The federal government might remove endangered species protection for wolves across the Lower 48, but that doesn’t mean other states will follow the lead of Wyoming when it comes to hunting wolves.
At the paws-on-the-ground level, it will likely be up to each individual state to determine how to manage wolves, retired federal game warden Tim Eicher of Cody told Cowboy State Daily.
And in many states, wolf hunting would probably be more restricted than it is in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, he said.
“I would think it would range from not allowing wolf hunting to very, very conservative hunting,” he said.
Nationwide Picture
The Biden administration is trying to revive a Trump-era rule that lifted federal protection for wolves across the Lower 48.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) recently stated that it would like to have a nationwide wolf management plan in place, possibly by late next year. That plan could include delisting wolves across the Lower 48, thus handing primary management of wolves from the FWS over to state wildlife agencies.
Wyoming Game and Fish, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and Idaho Fish and Game have had direct authority over wolves in those states for more than a decade. All three states allow wolf hunting.
Wolf hunting has been on-again, off-again in the Great Lakes states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Most recently, hunting was halted there two years ago by a court order, and after wolf advocates claimed that too many wolves had been killed.
Some northern Wisconsin residents recently told Cowboy State Daily that wolves have been showing up in small towns there. There have been stories of wolves hanging out in parking lots and even snatching peoples’ pets.
Wisconsin resident Chase Melton said he shot a wolf in self-defense last month after it came at him and some of his friends in a duck hunting blind.
There are also wolves in Oregon and Washington state, where they may not be hunted and remain under full federal protection. California’s growing wolf population is also fully protected.
Kirk Wilbur, vice president of government affairs for the California Cattleman’s Association, previously told Cowboy State Daily that’s made it difficult for ranchers there to protect their cattle.
Colorado’s Quandary
Colorado began reintroducing wolves late last year, releasing 10 wolves transported from Oregon. Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) hopes to release up to 15 more wolves from British Columbia, Canada, early next year.
Colorado’s wolf program has hit some snags.
One of the reintroduced wolves was killed by a mountain lion early this year, and the entire Copper Creek wolf pack was trapped and placed in captivity after killing cattle in northern Colorado.
Wolves in Colorado are still federally protected, but under a federal rule which allows the state more latitude for dealing with things such as livestock killing.
That makes them technically a “threatened” species in Colorado, not an endangered species, Colorado resident Matt Barnes told Cowboy State Daily.
“In theory, it wouldn’t make that much difference” to Colorado if wolves are federally delisted, said Barnes, a range scientist who has worked on wolf and grizzly bear conflict mitigation on ranches in Wyoming and Montana.
The current move toward delisting isn’t the first time the federal agency has pushed for it. It recommended the same thing in 2020.
Barnes said the latest attempt might fail for the same reason the previous attempt did.
“You can’t delist a species everywhere just because it’s abundant somewhere,” he said. “There’s still a whole lot of historic wolf range that has zero wolves on it.”
As for whether wolves will ever be hunted in Colorado, that would hinge on the state itself lifting protections for them, even if the federal government already had done so.
The word is that there would have to be an established population of at least 200 wolves in Colorado before that could happen, Barnes said.
CPW officials previously told Cowboy State Daily that it will likely be several years before Colorado even considers having a wolf hunting season.
Some Want Wolves To Remain Protected
The Center for Biological Diversity is among groups that oppose having wolves federally delisted.
“We won previous lawsuits against it” and will likely challenge the latest effort, Andrea Zaccardi, the group’s carnivore conservation legal director, told Cowboy State Daily.
As with grizzly bears, some try to argue that the decision whether to delist wolves should hinge upon the number of animals, she said.
But from her group’s perspective, the extent of suitable range a species occupies is a better indicator of whether it’s fully recovered.
“In California, they (wolves) could make it down to the southern Sierras and do well there, if they were allowed to,” she said. “It’s about a dispersal of range and about them not being persecuted when they do disperse.”
Rules Will Vary By State
Eicher said that if wolf protections ever are lifted across the Lower 48, the states themselves would become “internal battle grounds” over how wolves would be managed.
If things were put up to a vote, people in the Great Lakes states would be the most likely to approve wolf hunting, he said. But it would be much more difficult to get hunting approved in Washington, Oregon and California.
Even where hunting was allowed, it probably wouldn’t be a permissive as it is in Wyoming, he said, referencing the current debate over whether to ban running wolves down with vehicles here.
“The argument in those states isn’t going to be, ‘Can we run them down with snowmachines?’” he said. “The argument is going to be over when the season is, what the quota is, and how low the quota is going to be.”
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
