The Wolf Preservation Blog

Members of Footloose Montana, from left, Anja Heister, Dave Taylor and Connie Poten, spent a frigid Saturday on Higgins Avenue in downtown Missoula protesting the opening day of wolf trapping season and trapping in general.

“Montana’s 2012 wolf hunt shifted to a new gear on Saturday as trapping became a legal way to take the predators.

However, state Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials don’t expect a rush of activity over the weekend. Trappers could not place traps before Saturday, and may leave them unchecked for up to 48 hours. They must report any kills within 24 hours.

Experienced trapper Mike Day of Missoula said he didn’t expect much success at all from the state’s new trapping program. Between the unhelpful weather and the difficult rules, he doubted the wolves had much to fear.

“We’re going to have a bunch of dingbats running around with great big traps not knowing what they’re doing,” Day said on Friday. “It’s designed to fail.”

FWP rules prohibit setting traps within 150 feet of a road or trail, as well as 1,000 feet from trailheads and campgrounds. Day said because wolves tend to travel on the same roads and trails humans do, they’ll never encounter the traps.

“It’s just like real estate – location, location,” Day said. “If your location’s wrong, you’re not going to catch nothing.”

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About 10 members of Footloose Montana braved the December wind to stage a protest on the Higgins Avenue on Saturday. The group’s director, Filip Panusz, said members in Helena, Great Falls and Bozeman planned similar demonstrations.

“Myself, I’m a strong supporter of fair-chase hunting and bow-hunting,” Panusz said on Saturday. “But trapping is not fair chase. It’s not a clean kill. The animal suffers, maybe for days. You don’t know your target, so you could catch all kinds of other, non-target species. And you’re using bait, which is an unfair advantage that’s not allowed in any other kind of hunting.”

Panusz said Footloose Montana members were widely divided on the issue of killing wolves, but were unified in opposition to using traps. In addition to injuring or killing pet dogs and hunting dogs, trapping hurts Montana’s image and economy, he said. While U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency surveys report the Montana economy annually brings in $310 million a year from hunters and $376 million from wildlife watchers, Panusz said trapping produces barely 1 percent of that amount.

Montana’s rifle season for wolves continues through Feb. 28. But big game hunters took only 93 wolves during the regular October-November season. The state set a quota of 220 wolves in its 2011 hunting season but recorded only 166 kills. This year, FWP opted to forego a quota but monitor kills to ensure the state did not get close to a low threshold of 150 wolves. Going below that figure could trigger resumption of federal Endangered Species Act controls in Montana. More than 600 wolves are estimated to live in Montana.

In Idaho, rifle hunters have killed 116 wolves while trappers have taken another seven, according to Idaho Fish and Game reports. During the 2011-12 season, Idaho reported 255 wolves shot and 124 trapped. The state has no upper quota for wolf kills. Its season runs through March 31, 2013, in most parts of the state except in remote areas west of Montana’s Bitterroot Mountain Range, where hunters can remain active until June 30.

Wyoming, which added a wolf hunt this year after gaining state control of its wolf population in early 2012, has reported at least 58 kills . The state has a quota of 52 wolves in a “trophy zone” around Yellowstone and Teton national parks, and hunters there have reported taking 39 animals. The rest of the state has no quota. Hunters have reported killing 19 wolves in that “predatory zone.” The Wyoming wolf season lasts through Dec. 31.”

**Special thanks to Missoulian (http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/wolf-trapping-season-begins-protest-held-in-missoula/article_188067f4-470d-11e2-aa57-0019bb2963f4.html) for providing this information.

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“An estimated 10 wolves from Yellowstone National Park have been killed by hunters this month, adversely affecting the park’s wolf research program, one of    the longest studies of its kind.

“Losing the wolves has been a big hit to us scientifically,” says wildlife biologist Douglas Smith, leader of Yellowstone’s wolf project, which has tracked    the wolves since their reintroduction in 1995. The killings came just as researchers, who are partly funded by a 5-year U.S. National Science Foundation    grant, were set to begin the wolf project’s annual winter survey of the canids’ predatory habits.

The wolves were shot by licensed hunters outside the national park during the legal wolf hunting season that opened this fall in Montana, Idaho, and    Wyoming. Seven of the wolves were wearing radio-collars that help scientists track the wolves. Two “were the only collared members of their packs,” Smith    says. “So, now we can’t track those packs.” In addition, two of the wolves had specialized GPS collars that collect data every 30 minutes, which has helped    researchers better understand wolves’ movements and predatory behaviors. Only one wolf in the study program is now left with such a collar.

Smith says that all seven radio-collared wolves were within 1 to 3 miles of the park’s unmarked boundary when killed. “We don’t know why they left; one had    never gone outside before, and three of the others did so only infrequently,” he says. The wolves may have been in pursuit of prey, since the park’s elk    also migrate out of the park at this time of year; or they may have been enticed by the gut piles hunters leave behind after shooting and dressing out an    elk. Many professional hunting camps are set up around the park’s boundaries close to known elk migration routes. The wolves, too, are used to humans,    “which could make them more vulnerable to hunting,” Smith says.

The wolves’ deaths mark the second time in 3 years that collared Yellowstone research wolves have been shot by hunters. Some worry that hunters are    targeting the radio-collared animals. The hunters returned the collars to the park’s wolf project.

Although Yellowstone’s wolves are protected while they roam inside the park, they now can be legally shot as soon as they set foot outside. Wolves in    Montana and Idaho were removed from the federal endangered species list in May 2011; those in Wyoming were downlisted on 30 September. The Wyoming wolf    hunting season opened the next day.

While lamenting the loss of the wolves, some of whom were well-known to park visitors, park officials stressed that Yellowstone’s wolf population remains    healthy, with approximately 88 individuals. “These were loved, iconic wolves,” says Dan Hottle, a park spokesperson, but their loss does not “adversely    affect our ecosystem.” But the wolves’ social structure and stability may be affected, Smith says. There could also be an impact on tourism, observers say:    A 2006 University of Montana study estimated that the wolves draw in $35 million a year in tourist dollars to the park and surrounding areas.

Scientists predict that the loss of the collared wolves will have a big impact on both the park’s research project and numerous other independent studies    investigating a variety of issues, such as elk management and ecology. The collars collect data intended to help wildlife managers better understand wolf    behavior, particularly the canids’ effect on elk. And unless a wolf is wearing a collar, researchers say they can’t be sure that it is an animal that uses    the park. The killings are “very unfortunate, because of the harm it does to the research,” says Bob Ream, a retired wolf biologist from the University of    Montana, and chair of the state’s Fish, Wildlife & Parks Commission, which oversees the hunts. “I would like to think this was not done intentionally.”    Intentional or not, Smith notes that of the killed wolves that were known to have used the park, an estimated 70% were wearing collars.

Smith and others, including park officials and conservationists, have lobbied officials in the three states to establish buffer zones around the park to    protect the wolves from hunting. Only Montana, however, has made an effort to do so. It has reduced the quota in one hunting district north of the park    from 15 wolves to three.

Smith has teams out now in search of the two packs that no longer have collared individuals. “Scientifically, our goal was to study a population of wolves    that was not exploited by people,” he says. “Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.”

**Special thanks to Science Insider,  http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/11/yellowstone-park-research-wolves.html?ref=hp, for providing this information!

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