State wildlife officials are again embroiled in a debate over wolf management, and will take it up at a Thursday meeting. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is proposing to reduce wolf numbers in the state by overhauling the wolf hunting season. But locals near Yellowstone National Park say the proposal would impact the region’s vulnerable wolf population and the economy built around it.
This is The Wide Open, I’m Nick Mott.
In the months since the first season of this show aired, I keep on seeing so many of the issues and the themes I grapple with everywhere I look. Take wolves, for example. Earlier this month, the Endangered Species Act made headlines once again. A federal court in Montana ruled that the Fish and Wildlife Service would have to reconsider whether wolves in the Northern Rockies deserve federal protections. Wolves have been off the endangered list since 2011, and at issue were threats that could send the species on a downward spiral and back to ESA protections. Those threats include aggressive hunting measures in place in Idaho and Montana.
At the same time, wolf hunting is making a stir in my neck of the woods, north of Yellowstone. I put together a piece for the radio on what the local impacts of what some new hunting measures might look like, and I think it really reflects so much of what this season of the show was all about. Here it is, in full.
I’m winding up Yellowstone's north entrance road before the sun is up with Cara McGary, a guide from Gardiner. McGary sports an insulated coffee mug in the early hours with a “Save Yellowstone Wolves” wristband strapped around it.
Nick Mott: What would you put our chances at of seeing wolves this morning?
Cara McGary: Very high. If I don't see wolves on a trip, I have a hard time not taking it personally.
Mott: McGary is hoping to show me not just wolves themselves, but all the people here to watch them – and therefore the economy that centers around wolves in Southwest Montana.
McGary: If we did not have grizzlies and wolves in this ecosystem, I would not have a job.
Mott: Wolves were reintroduced here in the mid-1990s. A wildlife tourism industry burgeoned along with the wolf population in the decades that followed. Today, wildlife tourism makes up a half a billion dollar industry in Park County, which surrounds the northern part of Yellowstone.
As McGary and I get deep into the savanna-like expanse of the sage-covered Lamar Valley, we find cars filling parking lots and lining the roads. We park to find out what has everyone so transfixed.
McGary: People sometimes cry when they see wolves. It's a big deal. And they're such a symbol of the wild and a symbol of, we didn't lose every single component of wildlife on our continent, in our country, that there's still something left.
Mott: McGary says a wolf hunting proposal from the state being heard August 21 could threaten all this. Instead of managing wolves based on individual regions, Montana wants to let hunters kill up to 500 wolves, anywhere in the state. Two small buffer zones would still exist under the proposal, just north of Yellowstone. But wolves travel, and McGary says this proposal will mean more dead wolves from packs in the park.
McGary: I am flummoxed as to why the proposal is what it is. I just want us to do better.
Mott: To better understand why the state wants to shake up wolf management, I talked with Quentin Kujala, chief of conservation policy for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Wolves have been hunted in Montana since they were removed from federal Endangered Species Act protections nearly a decade and a half ago. And in 2021, legislators passed a bill, saying the wolf population had grown too large, especially in Northwest Montana. That bill had a mandate:
Quentin Kujala: Reducing the state's wolf population.
Mott: Fast forward to today and Kujala says there are about the same number of wolves in Montana as there were in 2021.
Kujala: So we sat down and said, okay, what is the next layer that we can put in place?
Mott: Already, the state had legalized night hunting on private land, neck snaring, even reimbursing wolf hunters and trappers for expenses. But overall wolf harvest stayed relatively static.
Kujala: We wanted to be able to say to those asking, 'are you pursuing this mandate,' as sincerely, as earnestly as you think you can – Fish, Wildlife and Parks, we wanted to be able to say yes to that question.
Mott: In addition to instituting a statewide quota of 500 wolves, the new proposal would allow an individual who both hunts and traps to kill up to 30 wolves on a single license, under certain circumstances.
Kujala said the state is managing for somewhere between 450 wolves – below which the species could risk returning to the endangered species list – and 1,100 animals, where the population is at today. He says finding that sweet spot, though, is tough.
Kujala: It's kind of like looking for a pair of boots that works 365 days of the year in Montana. Keep looking, because it's hard to find that perfect season setting answer.
Mott: Two bills died in the 2025 Montana legislative session that looked strikingly similar to the state’s current proposal. Much of the support for those bills focused on livestock lost to wolves and, particularly, on diminishing hunting opportunities, since wolves kill elk. I reached out to multiple wolf hunters and outfitters who either didn’t respond or declined to be interviewed for this piece.
Matt Lumley, president of the Montana Trapper’s Association, spoke in favor of one of those bills back in January. He said wolves around Yellowstone caused the elk population there to plummet.
Lumley: It’s the greatest loss of hunting opportunity in the world.
Mott: Wolves move long distances, which is one reason Kujala says a statewide quota makes sense. But wolves in Yellowstone don’t abide by the park’s boundaries. When they enter Montana, they’re fair game for hunting and trapping.
Lumley: For the record, I’ve killed a lot of wolves. I’ve never killed a Yellowstone National Park wolf. I’m killing all my wolves in Montana. And that’s what you are elected to do: protect Montana’s interest, not Yellowstone National Park’s.
Mott: But Karrie Kahle with Park County Environmental Council says advocating for Yellowstone-area wolves in Region 3, or a big swath Southwest Montana north of Yellowstone, is in Montana’s interest. Her group successfully fought against those bills in the legislature last session.
Karrie Kahle: Here we are, three months later, doing it all over again. That doesn't make sense to me.
Mott: Kahle says Region 3 is the only region in the state that meets its quota year after year, and does so early. Last season, that region met its wolf quota over a month and a half before the rest of the state’s season ended. She says the state’s hunting proposal will hit wolves in Region 3 far harder than anywhere else.
Kahle: A wolf alive in Park County makes a lot more money than a dead wolf does.
Mott: According to the park, at least six wolves from Yellowstone packs were killed by hunters and trappers in Region 3 last season alone – that’s north of those buffer zones, where other wolves were also killed. At the same time, FWP data shows that Region 3 wolves are the only population in the state already declining.
Kahle: A one-size-fits-all regulation does not work.
Mott: Back in the park, McGary and I get out of the car and set up spotting scopes. We’re looking at a vast open area: rolling, arid hills. We can see for miles. She calls this a wolf rendezvous area, near a den.
McGary: Here you go, here's a couple wolves.
Mott: They’re puppies. About the size of a heeler right now, McGary tells me. She goes into guide mode, naturalizing. She tells me when wolves feed, they can carry about 20 pounds of meat in their stomach for their puppies.
McGary: They'll return to the rendezvous area. The puppies will lick them in the face. So if you ever come home and your dog's like, lick, lick, lick, lick, lick …
Mott: I have a very licky dog.
McGary: … You have a very licky dog. Your dog is trying to get a meal out of you. If you were an adult wolf, when your dog licked you, you would automatically regurgitate whatever you had in your stomach.
Mott: We keep looking around, seeing if we can find the rest of the pack returning with a meal in their bellies.
McGary: Oh, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, there is a cornucopia of wolves.
Mott: We spot at least 10 animals. Licking ensues. So does some playing. Lots of wagging tails. More than a hundred people line the ridges around us, watching the wolves—and the sun is barely up.
McGary: All of these people have gotten out of bed to come see this. And it's worth it, I think.
Mott: People, from across the country and the world, hunched over spotting scopes on the hilltops around us will go back to hotels, eat in restaurants, and shop in souvenir stores outside the park. What happens in Yellowstone, she says, echoes in Montana—and vice versa.
Jeff Reed: I really am fed up with economics not being front and center in this conversation.
Mott: Jeff Reed co-founded Wild Livelihoods with McGary. That’s a coalition of businesses around Yellowstone who depend on tourism. He also runs a tech startup focused on using AI to capture howls and learn more about the language of wolves.
Reed: I'm not going to tell someone in eastern Montana what their position on wolves is, but where our economy is dominated by tourism here, I am going to speak up for our county.
Mott: Reed, like McGary and Kahle, isn’t against wolf hunting. In fact, he’s an avid elk hunter. Rather, he says, management decisions should come from the bottom, up, not the top, down. A 2023 survey from the University of Montana showed big increases in tolerance for wolves across almost all groups in Montana since delisting, save for wolf hunters themselves. The state’s proposal, Reed says:
Reed: It means a minority of people are telling the majority of people who make their living on tourism what to do.
Mott: Reed’s family started one of the first bed and breakfasts in Paradise Valley. He says it’s true that the elk population around Yellowstone has taken a major hit since reintroduction. But prior to wolves, the 20,000-odd elk in the area were overpopulated and decimated grass and feed that ranchers depended on for the cattle. In Region 3, elk still number higher than the objective set by the state, according to FWP.
Reed: The question is, do we really want a wild place to live in? To me, that is the fundamental question. We're talking about a thousand wolves in Montana, and there are eight billion us on the planet. When did we in Montana become such pansy asses? We are the last wild state in the lower 48.
Mott: Shannon Maness is a Montana House representative from Dillon. He’s an appliance repairman and former hunting guide, and he sponsored one of the wolf bills in the 2025 legislature. Under the new proposal, he says:
Shannon Maness: We will kill more wolves in region three. Reducing them does not make them disappear. There are still wolves. They're not going away.
Mott: Maness lives in Southwest Montana too, but he says he’s advocating for what he hears from his constituents – ranchers and hunters – who deal with too many wolves on the landscape.
Maness: I get all the emails and all from people all over the country. 'I'm never spending a dollar again,' blah, blah blah. But the data doesn't show that. Ever since we started hunting wolves when they got delisted we've been hearing that. And yet, our tourism, it has not declined one bit in all that time. For lack of a better pun, you can only cry wolf so much.
Mott: Yellowstone visits as a whole have seen massive increases over the decades. Today, just shy of 5 million people visit the park every year. Maness says wolves, like all those tourists, need management.
Take ranching, for example, The state livestock loss board compensated ranchers for a total of 45 cows killed by wolves in 2024. That’s a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the state’s more than 2 million cows. But Maness says that number is extremely conservative, and the real cost of wolves on the landscape to ranchers is much higher. Some studies show weight loss in cows from the stress of wolf presence. That can undercut a rancher’s bottom line. Measures to help ranchers and wolves get along like electric fencing, range riding, and guardian dogs all cost time and money, too.
Maness says wolf management needs a balance, and right now, that balance is skewed in favor of people who only see wolves through spotting scopes, rather than those that live with them up close, on the ground.
Maness: The wolves are fine. I mean, they're not my favorite, but they're here. They live here, that's fine. We just manage them. It's not all wonderful world of Disney where they're just gonna be in perfect harmony. That's just not reality. And people need to understand that.
Mott: Malou Anderson is a rancher in the Tom Miner Basin, just north of Yellowstone. She grew up here, and she understands the often brutal nuance of ranching in wolf country. Her family ran sheep when wolves came back after reintroduction.
Malou Anderson: It turned desperate. It turned sort of scary.
Mott: They experienced conflicts with livestock, and even with their beloved family border collie. But her family decided that adapting was more important than continuing business as usual. In the years since, they’ve stopped grazing sheep, and focused on helping cattle coexist with the predators on the landscape.
Anderson: Of course, we're gonna have a couple losses in a wild place. Probably best to write those into our budget before they even happen, instead of get really reactive and angry when there are two or three losses that happen in a place like this.
Mott: Anderson knows she’s an outlier in parts of the ranching world. But she says she wants more, not fewer, wolves on the landscape, and this new hunting proposal isn’t rooted in on-the-ground reality in Park County.
Anderson: We should not be managing the species on fables that ranchers love to tell. It would be pretty sterile and boring if those animals were not in this wild place.
Mott: In Yellowstone, the sun’s risen higher in the sky and the wolves have bedded down for the day. McGary is packing up her spotting scopes and our conversation turns back to policy. She says she really does feel for ranchers who lose livestock to wolves.
McGary: The conversation I wanna have is not, how many wolves can we kill in Montana. I want to know how can I preserve what I do and support people who are really being affected by the predators that I'm making a living off of. And I don't know how to solve that problem, I need help. But this? This is not helpful. This is a waste of everybody's time and we have really important problems to solve.
The Fish and Wildlife Commission will hear the new wolf proposal along with a slew of amendments on Thursday. Wolf hunting season starts in September.
The Wide Open is a production of Montana Public Radio and the Montana Media Lab. Thanks to Shaylee Ragar for the edits. Our theme music is by Izaak Opatz, arranged and produced by Dylan Rodrigue, featuring Jordan Bush on Pedal Steel.
