https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/monata-wolf-hunt-conservation-republicans-greg-gianforte-1321126/amp/
For Wolves, the Culture War Is Extremely Deadly
In Montana, a radical Republican governor changed the rules of the annual hunt, endangering a great rewilding success story
CASSIDY RANDALL
In February 2021, a black wolf wandered across the border of Yellowstone National Park in Montana. Called 1155, he wore a radio collar that park biologists fit him with three years before. When he left the safety of the park, 1155 was what biologists call a “dispersed male,” leaving his pack to travel alone in search of a mate. As a descendant of wolves reintroduced in 1995 to Yellowstone and Idaho’s Frank Church-River of No Return wilderness, he was playing out a role in a success story three decades in the making: to ultimately restore wolves to their former range from which they’d been exterminated.
The year before, scientific findings emerged from Yellowstone on the impact of wolves’ return to the landscape. In their long absence, coyotes had run rampant and the elk population exploded, overgrazing the willow and aspen. Without those trees, songbirds declined, beavers no longer built dams, and streams began to erode. In turn, water temperatures were too high for cold-water fish. Upon wolves’ reintroduction, in what’s called a trophic cascade, the elk populations began falling immediately. Within about 10 years, willows rebounded. In 20, aspen began flourishing. Riverbanks stabilized. Songbirds returned, as did beavers, eagles, foxes, and badgers. Wolf populations in Montana and Idaho began to grow and slowly disperse to other parts of the Rockies and beyond. Media and conservationists heralded it as the greatest rewilding event in history.
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GOP lawmakers took full opportunity to strike a heavy blow in the West’s century-old wolf wars. By the end of the session, Gianforte had signed new laws that would extend the wolf-hunting season by several weeks; allow night hunting on private land with artificial lights, thermal-imaging tech, and night-vision scopes; neck snaring and the use of bait to hunt and trap; and increase the kill limit to 20 wolves per hunter.
And the kicker: Montana joined Idaho (which recently allocated $1 million for efforts that lawmakers there say could wipe out 1,300 of its estimated 1,500 wolves) in allowing monetary compensation to hunters for each wolf killed — what many call a bounty. Now, in the two states where American taxpayers spent $30 million to reintroduce wolves, anti-wolf organizations are legally paying hunters to kill them. The assault threatens the West-wide recovery the U.S. began 30 years ago — all because wolves are a socially charged political football used to appease a certain electorate, with the actual science on their contribution to the natural world often left on the sidelines.
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