Yellowstone National Park superintendent Cameron Sholly submitted a letter to the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission on June 26 as part of the public comment period for proposed changes to Montana’s wolf hunting and trapping regulations. In the letter, which was acquired by WyoFile, Sholly asked commissioners to consider changes to the state’s wolf hunting regulations in the management unit that borders the national park. Referring to “high wolf mortality in a very small percentage of [Wolf Management Unit] 313,” Sholly said hunters, poachers, and trappers in the area were taking too big a toll on Yellowstone’s wolves.
Sholly’s main request is for commissioners to break WMU 313 into two separate units, with the current quota of six wolves split between the two units. WyoFile reports that one of the state’s wildlife commissioners, Susan Kirby Brooke, has formally introduced a similar proposal to split WMU 313 and divide the six-wolf quota.
Sholly pointed out in his letter that 13 gray wolves known to live in the park were killed by humans during the 2023-24 wolf hunting season. Six were legally harvested by hunters in WMU 313; two were harvested outside WMU 313 but near the park boundary; one radio-collared wolf was poached inside WMU 313 in February; and two collared wolves reportedly died (one inside the park boundary and one adjacent to it) from gunshot wounds that were likely sustained inside WMU 313. The other two wolves were harvested legally by hunters in Idaho and Wyoming.
“These losses represented approximately 10 percent of the winter 2023/2024 Yellowstone wolf population,” Sholly wrote. He said this led to the “dissolution” of three of the park’s known wolf packs.
“Recently published research has documented significant impacts of human-caused mortality on natural social dynamics,” Sholly wrote. “Harvest of Yellowstone wolves has been shown to negatively impact pack persistence and pup production.”
Sholly said that ironically, hunter harvest can sometimes lead to more wolves on the landscape. He pointed to a long-term alpha female wolf that was legally trapped in WMU 313 during the 2021-22 season. He said that in her absence, three other females gave birth to 18 pups in 2023.
“In other words,” Sholly wrote, “the State’s approach is causing increasing reproduction of wolves.”
The area that Montana wildlife managers define as WMU 313 borders the northern edge of Yellowstone National Park, and it’s been an ongoing source of controversy since the 2021-22 hunting season, when Montana hunters killed 15 wolves that roamed across the park’s northern boundary. In the wake of that controversial season, MFWP established a quota of six wolves for WMU 313. This makes it unique from the rest of the state, which is subject to regional wolf hunting and trapping quotas.
“Since the 2022 change, the harvest has been mostly concentrated near the Yellowstone Park Boundary by Gardiner and has resulted in the harvest of multiple wolves from one or two packs that primarily reside in Yellowstone Park,” Brooke writes in the proposal. She also notes that there have been no livestock depredations in or around WMU 313 for years, and that harvest in Region 3 is meeting its legislative obligation to reduce wolf populations.
Wildlife commissioners have not formally responded to Sholly’s letter, according to WyoFile. However, it could guide the commission’s discussions as they finalize regulations for the 2024-25 hunting season. MFWP is accepting public comments for those proposed regulations and Brooke’s amendment through July 25.
In a broader sense, these kinds of recommendations and tweaks come around every time wolf management is up in the air, MFWP Communication and Education Division administrator Greg Lemon tells Outdoor Life.
“This concern is something that the Commission has heard every single time that they’ve taken up wolf regulations,” Lemon says. “Wolves are typically controversial, and the Commission has historically done a lot of balancing to tweak the regulations and define the path forward. The charge that we have and that the Commission has is to manage wildlife within state boundaries. That’s the science we focus on.”