To understand how thorny a problem wolf management is in Montana, just look at the clock.
The August 21 state Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting started at 8:30 a.m. and ticked a dozen items off its agenda before noon.
The debate over 2025-26 wolf regulations took another seven hours.
At the end of the day, the commissioners had set a quota of 452 wolves to be killed in the 2025-26 season, up from 334. They removed trapping setbacks from Mineral County and a roaded portion of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. They turned down proposals to make wolf hunting essentially year round, and to create a new wolf-hunting zone in the Bob Marshall. They approved new rules for presenting carcasses and buying licenses.
But around those specific votes swirled much larger questions of scientific fact, fair chase, what’s at risk and who’s in charge. These issues played out in the debates over what rules should apply to Montana’s wolves roaming the lands around Yellowstone National Park.
Around those specific commission votes swirled much larger questions of scientific fact, fair chase, what’s at risk and who’s in charge.
Susan Kirby Brooke represents the commission’s Southwest Montana Region 3, extending north of the park from Lost Trail Pass to Cooke City. It holds an estimated 173 of the state’s 1,106 wolves. It also holds a complicated mix of stakeholders concerned that a statewide wolf policy would have a disproportionate impact on their local landscape.
“I have hundreds of people who have written letters, who have businesses, who are agriculture-based, that are asking us to leave Region 3 at the existing quota,” Brooke told her fellow commissioners at the meeting. “I don’t know why we continue to focus on 173 wolves, and driving them down, when they are part of the tools for managing elk in Region 3. Ag producers and people whose livelihoods are based on wolves want me to advocate for a quota in Region 3.”
Western Montana commissioners Ian Wargo of Region 1 and Jeff Burrows of Region 2 complained that wolves were depressing their elk herds. Brooke said Region 3 wolves weren’t eating enough elk. And those Region 3 elk were eating the barley and potatoes and hay that farmers and ranchers depend on, while the wolves were drawing tourists that help community businesses thrive.
Although Greater Yellowstone’s wolf numbers lag behind the larger populations in Montana’s northwest, it gets disproportionate attention and impact from wolf hunting and trapping. Governor Greg Gianforte got an official warning after killing a trapped wolf there in 2021. In turn, Gianforte has blasted “environmental extremists [who] abuse the ESA and ride the gravy train of judicial activism.”
PICK A NUMBER
During the commission meeting, Brooke broached three of the big questions stalking wolf management: Should FWP have a statewide policy or go region by region? Are wolves causing the same problems everywhere? And how do we decide what facts and numbers to use?
Brooke and Commission Chairwoman Lesley Robinson tangled with that last question head-to-head when Brooke tried to carve a Region 3 subquota out of the proposed statewide wolf bag limit of at least 450 wolves.
Region 3 had a quota of 52 wolves in the 2024-25 season, and reached that tally halfway through the season. The area received 40,000 “wolf hunter days,” which according to Brooke, explained why it hit its quota so quickly. Regions 1 and 2 in the wolf-heavy western third of Montana each logged about 20,000 wolf hunter days and failed to fill quotas.
Brooke asked the commission to repeat R3’s 52-wolf number for the 2025-26 season. The members deadlocked 3-3, and Robinson started negotiating with Brooke: Legislators were pushing to move the kill total from 300 closer to 500. Region 3 needed to rise with the tide.
“I just think there’s got to be some movement,” Robinson said during the meeting. “Could you set a more reasonable number – a number that could possibly pass?”
“You want me to come up with a number?” Brooke replied. “I try to make this decision based on information and science from the department. Anything other than that is anecdotal. What would make you comfortable?”
Robinson replied that the statewide 500 quota was also “based on science.” “I’ll throw one out there: 60.”
Brooke seconded the 60 quota. Commissioner Burrows offered another methodology: 40 percent of the estimated number of wolves in Region 3. That would produce a quota of 72 wolves.
Commission Vice Chair K.C. Walsh called that method “super-random.” Burrows retorted: “The number is absolutely not super-random. It’s the center point for acceptable mortality for wolves.”
Robinson called the question on the 60-wolf limit for R3. The members deadlocked again 3-3, and this time Robinson sided with Brooke to break the tie.
A STATISTICAL CHALLENGE
Questions about whether FWP’s wolf-counting methods were scientific or super-random dogged the discussion all day. The wildlife agency uses a statistical tool called Integrated Patch Occupancy Modeling, or IPOM, for its wolf census. It’s roughly based on annual surveys FWP does of hunters, asking them if they saw any wolves while pursuing deer or elk. Those results are compared to past FWP staff observations, trail camera records and collared wolves to estimate how many wolves and wolf packs are roaming the state. The 10-year average Montana wolf population has held steady at about 1,100 animals.
One challenge for IPOM is that a wolf isn’t always one wolf, in a statistical sense. Brian Wakeling, FWP’s game management bureau chief, reminded the commission that FWP resists allowing hunting between March 15 and September 1, when wolf packs are raising pups.
“That risks an undocumented effect of ‘take’ on recruitment,” Wakeling said. Killing a mother wolf will likely result in the deaths of her litter of pups, so eliminating that one animal potentially means the loss of seven wolves. Killing a pup turns that math upside down. Because many pups don’t survive to adulthood, the killing of one counts as 0.3 wolves in the IPOM system. The death of a non-breeding adult pack member counts as 1.7 wolves, because its loss could affect pup survival.
IPOM works well as a statewide tool, Wakeling said, but loses effectiveness at smaller geographies. He declined to offer a target number for Region 3 when Brooke requested one.
FWP’s first three regions cover the state’s western Rocky Mountains from Glacier to Yellowstone national parks. Northwest Montana Region 1 has about 500 wolves. West-Central Montana Region 2 has about 300. Region 3 has an estimated 173. The remaining four regions east of the Rockies have about 200 wolves combined.
The numbers matter. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 added gray wolves as an endangered species in 1978 throughout the Lower 48 states except Minnesota. FWP records indicate there were less than 10 wolves in the whole state by the early 1980s. In 1995 and 1996, a federal reintroduction project released 66 Canadian wolves into Yellowstone National Park and Central Idaho.
For Montana, the federal recovery threshold was 150 wolves and 15 breeding pairs. By 2011, the state had an estimated 1,270 wolves and Democratic Senator Jon Tester inserted a rider into a defense appropriations bill delisting gray wolves in Montana and Idaho and blocking further court challenges.
“A [Montana] statewide quota would likely lead to a more disproportional impact on Greater Yellowstone.”
Brian Wakeling, game management bureau chief, FWP
That cleared the way for Montana’s wolf hunting and trapping seasons. But FWP also imposed region-specific upper limits for kills. In 2024, those ranged from 195 in Region 1 to 82 in Region 3 to four in Region 7. If regional wolf kills exceeded those thresholds, the FWP Commission would convene to check if the population was at risk of getting too close to federal Endangered Species Act intervention triggers.
The 2021 Legislature ordered the state’s wildlife managers to reduce Montana’s wolf population by 40 percent. The Fish and Wildlife Commission has been responding with liberalized hunting and trapping tactics, bounties and other incentives. The 2023-24 season sought to bag 313 wolves. Last year’s harvest was pegged at 334. Nevertheless, the number of wolves has held steady over the last several years at about 1,100.
Wakeling told the commissioners that Region 3 receives a greater harvest rate than other parts of the state, and is the one area where wolf numbers are declining. A statewide quota would likely lead to a more disproportional impact on Greater Yellowstone, he said.
“But the order is to reduce the statewide population,” Wakeling said. “And all the tools we’ve used so far have not resulted in a tremendous change in the harvest.”
FAR FROM FINISHED
During the 2025 legislative session, several members pushed to reduce Montana’s 1,100 wolves by at least half. At last week’s meeting, Republican Representative Shannon Maness of Dillon told the commissioners the Legislature’s intent was to drive the population below 450, as a ceiling, not a floor.
Wolf advocates counter that pushing wolf numbers that low has no basis in science, risks returning the species to ESA protection and is ethically unsupportable. Bold Visions Conservation Executive Director Stephen Capra called the commission “dedicated to the slaughter of wolves.”
“In the western part of our state in Sanders County, traps can be placed in the middle of a hiking trail,” Capra wrote in comments sent to Mountain Journal. “In Region 3 near Bozeman, more than 252 dogs were caught in traps in recent years, some died, some lost legs. This commission ignores such realities and shows no concern for the dogs that are family to so many of us.”
Public comments at last week’s meeting, which Robinson first set at two minutes per comment and later reduced to 30 seconds to handle the volume, often became emotional. But many focused on the harder question of who was serving whom.
“We don’t have any state mandate to make sure ecotourism thrives,” testified Chris Morgan, vice president of the Montana Trappers Association. “Our mandate is to reduce the state’s population of wolves.”
Democratic House members Josh Seckinger of Bozeman and Tom France of Missoula retorted that there was no evidence of legislative intent or mandate forcing the commissioners’ hand. Several bills offered in the 2025 legislative session would have required a quote of at least 500 wolves this season. All were defeated.
“We did not pass any bill that sought to impose a sharp decline of wolf numbers,” France said. “We did pass two bills that make it easier for hunters and trappers to kill wolves. The commission would be well-advised to see if those new technologies, including infrared scopes and increased bounties, result in greater harvest. Then we can have this discussion again.”
