Two weeks after the Outdoor Heritage Coalition and a pair of Republican lawmakers sued the state for doing too little to reduce Montana’s wolf population, a coalition of conservation groups on Oct. 15 made the opposite argument before a different judge.
The lawsuits reflect an ongoing tug-of-war between state lawmakers intent on reducing the predator’s presence in Montana and wildlife advocates who argue that the legislative and executive branches are driving Montana’s wolf population down to unsustainable levels.
Although the opposing lawsuits forward dramatically different visions for a “sustainable” wolf population, both fault Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) and the seven-member, governor-appointed Fish and Wildlife Commission for using unscientific management methods. In August, the commission established a 458-wolf quota with tighter restrictions for the areas surrounding Yellowstone National Park.
In a lawsuit filed Sept. 30 in a district court in Sanders County, Outdoor Heritage Coalition and Gallatin County outfitter Craig Neal argued alongside Montana Republican Reps. Shannon Maness of Dillon and Paul Fielder of Thompson Falls that an overabundance of wolves has contributed to “chronic” livestock depredations, a decline in ungulate populations, and reduced hunting and trapping opportunities.
The plaintiffs in that lawsuit maintain that the commission has set quotas that maintain a more-or-less steady population in defiance of the Legislature’s 2021 directive to the commission to set hunting and trapping seasons with an “intent to reduce the wolf population.” They also argue that the commission’s actions diminish “the opportunity to harvest wild fish and wild game animals” enshrined in the Montana Constitution. They’re asking the 20th Judicial District Court to issue a permanent injunction eliminating the 2025-2026 wolf hunting and trapping framework in favor of looser regulations with, for example, a higher quota and a longer season.
In an Oct. 15 conversation with Montana Free Press, Fielder argued that state wildlife managers should be shooting for a statewide population of 400 wolves in accordance with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2009 proposal to remove federal protections for gray wolves in Montana and Idaho.
Fielder pointed out that wolf hunting is allowed year-round in Wyoming and Idaho and that in addition to extending the hunting and trapping season in Montana, FWP could expand the use of specific techniques, such as using night scopes to hunt wolves on public land.
“I’m a retired wildlife biologist and I’ve got my ideas and opinions on what they can do, but the department has the authority and the responsibility and the expertise to figure out how we can remove more wolves,” Fielder said. “And they’re not doing it.”
On the other side of the issue, WildEarth Guardians, Project Coyote, Footloose Montana and Gallatin Wildlife Association are asking a Helena judge to immediately block “an extreme quota” of wolves that represents an “unsustainably high percentage of the state’s over-estimated wolf populations.”
They argue in their Oct. 15 brief that the 2025-26 quotas, paired with 100 wolf “removals” that are authorized for wolves in conflict with humans, are “unsupported by science and [threaten] to push the Montana population toward long-term decline and irreparable harm.” Continuing those quotas and state-authorized removals in the future will lead to “declines of increasing magnitude,” and will compromise the genetic health of the remaining population, they say. They also take issue with the state’s method of estimating the population.
“Montana’s reckless and unscientific wolf eradication must stop,” Lizzy Pennock, with WildEarth Guardians, wrote in an emailed release. “Every year, the public comes out en masse to protest the unethical wolf regulations, but the Commission continues to ignore most Montanans in favor of minority, fringe special interest groups hell bent on killing wolves.”
The conservation groups overlap with the anti-wolf groups in raising right-to-participate claims in their lawsuit, arguing that their members had just 60 or 90 seconds to make their concerns known to commissioners during an hours-long meeting in August. That’s too little time, they say. Fielder and his co-plaintiffs claimed that many of the comments of members of the Outdoor Heritage Coalition submitted to the commissioners landed in their spam or junk folders when they should have been routed to their inboxes.
The conservation groups also made constitutional claims in their lawsuit, arguing that the state’s wolf management framework runs counter to Montanans’ right to a “clean and healthful environment” and to a constitutional directive to “provide adequate remedies for degradation of the environmental life support system and to prevent unreasonable degradation of natural resources.”
The conservationists’ fight over wolf management dates to 2022, when the groups sought to block the 2021 Legislature’s aggressive wolf management bills from going into effect. Lewis and Clark County District Court Judge Christopher Abbott granted their restraining order request in November of 2022, temporarily halting the 2022-2023 wolf hunting and trapping season. Two weeks later, following a hearing that lasted for the better part of a day, Abbott lifted the restraining order, finding that the plaintiffs had failed to produce evidence that the revised wolf management framework would drive the state’s population to unsustainable levels.
Federal wildlife managers protected gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act in 1978. In 2011, after unsuccessful attempts to remove ESA protections, Congress passed an appropriation bill that delisted wolves in Montana. Several efforts have been made to restore federal protections for Northern Rockies wolves in the ensuing years, but none have been successful.
The state’s wolf population has held relatively steady around 1,100 animals for the past decade, according to FWP’s estimates, figures that are contested by WildEarth Guardians and its co-plaintiffs. — Amanda Eggert, Montana Free Press
