[MCN] BREAKING: Wolf hunting season opens today in Montana, Yellowstone wolves in the crosshairs

[Matthew Koehler]

For Release: Wednesday, September 15, 2021

*Montana puts Yellowstone wolves in the crosshairs*

*Wolf hunting season opens today in Montana as state eliminated any cap on
the number of wolves that can be killed in zones bordering Yellowstone
National Park*

*Contact*: Sarah McMillan, WildEarth Guardians, Missoula, MT: (406)
549-3895, smcmillan at wildearthguardians.org

MISSOULA, MONTANA—Starting today, iconic Yellowstone wolves crossing the
boundary of Yellowstone National Park into the state of Montana face
slaughter by trophy hunters with high-powered rifles, including within
federally-designated Wilderness areas. Wolves living in Glacier National
Park face a similar fate when they exit the national park.



Last month
<https://wildearthguardians.org/press-releases/montana-fish-and-wildlife-commission-votes-to-exterminate-wolves/>,
Montana not only eliminated any cap on the number of wolves that can be
killed in hunting and trapping zones bordering Yellowstone National Park
and Glacier National Park, but individuals can now kill a total of 10
wolves per season. New regulations
<https://wildearthguardians.org/press-releases/montana-fish-and-wildlife-commission-votes-to-exterminate-wolves/>
also
allow unethical baiting for wolves statewide, including within federal
public lands and Wilderness areas. Night hunting with artificial lights or
night vision scopes is also allowed on private lands statewide.

“Despite a groundswell of public opposition from individuals across
Montana, the nation, and world, Montana has declared open season on wolves
in the state, clearing the way for nearly 50% of the state’s wolf
population to be decimated in the upcoming hunting and trapping season,”
said Sarah McMillan, the Montana-based conservation director for WildEarth
Guardians.

“Yellowstone’s wolves are nationally and internationally famous and the
biological role these iconic wolves play within the Greater Yellowstone
Ecosystem is priceless. Yet starting today, an individual can slaughter up
to ten Yellowstone wolves for just $12,” explained McMillan.


The general wolf hunting season in Montana runs for the next six months,
until March 15, 2022, while the wolf trapping and snaring season will start
on November 29, 2021 and also run until March 15, 2022.

In response to the on-going slaughter of wolves, in June, WildEarth
Guardians and a coalition of fifty conservation groups asked the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service to immediately restore Endangered Species Act
protections
<https://wildearthguardians.org/press-releases/conservation-groups-ask-biden-administration-to-immediately-restore-wolf-protections-in-northern-rockies/>
to
gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains. In July, Guardians and allies
also petitioned the Biden administration
<https://guardiansaction.org/relistwolves> to list the Western North
American population of gray wolves as a distinct population segment.  Over
120 Tribes have signed “The Wolf: A Treaty of Cultural and Environmental
Survival <https://www.globalindigenouscouncil.com/wolf-treaty>,” and have
called on Interior Secretary Haaland to meet with a Tribal delegation
regarding the Treaty and to reinstate protections for wolves. So far, the
Biden administration has failed to take any steps to protect wolves.

“As we clearly warned would happen, state ‘management’ of wolves
essentially amounts to the brutal state-sanctioned eradication of this
keystone native species,” said McMillan. “We must not abandon wolf-recovery
efforts or allow anti-wolf states, hunters, and trappers to push wolves
back to the brink of extinction.”

Montana’s hunting regulation changes come on the heels of the Biden
administration doubling down
<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-wolf-hunting-protections-criticism-activists/#app>
on
its commitment to keep all wolves federally delisted, despite the massive
public outcry. In August, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service filed a brief
in federal court opposing legal efforts from multiple environmental
groups—including WildEarth Guardians, Western Environmental Law Center, and
Earthjustice—to challenge the federal delisting rule. This case is set for
oral arguments in Northern California District Court in November 2021. As
the Northern Rocky Mountain population of wolves was delisted by an act of
Congress in 2011
<https://wildearthguardians.org/press-releases/10-year-anniversary-of-northern-rockies-wolf-delisting-comes-amid-on-going-slaughter/>,
the outcome of this litigation will not impact wolves in Montana.



Gray wolves became functionally extinct in the lower 48 states in the 1960s
largely due to rampant hunting and trapping, including deliberate
extermination efforts carried out by the federal government. Though first
listed as endangered in 1967 under a precursor to the Endangered Species
Act, gray wolves only began to recover in the West following
reintroductions to central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in the
mid-1990s. Scientists estimated a steady population of about 1,150 wolves
in Montana between 2012 and 2019. However, hunters and trappers killed 328
wolves in Montana during the 2020-2021 season, and the Montana Department
of Fish, Wildlife and Parks now estimates that only 900 to 950 wolves
remain in the state. The total wolf-kill quota for the 2021-2022 hunting
and trapping season in Montana is 450, meaning that nearly 50% of the wolf
population in Montana could be eliminated in the next six months.

# # #


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