Earth Protect Blog

By Matthew Brown and Iris Samuels The Associated Press

BILLINGS, MONT. » Payments for dead wolves. Unlimited hunting of the animals. Shooting wolves from the air.

Wolf hunting policies in some states are taking an aggressive turn, as Republican lawmakers and conservative hunting groups push to curb their numbers and propose tactics shunned by many wildlife managers.

In Montana, lawmakers are advancing measures to allow shooting wolves at night and payments to hunters reminiscent of bounties that widely exterminated the species last century. Idaho legislation would allow hunters to shoot them from motorized parachutes, ATVs or snowmobiles year-round with no limits in most areas.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, just weeks after President Donald Trump’s administration lifted protections for wolves in the Great Lakes region, hunters using hounds and trappers blew past the state’s harvest goal and killed almost twice as many as planned.

The timing of the Wisconsin hunt was bumped up following a lawsuit that raised concerns President Joe Biden’s administration would intervene to restore gray wolf protections. The group behind the suit has close links to Republican political circles including influential donors the Koch brothers and notable Trump loyalists — Kris Kobach, a former U.S. Senate candidate from Kansas, and rock star and gun rights advocate Ted Nugent.

Antipathy toward wolves for killing livestock and big game dates to early European settlement of the American West in the 1800s, and flared up again after wolf populations rebounded under federal protection. What’s emerging now is different: an increasingly politicized campaign to drive down wolf numbers sometimes using methods anathema to North American hunting traditions, according to former wildlife officials and advocates.

“It’s not a scientific approach to wildlife management. It’s management based on vengeance,” said Dan Vermillion, former chairman of Montana’s fish and wildlife commission. Vermillion and others said wolves were being used to stoke political outrage in the same way Second Amendment gun rights were used in recent elections to raise fears Democrats would restrict firearms.

Colorado voters in November 2020 narrowly passed a ballot measure directing Colorado parks and wildlife commissioners to make a plan and reintroduce wolves on public land in western Colorado. State wildlife officials must reintroduce an undetermined number of gray wolves, enough to ensure wolf survival, by the end of 2023 on former habitat west of the Continental Divide.

Hanging in the balance is a decades- long initiative that brought back thousands of wolves in the Rocky Mountains, Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions. Considered among scientists and environmentalists a major conservation success, the predator’s return remains a sore point for ranchers whose livestock are sometimes attacked by wolves and hunters who consider wolf packs competition in the pursuit of elk, deer and other big game.

In Montana and Idaho, wolf numbers exploded after their reintroduction from Canada in the 1990s. Federal protections were lifted a decade ago. The states have been holding annual hunts since, and wildlife officials cite stable population levels as evidence of responsible wolf management.

That has not satisfied hunting and livestock groups and their Republican allies in those legislatures, who contend 1,500 wolves in Idaho and 1,200 in Montana are damaging the livelihoods of big game outfitters and cattle and sheep producers.

“Too many wolves,” Republican state Sen. Bob Brown said of his mountainous district in northwest Montana. He’s sponsoring a bounty-like program that’s similar to one in Idaho and would reimburse hunting and trapping expenses through a private fund.

A separate measure from Brown would allow the use of bait and night-vision scopes. Another proposal would allow snares, which critics say are indiscriminate and can accidentally catch pets or other animals.

In response to concerns that the treatment of wolves will drive away tourists hoping to glimpse one in places such as Montana’s Glacier National Park, Brown said their negative impact can’t be ignored.

“I certainly believe there are people who come to look at wolves,” he said. “But we are also hurting the outfitting industry.”

Critics including Democratic Sen. Pat Flowers, a former state wildlife department supervisor, warned of a significant toll on Montana’s wolf population. State Senate Minority Leader Jill Cohenour, also a Democrat, said the proposals would “take us right back to having them listed” as an endangered species.

Wolves lost federal species protections in the western Great Lakes in 2011, but they were reimposed three years later under court order.

The Trump administration lifted protections again five days before the November election, when Interior Secretary David Bernhardt traveled to Minnesota to announce the move.

On President Joe Biden’s first day in office, the White House said it would review the wolf decision.

Wisconsin officials already were planning a hunt in November when Hunter Nation, founded in 2018, sued to force a hunt immediately. The group cited a possible return of protections by the Biden administration.

Hunters and trappers killed at least 216 wolves of Wisconsin’s 1,100 wolves over three days, nearly doubling the state’s target of 119 animals and forcing an early shutdown of the season.

Former federal wildlife agent Carter Niemeyer, who killed wolves that preyed on cattle in the Northern Rockies and was later involved in restoration efforts, said wolves are too resilient to be easily eradicated. But he warned the tactics being used will alienate large segments of the public to hunting and trapping.

“They’re running them down with hound dogs,” he said. “That’s wolf killing. That’s not wolf trapping or wolf hunting.”

The Denver Post’s Bruce Finley contributed to this report.