wolves

Conservationists want the state to update rules for when the animals can be killed after having run-ins with livestock. State wildlife officials are opposed.

Nine wildlife groups sent a letter to Fish, Wildlife & Parks Director Dustin Temple asking for more diverse public involvement in the development of Montana’s updated wolf management plan.

The six wolves were caught with foothold traps and then shot by employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services division.

After two years of wolf population declines, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks has lowered kill quotas for Montana’s wolf hunting and trapping season. But allowing early wolf trapping in more areas may threaten some grizzly bears.

Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks are proposing to reduce the hunting quota for wolves statewide from 450 to 289, according to the department and an interview with a spokesperson.

The state plans to reintroduce wolves to the southern Rocky Mountains in Colorado by the end of the year as voters mandated.

Proposition 114 directed Colorado Parks and Wildlife to “take the steps necessary to begin reintroductions of gray wolves by December 31, 2023.”

Voters narrowly passed a ballot initiative in 2020 tasking the state with bringing the apex predator back to Colorado by the end of 2023.

A slim 50.91% of Centennial State voters supported a measure in 2020 backed by environmental groups to reintroduce wolves.

The gray wolf, Canis lupus, was endemic to Colorado until it was hunted to extinction in the middle of the 20th century.