think this is the proper way to manage a species that’s not fully recovered.”
With 500 wolves in Montana alone, and a population expected to grow by another 100 wolves even if the 75-wolf quota is filled, state and federal wildlife managers decided last year that the hunt was a good management tool to keep wolf numbers in check.
They also hoped the hunt would create a healthy fear of humans in wolves so they would avoid ranches and livestock, lessening depredations on cattle, sheep and other domestic animals.
Aasheim said managers learned a lot during the wolf hunt. More than 11,000 people bought licenses in Montana, and state officials weren’t sure how successful they’d be: whether they’d shoot younger or older wolves, and whether the sex of the species would make a difference.
They also weren’t sure if people would go out specifically to shoot wolves, or were just buying permits so they could legally take a wolf if they saw one.
That information is being compiled now, and will be presented to the FWP Commission at its December meeting.
Aasheim noted that because the quota was almost filled in WMU 3 before the regular season started, the commission probably will be refining some hunting districts into smaller units in order to better target areas having problems with livestock depredation.
“That’s exactly the sort of thing we will be talking about,” Aasheim said, adding that the commission will be setting next year’s wolf hunt season in February, with quotas being decided next summer.
“We may adjust some quotas and the sub-units to try to be more surgical,” he said.
Overall, 38 wolves were shot by hunters in WMU1 , which includes most of Montana north of Highway 200.
In WMU 3, which is mainly southern Montana from Interstate 15 to the eastern border, 13 wolves were taken, even though the quota was 12. That unit was closed to wolf hunting on Oct. 26.
In WMU 2, which is in southwestern Montana west of I-15, 21 wolves were shot, which is one fewer than the quota.
Idaho’s hunting season is continuing, with 104 wolves harvested by hunters so far. The state is home to about 850 wolves, and has set a quota of 220 wolves.
Wolves were prevalent in the northern Rockies in the 1800s, but were trapped and poisoned until their population was close to extinct in the region.
They were re-introduced in 1995, and their population now sits at close to 1,650 in the three-state area.
