Wildlife advocates again ask courts to stop new wolf regulations
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) After a judge denied a request to suspend Montana’s wolf season three years ago, wildlife advocates are now trying again after the Fish, Wildlife & Parks commission recently increased the wolf quota.
Four wildlife advocacy groups this week filed in Lewis and Clark County district court for a temporary restraining order, which usually lasts a few weeks, and a follow-on preliminary injunction to stop FWP from applying the 2025 wolf season regulations that could potentially kill more than 500 wolves. The four organizations - Wildearth Guardians, Project Coyote, Footloose Montana and the Gallatin Wildlife Association - are asking the judge to maintain the status quo, which would keep the 2024 regulations in place.
“The strongest position one can find themselves in when it comes to wildlife management is to have a management decision based upon science and morality,” said Clint Nagel, Gallatin Wildlife Association president. “We have neither here in this case as positioned by the state of Montana.”
The organizations filed a complaint against FWP and the FWP commission in November 2022, after the 2021 Legislature passed four bills mandating that various killing methods be used to hunt and trap wolves, including snares, night-hunting with spotlights and longer seasons. The FWP commission, most of whom were appointed by incoming Governor Greg Gianforte, then upped the wolf quotas in the affected FWP regions during their August 2022 season-setting meeting.
At the time, the plaintiffs asked Lewis and Clark County District Court Judge Christopher Abbott to stop the 2022-2023 wolf season. Abbott granted their temporary restraining order but then didn’t grant the preliminary injunction, saying the plaintiffs hadn’t shown that the new rules posed a sufficient threat to the wolf population.
But now, after the changes that the FWP commission made in August to the wolf season, the plaintiffs have returned, asking the judge not to stop the wolf season completely but to keep it the way it was in 2024. Meanwhile, the lawsuit filed in 2022 is still working its way through the system.
“Unlike the situation in 2022, there is now a significant risk that, absent an injunction, Montana’s wolf population will be substantially degraded or eradicated, rendering Petitioner’s litigation futile,” the plaintiffs said in Tuesday’s filing.
On Aug. 21, the commission voted to allow the wolf season to continue until the wolf population drops to less than 458 or the season ends. The season runs from Sept. 1 to March 15. The statewide wolf population is currently estimated at 1,091, so if hunters and trappers do their worst, around 600 wolves could die in one season. That’s more than 50% of the population, a mortality rate far greater than the 27% that FWP’s 2024 wolf report says will result in population declines.
In addition, that population number of 1,091 is only an estimate that was calculated by FWP’s own model, the Integrated Patch Occupancy Model or iPOM. But some scientists have questioned the applicability of the model, and a recent peer-reviewed journal article shows that iPOM over-estimates wolf population abundance.
The plaintiffs say there could be fewer wolves than what FWP says. And if the total population number isn’t accurate, there’s no way to know when the population drops below 458 wolves. With more snares on the landscape and people hunting with bait, night-vision scopes and spotlights, the wolf population could drop even lower before the commission would know they needed to stop the season.
In their Tuesday filing, the plaintiffs said the wolf quota that the FWP commission set for the 2025 season could cause irreparable harm to Montana’s wolf population, “including severe depletion, genetic erosion and inbreeding, and the risk of eradication.”
The plaintiffs claim that FWP’s wolf rules violate their Constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, which “includes but is not limited to air, water and land,” and that extends to the protection of wildlife. They also claim that the FWP commission violated their Constitutional right to participate when the commission limited public testimony to 30 seconds to a minute per person during the August meeting.
“Montana’s reckless and unscientific wolf eradication program must stop,” said Lizzy Pennock, WildEarth Guardians carnivore coexistence attorney. “Every year, the public comes out en masse to protest the unethical wolf regulations, but the Commission continues to ignore most Montanans in favor of minority, fringe special interest groups hell bent on killing wolves. This is not how the state should be managing wildlife.”
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.