The disturbing news that Montana has drastically over-estimated its wolf population and used a deeply flawed model to justify killing hundreds of wolves has poured across the state over the last few weeks. It’s awful timing, too: the news arrives just before August 13th, International Wolf Day, when Montanans should be celebrating our natural heritage, not reckoning with how badly the state has mismanaged it. But many of us who work to protect Montana’s wolves have long known that something was amiss with population numbers. We raised the alarm for five years—and were finally proven right.
Having known the implications of this mistake does not dim our outrage. But those of us in the know were not surprised at Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) having to admit to its error. The model had already been heavily criticized by independent scientists and is the subject of ongoing lawsuits.
In short, Montana used a tool called iPOM (integrated Patch Occupancy Model) that utilizes a few data inputs (known wolf locations, territory range, crowdsourced information from hunters, etc.) and spits out a population number. Last year that “estimate” was precisely 1,094, much the same as it has been since 2021. The primary driver of the error, as I understand it, was over-estimating wolf pack sizes. And the outcome is that the number that drove the pro-killing policy was off by at least one-third.
Justifiably, the conservation community and the Montana public are angry. And the notion that “Montana FWP can’t count and therefore can’t actually manage wolves” is the latest talking point levied against an agency and state decision-makers who have waged an ill-advised war on wolves for years, decimating the population and facilitating cruelty in the form of barely-recognizable “hunting” (like using night-vision goggles to shoot wolves in the dark, an abomination).
But if we take a few steps back and gain perspective, it’s obvious that something far worse is happening. This entire debacle, the notion that we can count the wolves and therefore have the right to decide how many are to die each year, is in itself an abomination. Even if FWP knew exactly how many wolves there are, that doesn’t justify the killing or the cruelty.
This notion goes beyond wolves; it extends to all living things. Reducing wildlife to some precise number, correct or incorrect, is an abhorrent way to interact with the non-human lives around us. Because we can tally the number of bees in a hive justifies our authority over the colony and allows us to do what we want with it? So long as we know exactly how many meadow lupines are in a valley, we should be able to build a data center there? Who are we?
Knowing something with supposed precision (FWP now says there are between exactly 618 and exactly 836 wolves in the state) is not the same as knowing something with wisdom, clarity, and forethought. And when we get trapped in the bureaucratic worship of numbers to justify our relationship with other living things, we get trapped in thinking we are superior. But then we screw up in spite of this alleged superiority. And we screw up over and over again, destroying natural places and driving species to extinction along the way. If only we had counted better!
FWP has “confidence” in the new version of iPOM, just like it had confidence in the last version. I think it’s high time we swapped out our confidence for a little bit of humility, perspective, and curiosity.
Lizzy Pennock is the Montana-based carnivore coexistence attorney for WildEarth Guardians, a non-profit conservation group committed to protecting and restoring the wildlife, wild places, wild rivers, and health of the American West.