During the last two legislative sessions Montana’s Republicans have put incredible energy into legislation allowing, among other cruelties, wolf baiting and trapping, snaring and suffocating, night hunting, bounties, killing pregnant and nursing females.
What’s their problem with wolves? Fact-free arguments about livestock depredation and overzealous predation don’t fly anymore. After years of acrimony over such bills and repeated fact-checking, we all know that only the tiniest fraction of livestock losses can be attributed to wolves, and the state reimburses losses at market value. Contrary to what anti-wolfers say, there isn’t an elk problem in Montana. Elk numbers are at or over Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ objectives in nearly every region. Rather than wolves, Chronic Wasting Disease is a problem, one that wolves are willing to work with FWP to solve. Maybe this is why the livestock industry has not supported these bills and why FWP testified against a bill that would permit killing pregnant and lactating wolves.
Most Montanans have no problem with wolves. Seventy-four percent of us favor or are highly tolerant of them, according to a 2024 survey from the Montana Institute of Tourism and Recreation, and we, along with millions of ecotourists, spend $82.7 million a year joyfully watching and photographing them.
Imagine if the Helena trifecta put all of its anti-wolf energy into solving actual problems – sky-high property taxes; affordable housing; wages well below the national average; the highest suicide and worst DUI records in the country.
Montana has problems. Wolves are not among them.
Deborah Slicer
Huson