A gray wolf (Photo by MacNeil Lyons/United States Fish and Wildlife, Midwest Region via Flickr/CC-BY-SA 2.0)
One bill aiming to create an unlimited wolf hunting quota met its end on the House floor Thursday.
On Friday, an amendment to another bill designed to reduce the state’s population of roughly 1,100 resident wolves made it palatable enough to pass the chamber.
House Bill 176 initially required the state Fish and Wildlife Commission to allow unlimited hunting when Montana’s wolf population is above 550 animals, but an amendment softened the language to merely “allow” for such measures.
In 2021, the Montana Legislature added language to the state code directing the state Fish and Wildlife Commission to reduce the wolf population to a “sustainable level,” intending to dramatically decrease the number of wild canids in the state.
However, the population has remained at essentially the same level since 2009.
“The purpose of that language was to start reducing wolves,” said Rep. Jed Hinkle, R-Belgrade, chairman of the House Fish, Wildlife and Parks committee. “Let it be known legislative intent — we want the commission to set the quotas in the state so that these numbers can start dropping down.”
While he said the amendment “gutted the bill,” Hinkle joined a majority of his colleagues to pass the bill on second reading.
HB 176 was one of a pair of wolf hunting bills aiming to cut Montana’s wolf population roughly in half.
The other bill, House Bill 222, brought by freshman legislator Lukas Shubert, R-Kalispell, was voted down 60-40 on Thursday.
Calling wolf overpopulation an “emergency,” Schubert set a 650-wolf threshold, above which there would be an open wolf hunting season with no limitations from July 1 to April 30.
Rep. Brad Barker, R-Red Lodge, said his concerns with Schubert’s bill related to stockgrowers, who have ways of dealing with wolves preying on livestock.
“They have tools right now to deal with wolves. They might not if we play roulette with wolf hunting season,” Barker said.
On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Joshua Seckinger, D-Bozeman, made an appeal unrelated to wolves themselves, saying the Legislature was overstepping its boundaries by dabbling in hunting quotas.
“This bill usurps power from the executive branch and inserts the Legislature directly into the wildlife management business. The power we are attempting to exert currently belongs to the Fish and Wildlife Commission, who, contrary to popular belief, are not unaccountable bureaucrats. They are appointed by governor and confirmed by Senate,” Seckinger said, urging his colleagues to make their thoughts known in the other chamber during the confirmation process.
Seckinger also pointed out that in the 2009 federal rule delisting wolves from the Endangered Species Act, there are three provisions listed where the federal government would review wolves’ status. One of them includes “if a change in State law or management objectives would significantly increase the threat to the wolf population.”
“A vote for this bill is a vote to return wolves to federal management,” Seckinger said.
After Thursday’s vote, Seckinger expressed some confidence that the same coalition might come together to oppose HB 176, but he said a forthcoming amendment he hadn’t seen could change the calculus.
The amendment did just that, declawing the bill by removing language requiring the commission to take action, and instead merely expanding the tools it can use to manage the wolf population.
Rep Eric Albus, R-Glasgow, who brought the amendment, called it an “excellent bill.”
“It’s excellently done. The wolf problem is a very difficult thing to get sorted out, and we’re going to have our disagreements with the other side of the aisle,” Albus said. “We need to get our wolf problem in check and take care of this problem so our ungulates can thrive.”
Several Democrats said they thought the bill, along with Schubert’s, is designed to minimize the population as much as possible, which could have unintended consequences.
The bill sponsor, Rep. Shannon Maness, R-Dillon, pushed back on that assertion, referencing the state’s draft Gray Wolf Conservation and Management Plan, which identifies a population of 450 wolves as a benchmark of sustainability. It’s roughly the same threshold set in the 2009 delisting rule for Montana’s wolf population to fluctuate around.
“We are going with what (agencies) recommended for our state,” Manness said.
Rep. Tyson Running Wolf, D-Browning, said the bill isn’t about wolf management, but is meant for people who just want to kill wolves.
“This sounds like a hunt, baby, hunt bill,” Running Wolf said. “I’ve been hearing it for the last four years, and it had nothing to do with management of reducing wolves. It all had to do with ‘let’s hunt them wolves.’”
“But I think we got a problem here. I think our hunters suck,” Running Wolf continued, pointing out that increased hunting and trapping hasn’t helped to reduce the population. “If you guys want to be effective in taking down wolves, get some traditional knowledge, go back to your history books, and go ahead and see what we did in the past about killing wolves.”
Running Wolf said that if a serious bill about reducing wolves came across the floor, he’d consider it, but said the current legislation was “just playing party politics.”
The chamber voted on a nearly party-line 57-42 vote, with Rep. Sherry Essmann, R-Billings, as the only Republican to vote against the bill.