Montana Suspends Wolf Hunt Outside Yellowstone National Park

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks suspended the backcountry wolf hunt just north of Yellowstone National Park today. 

That's great news.  The famous wolves of Yellowstone can let loose a big howl of relief. 

I wrote about the ridiculousness of that backcountry hunt yesterday, and the Los Angeles Times wrote a piece about my blog entry today. 

The timing of the hunt makes no sense.  Nor does the lack of a no-hunt buffer zone outside Yellowstone to protect the Park's legendary wolves that freely roam in and out of Yellowstone (and can't read maps). 

Montana has temporarily suspended the backcountry hunt until hunting in the front country begins on October 25th.  Hopefully Montana will add additional restrictions before October 25th to protect both Yellowstone's wolves and the wolves that live in backcountry wilderness areas in other parts of the state (as well as the wolves in and around Glacier National Park).

It's frustrating that these premature wolf hunts in Idaho and Montana are proceeding at all.  And it's incredibly frustrating that several wilderness wolves and multiple Yellowstone wolves have already been killed -- and that Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) says it didn't see this coming.  But it's encouraging to see Montana respond by suspending the hunt outside Yellowstone.

Killing wolves in backcountry wilderness areas is bad wildlife management.  FWP Commissioner Ron Moody said today that "[w]e don't want to kill the wilderness wolves."  

If so, Montana should suspend the other backcountry hunts that are still ongoing and make the suspensions permanent. 

Or, even better, Montana could scrap this hunt altogether until wolves in the Northern Rockies have fully recovered . . .

Either way, Montana can do a better job managing its state's wolves, and it appears it knows it.       

(Wolf photo by SigmaEye on Flickr)

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