Montana wolf death toll: 225

The rate at which gray wolves are dying in Montana took a big jump during the state's second hunting season since a rider to federal budget law cost the species Endangered Species Act protection.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks announced Monday that 225 gray wolves were killed in the state during the recently-closed hunting season, a 36 percent increase over the 2011-2012 seasonal total.

"We're generally pleased with these results," Jeff Hagener, MFWP's director, said in a statement. "The overall harvest of 225 wolves this season is higher than last year and reflects the more liberal harvest opportunities that were added for 2012. The effectiveness of hunters and now trappers together continues to grow."

Hunters accounted for 128 deaths, the agency said, while trappers killed 97 more.

The toll does not indicate a high likelihood of success for individual hunters. According to data released by MFWP, 18,642 permits to hunt wolves were issued during the 2012-2013 hunting season.

Next year's total might be even higher. The Montana legislature recently enacted, and the state's governor signed into law, a bill that increases the number of wolf hunting licenses that any individual can hold and lowers the price of an out-of-state resident's license to shoot a wolf from $350 to $50.

That said, the number of living wolves within the state likely exceeds this year's death toll. At the end of 2011 there were more than 600 wolves in the state, according to MFWP.

Montana governor signs bill banning hunting buffer zones for wolves around national parks

There will be no buffer zone around Yellowstone National Park in which wolves cannot be hunted, at least not if Montana has anything to say about it.

A bill that forbids Montana's wildlife management agency from establishing such zones for the Rocky Mountain gray wolf was signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Steve Bullock.

The legislation takes away a tool that Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks considered using to limit the killing of wolves that were collared as part of a federal study. At least nine individual collared wolves that either lived in Yellowstone or recently migrated out of the park were killed in 2012.

The director of Yellowstone National Park had sought the buffer zone to assure the stability of packs that reside primarily in the federal preserve.

A state court judge had refused to allow the Montana Wildlife Commission to impose a wolf hunting buffer zone, enjoining such a step in an order issued last month.

Wolf populations inside Yellowstone have declined by about 25 percent since hunting of the iconic animal resumed in the northern Rockies several years ago.

HB 73 will continue to allow MFWP to close areas to wolf hunting if a quota has been met.

The bill also lowers the cost of a wolf hunting permit from $350 to $50 and allows hunters to obtain more than one wolf permit. It also opens the door to the use of simulated wolf calls as a way to lure the animals closer to a shooter.

HB 73 goes into effect immediately, which means it will likely have a quick impact on the number of Rocky Mountain gray wolves killed in Montana. The wolf hunting season in the Treasure State is underway now.

Hunting of the wolf in Montana became legal in 2011 after President Barack Obama signed legislation that included a provision removing the individuals of the species in Montana, Idaho, and portions of Oregon, Utah, and Washington from the Endangered Species List.

According to the environmental protection advocacy group Predator Defense, at least 1,000 individual wolves in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming have been killed since that decision.

Of that number, 582 wolves have been killed in Idaho, 346 have been killed in Montana, and at least 74 have died at hunters' hands in Wyoming.

The Obama administration acted on its own to remove ESA protection from Wyoming gray wolves last year.

That total does not include several hundred more wolves killed in the northern Rockies, along with Wisconsin and Minnesota, by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services branch and other government predator killing programs.

Lawsuits challenging Wyoming wolf management pile up

Another lawsuit attacking the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's decision to grant Wyoming essentially unrestricted discretion in the way it manages the state's gray wolf population has been filed.

The complaint was filed Friday in federal court in Washington, D.C. by the Humane Society of the United States and the Fund for Animals. It follows a lawsuit filed Nov. 26 by a coalition of environmental groups in the U.S. district court in Denver and another case, also filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, by four prominent national environmental advocacy organizations.

"The agency's decision to strip Wyoming wolves of federal protection is biologically reckless and contrary to the requirements of the Endangered Species Act," Jonathan Loworn, an in-house lawyer for HSUS, said in a statement. "Wyoming's regressive wolf management plan is reminiscent of a time when bounties paid by state and federal governments triggered mass killings that nearly exterminated wolves from the lower 48 states."

FWS announced on Aug. 31 that gray wolf populations in Wyoming had fully recovered. The agency removed all gray wolves in the state from the list of endangered and threatened species and approved a management plan that commits Wyoming to maintaining 150 individuals and 15 breeding pairs within its borders.

Environmentalists were harshly critical of the agency's decision, predicting that it could lead to the extirpation of the wolf in Wyoming.

"Wyoming's anti-wolf policies take the state backward, to the days when wolf massacres nearly wiped out wolves in the lower 48 states," Jenny Harbine, an attorney at Earthjustice, a public interest law firm that frequently represents environmental and animal welfare advocacy organizations, said in a statement. "Our nation rejected such predator extermination efforts when we adopted the Endangered Species Act."

Harbine was referring to policies that overtly encouraged the mass slaughter of wolves and extirpated them from all of the nation except Alaska and parts of Minnesota.

The northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf was included on the list of threatened and endangered species in 1974.

FWS' decision to remove the gray wolf population in Wyoming from that list, and to delegate management authority to the state, followed the removal of gray wolf populations in Idaho and Montana from the list of endangered and threatened species via a "rider" to a budget bill enacted by Congress in 2011.

That legislation followed a court decision that negated a Bush administration effort to remove ESA protection from gray wolves in the northern Rockies.

A website maintained by the state's Department of Game & Fish says that there were more than 300 wolves in the state at the time its management plan went into effect. At least 50 of those wolves have been killed since then.

They include one female who was the leader of a pack that frequented Yellowstone National Park's Lamar Valley and a common sight to tourists. She was killed by a hunter outside of the national park on Thursday.

U.S. Department of Justice lawyers have asked the federal district courts in Denver and Washington, D.C. to transfer the first two challenges to FWS' decision to approve Wyoming's wolf management plan to a federal court in Cheyenne.

Photo courtesy U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service; photo by Tracy Brooks.

Concern rises over killing of Yellowstone wolves

The apparent targeting of seven wolves from Yellowstone National Park packs as they roamed outside the park boundaries is raising concern that liberal hunting rules in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho are putting the National Park Service's effort to restore wolves to the Yellowstone ecosystem at risk.

National Parks Traveler has the story.

Feds to take over Idaho wolf management

A television station in Montana reported Thursday that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will take over management of gray wolf populations in southern Idaho.

The report by KECI said that the federal action is in response to Idaho Gov. Butch Otter's decision to abandon state management of the species.

Otter, a Republican, objects to Interior secretary Ken Salazar's decision to forbid a public hunt of gray wolves in the Gem State.

In aletter to Salazar dated Oct. 18, Otter wrote that Idaho has skillfully managed wildlife within its borders, including "your wolves."

Gray wolves north of I-90 in Idaho are protected by the Endangered Species Act. Those south of that highway are not, and it is that population that will now be managed by FWS.

A spokesperson for FWS said Thursday that the agency will investigate all reports of wolf depredation.

Photo courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, photo by Carter Niemeyer.

LA Times: Northern Rockies pols attack gray wolf protections

The Los Angeles Times has posted an informative article about at least two efforts underway in Congress to prevent protection of northern Rockies gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act.

In 2007 the Bush administration removed gray wolves in Montana and Idaho from the endangered species list. But a federal judge recently held that the decision violated the Endangered Species Act because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service separated populations in Wyoming from those two states for regulatory purposes.

In August Judge Donald Molloy ordered the entire population in the northern Rockies returned to the list.

The original recovery target for gray wolves in the region was 300 individuals. There are now more than 1,700 in the three states.

The bills that either are, or will be, before Congress would, if enacted into law, mark the first time that a federal wildlife agency is ordered by statute to remove a species from the protection of the Endangered Species Act.

Yellowstone's famed Druid Peak pack of gray wolves almost gone

Yellowstone's pioneering wolf family, the Druid Peak pack, is down to its last member.

That lone survivor of the famous group of gray wolves, which has been a draw to tourists worldwide and a subject of consistent interest to scientists since re-introduction of the animals to the national park in 1996, might not survive this winter.

“The Druid pack is kaput,” Doug Smith, Yellowstone’s wolf biologist, told the Billings Gazette.

There were still 11 wolves in the pack as late as January.

Then the alpha female was killed in a fight with another pack and the alpha male disappeared. Before doing so, he contracted mange, a disease that can kill animals with compromised immune systems.

Seven other females in the pack have died from mange or after being injured in fights.

When introduced to the nation's oldest national park on Apr. 14, 1996, the Druid Peak pack had five members. It grew to 37 members by 2001, sustained by the ample quantity of elk in its home area on the northwest corner of the park.

By the next year the pack had split up, and by 2005 the number of wolves was down to four adults.

The Druid Peak pack would not be the first to disappear from the Yellowstone ecosystem since re-introduction. At least six others have died out.

But the Druid Peak pack may be one of a kind.

In a first, some of its members were filmed in 2001 in the act of killing a grizzly bear cub.

Then, in 2003, researchers recorded the pack welcoming a new male member, an event never before documented by humans.

Perhaps that illustrious history is a reason that some observers continue to be optimistic about the pack's future.

"I would say they are down and out, but not done yet,” Rick McIntyre, a Yellowstone Wolf Project technician who has worked with the Druid Peak pack since before they were released from cages nearly fifteen years ago, told the Gazette.

The gray wolf was first listed as an endangered species in the United States in 1967. Restoration of the species to its historic range in Yellowstone National Park was mandated by the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

In May 2009 the Fish and Wildlife Service removed the Yellowstone wolves, along with others that made up a distinct group called the Northern Rocky Mountains Distinct Population Segment, from the endangered species list.

Commentary: Colorado wildlife agency shouldn't feel heat over possible presence of wolves in state

Apparently the Colorado Division of Wildlife is feeling pressure over wolves, although there has not yet been any confirmation that a pack of wolves has taken up residence on the Western Slope.

A story in today's Los Angeles Times highlights the entirely expected lobbying hitting the agencies from all sides.

Some ranchers apparently remain convinced that they cannot shield livestock from being eaten by the predators without killing them, while others naturally argue that there are non-lethal ways to protect cows and sheep.

Some callers, the Times reports, have felt the need to accuse the owner of land where some wolf scat has allegedly been found of perpetrating a hoax.

Lost in the argument, of course, is that it's not clear whether rancher Paul R. Vahldiek Jr. has discovered actual evidence of wolves on his land near De Beque.

According to the article, Vahldiek has requested a DNA test on the scat found amidst aspens at his High Lonesome Ranch. Results aren't expected for several months.

Wolves are still an endangered species in Colorado.

Whatever those tests reveal, it is disheartening to learn that wildlife officers continue to be pestered to kill an animal that is far more woven into the fabric of the American west than livestock. Cattle and sheep are part of the landscape, yes, but their existence in this region should not come at the expense of a misguided effort to kill endangered wolves, especially when non-lethal alternatives are readily available.

Have wolves returned to Colorado?

This story from the Feb. 5, 2010 issue of High Country News says they may have.

And the Denver Post says that biologists are looking for them.

Gray wolves were extirpated from Colorado in the first half of the 20th century and the last confirmed sighting of an individual in the state was in 1943.

However, since reintroduction of the species to Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s populations of the animal have begun to pop around the Rocky Mountain region.

The gray wolf was listed as an endangered species for more than three decades before the administration of President George W. Bush removed it from the list of those species protected by the Endangered Species Act. Current Interior Secretary Ken Salazar re-affirmed that decision in spring 2009.

Environmentalists have challenged it but, in September 2009, a federal judge ruled that hunting of the species in the northern Rockies could continue.

Are the Yellowstone wolves in trouble?

The number of gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park is declining.

That's the gist of a report in today's USA Today, which says that the population of the animals in the nation's oldest national park is down by a third from its high in 2003.

The species, which was re-introduced to Yellowstone in 1995, is stressed because hunting in areas around the park is now permitted. The U.S. government removed the gray wolf from the list of endangered and threatened species in 2008.

Management plans for the species proposed or adopted by Wyoming, Idaho and Montana would allow the number of individuals to fall from about 1,650 to 450.

In addition, the number of elk in and around Yellowstone National Park has significantly dropped since wolves were re-introduced.

NYT: More protection for wolves needed

The New York Times published today an editorial arguing that too much hunting of wolves is being allowed in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

The piece is worth a read.

Obama Kills Effort to De-List Northern Rockies Gray Wolves

President Barack Obama ordered Tuesday that all pending federal regulations be suspended, including one that would de-list two populations of the gray wolf, including those native to the northern Rockies.

The new president acted through a memorandum issued to all federal agencies by his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, shortly after being inaugurated.

The rule de-listing the gray wolf, which had previously been finalized in February 2008, was struck down by a federal judge last summer.

The Bush administration had announced Jan. 14 that it would again de-list the Northern Rockies population of the wolf, as well as a population in the western Great Lakes region, as of Feb. 13.

A previous attempt by the Bush administration to re-classify all populations of the gray wolf, except the population in the southwest, as threatened species was blocked by federal district courts in Oregon and Vermont in 2005.

The gray wolf was originally listed as an endangered species throughout the 48 continental states and in Mexico in 1974.

Photo courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Feds to Withdraw Wolf De-Listing?

The Associated Press reports that the Bush Administration plans to withdraw its ruling de-listing the Northern Rocky Mountains gray wolf.

If true, such a decision would mean that the wolves of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming would remain protected by the Endangered Species Act.

A federal judge in Montana ruled in July that the de-listing was unlawful.

Judge Orders Gray Wolves Returned to Endangered Species List

The Rocky Mountain gray wolf is again an endangered species.

The population numbers haven't changed since the Bush Administration removed the species a few months ago. Instead, a federal judge in Montana issued an injunction Friday requiring the Interior Department to restore Canis lupus to protected status.

According to a New York Times article to be published in Saturday's editions, the court's decision was heavily swayed by the administration's decision to reverse course from an early refusal to allow Wyoming to put in place a management plan allowing extensive hunting.

According to a press release issued by Natural Resources Defense Council, one wolf per day has been killed, with mortality exceeding 100 animals, since the Bush Interior Department removed Endangered Species Act protections on March 28, 2008.

The gray wolf was originally listed as an endangered species in 1973, shortly after the Endangered Species Act became law. The species was eliminated from about 95 percent of its habitat in the United States by the 1930s after a lengthy, government-sponsored extermination campaign.