Better late than never, Montana shut down the wolf hunt just north of Yellowstone National Park for the season on Tuesday. 

The first fair-chase wolf hunt in Montana's history began on September 15th.  The problem with the hunt (besides its existence) is that only backcountry wilderness areas opened to wolf-hunting on September 15th (specifically four districts, including one that borders Yellowstone).  The rest of the state's wolf hunt opens on October 25th.  

The result?  You guessed it: several wilderness wolves have been killed, including multiple Yellowstone wolves.  In fact, 75% of the wolf quota for most of southern Montana has already been "harvested." 

This was not what Montana wanted with its first wolf hunt.  The state hoped to use the hunt to move some wolves away from livestock operations in the front country.  Killing backcountry wilderness wolves was never a goal for the hunt.  And I'd like to think that killing Yellowstone wolves was something Montana really hoped to avoid (but with its design of the hunt, you can't help but wonder if it even cared).

With the death toll rising and wolf advocates' frustration increasing, Montana suspended the hunt outside Yellowstone last Thursday.  And the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission officially cancelled that hunt on Tuesday. 

The wolf hunt in the other three backcountry districts (in northwest Montana) is still transpiring, and the rest of the state will open to wolf-hunting as scheduled on October 25th.

When the general hunt opens, Yellowstone's wolves will still be in danger, as only the district outside the northeast corner of the Park will be closed.  It will be open season on wolves along the rest of Montana's border with Yellowstone, and more Yellowstone wolves (who freely wander in and out of the Park and are unaware of human-made borders) might be killed. 

And even though only three wolves remain in the quota for the area around Yellowstone, there is nothing to prevent numerous wolves from being killed on the 25th (even with hunters dutifully reporting their kills within the mandatory 12-hour reporting period, as they have done thus far). 

An easy solution to avoid the deaths of more Yellowstone wolves is implementing a no-hunting buffer zone for wolves around the Park, which should have been in place from the outset of the hunt.

People associate Yellowstone with wildness, something that's been lost in most of the country, and they visit Yellowstone to experience -- to touch, feel, and breathe -- that wildness.  Wolves embody Yellowstone's wildness like nothing else, and allowing them to be killed in the hunt should be averted at all costs. 

Yellowstone is every American's park, not Montana's (or Idaho's or Wyoming's), and I think the deaths of these wolves represent to many around the country a further erosion of the wildness still left in America.  

And it's ironic (and absurd) that Yellowstone wolves were being killed just outside the Park's border at the same time Ken Burns's celebrated documentary series about our national parks was debuting on PBS.

Montana approached this hunt hoping to "educate" some wolves, but it seems as though Montana is the one that has received the education. 

Hopefully Montana will act on its education and implement a buffer zone around Yellowstone before the 25th.

(Wolf photo by SigmaEye on Flickr)