It is a dangerous time to be a wolf in Montana. There are an estimated 850 wolves in Big Sky Country, who need to be on the lookout and lay low: open season may be coming!
The gray wolf was delisted from the Endangered Species Act on January 4, 2021, leaving the fate of Montana’s wolves in the hands of individual states. This is detrimental due to lawmakers such as Senator Bob Brown and Representative Paul Fielder, who recently introduced bills that aim to further villainize and compromise the species while rewarding those who attempt to decimate it.
Proposals such as the updated reimbursement act (or private reimbursement for people who kill wolves), expansion of trapping season, and the reclassification of wolves as predators all align to promote what would essentially become “open season” on wolves in Montana. If passed, these bills would allow wolves to be killed year round without license.
The pronounced anti-wolf sentiment underlying these measures, echoed by hunters and lawmakers alike, reflects a collective frustration regarding the diminishing numbers of elk and deer in the region. According to lawmakers, the measures proposed would help restore balance to the state’s dwindling elk and deer population. This mindset is dangerous and disregards the science that elk and deer numbers rise and fall naturally based on the state’s extreme and/or mild winters and summer droughts, among other pressures, which affect the ungulate’s population survival and reproduction rates.
Animal advocates and general opponents of the budding anti-wolf agenda view the bills not only as unethical but also detrimental to the state’s overall big picture. They consider the reimbursement bill to be a bounty on dead animals, and assert it will not achieve what lawmakers are aiming for, which ultimately is greater numbers of elk and deer. Others believe these bills are essentially a crude form of “pest control,” with the state simply reimbursing individuals who are trying to control a “problem” animal.
The proposed anti-wolf bills and the seeming effort to establish open season on gray wolves take a narrow view of a broad situation, and in doing so fail to recognize any positive impact wolves have in Montana’s economic and ecological landscape. They also fail to recognize the intrinsic value of wolves, regardless of its potential to elicit capital.
What we regard as priceless – the lives of animals and the welfare of species – are often deemed valueless by others. What cannot be discounted, however, is the $35 million per year in tourism dollars that wolf watchers alone bring to the greater Yellowstone area. Perhaps those who do not value the wolf as an individual, sentient being, do value $35 million in state income, local businesses, and jobs – and perhaps they will reach the same conclusion about the value of wolves, albeit from an economic standpoint.
Born Free USA opposes all measures that expand opportunity and provide incentive to kill wolves in Montana. Lawmakers’ aim to establish open season on wolves is not only unethical but also unsound in the supposed benefits it would bring.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Ridge
