BY ROB CHANEY OF THE MISSOULIAN
This fall’s Montana wolf hunt will face critics who say it’s too extreme and not extreme enough.
State Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials got a taste of the divide on Tuesday during a Missoula listening session. While not ready for formal public comments, Region 2 Supervisor Mack Long invited the roughly 50 people in the audience to lay out the issues that should be considered. They obliged.
“It’s not too late to turn things around, but we’ve got to do it quick,” Long said. “This is one of the most dynamic times we’ve ever seen in wildlife management.”
At stake are proposed changes to how hunters can pursue wolves and mountain lions in coming years. The FWP Board of Commissioners is accepting written comments on the wolf plan until June 25. But the lion feedback must be delivered by this Friday.
Region 2 wildlife manager Mike Thompson said the agency hasn’t yet proven it can move the numbers of wolves up and down reliably. Hunters failed to reach the 220-wolf kill quota in last year’s hunt, and a minimum estimate of 653 wolves prowl the Rocky Mountain portion of Montana. That’s up from about 256 wolves in 2005.
“The trick is how we work out something that feels like success to everybody,” Thompson said. The agency must balance the desires of hunters who want plentiful elk and deer populations, livestock owners who don’t like too many wolves or elk on their land, and wolf advocates who argue the predator has returned a better natural balance to meadows, bird habitat and other parts of the backcountry. And all of that has to happen under the scrutiny of federal wildlife officials, who can return the gray wolf to threatened or endangered protection status if its numbers drop too low.
The proposed wolf hunt changes include an archery season in the late summer, a slightly longer general rifle season, trapping, and possibly the permission of electronic calling and three tags per hunter. Those last two would require law changes by the Legislature.
That wasn’t enough for several speakers in the audience. Some suggested the state allow aerial shooting by state or federal authorities to reduce wolf numbers. Others wanted to allow snare traps, which have proven successful in Idaho and Alaska.
Thompson said snares also tend to catch too many non-target animals besides wolves, so the state preferred to use the more challenging methods.
But others in the audience criticized all trapping as inhumane and uncivilized. They questioned why public trappers got 48 hours to check their traps, while state and federal trappers usually have to monitor theirs every 24 hours or less.
“If we focus only on wolves, we’re missing the point,” Thompson said. “There’s a bloc of carnivores out there working on prey. We’ve got to try and balance them all.”
That includes mountain lions, which had seen a big drop in hunting kills since a heyday in the late 1990s. The new proposal would try to increase kills of female lions by 30 percent over the next three years, which should bring the population down to a manageable level “with a surgeon’s knife instead of a chain saw,” as Thompson put it.
Part of that involves keeping the present limited permits for early-season hunters, but opening it to general license holders after Feb. 1 in all areas where kill quotas haven’t been reached. That should allow for both uncrowded trophy hunts and ensure the management goals are reached.
Comments on both wolf and lion hunting proposals may be mailed to FWP, Wildlife Bureau, Attn: Public Comment, POB 200701, Helena, Mont. 59620-0701. To email wolf comments, use the FWP page here.
For mountain lion comments, use the FWP page here.