Study Shows Why Hunting Wolves is Overkill

This post is part of series highlighting the top issues faced by wolves in North America today.

Hunting wolves is often at the top of a short list of state wolf management techniques. The argument is that, in order to keep the wolf population at a targeted level, the same number of wolves needs to be killed as would die anyway from other causes. Sounds like a vain attempt by wildlife managers to appear kindhearted by preferring to "humanely" kill wolves instead of letting them die slow, agonizing deaths from injuries or old age.

Does it work?

Not exactly. New research from two Montana State University professors shows that instead of maintaining a target wolf population size, “increased human-caused mortality was associated with a strong increase in the overall death rate and a strong tendency for wolf populations to decline.”

In plain English, this means that killing wolves doesn’t compensate for other deaths. Instead, the wolf population tends to go down. Why? Wolves are still going to die from other causes. Pretty obvious, I would think. Not to mention that the wolves killed by humans are more likely to be breeding wolves, which may lead to dissolution of the pack and less offspring.

To explain just how devastating management plans can be, the study focused on Montana’s wolf harvest quota. This fall, before a federal judge reinstated gray wolves as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, Montana was set to open the wolf hunting season with a quota of 186 wolves. According to the research findings, this would mean that the population of 500-plus wolves in Montana would be reduced by half.

I acknowledge that there are some circumstances when wolves may have to be removed. Livestock loss is one example, even though there are many successful techniques to decrease this conflict, which will be discussed later this week as part of the Wolf Awareness Week series. But for Joe Maurier, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Park’s director, to claim that they “are left with no way to actively manage wolves as a Montana wildlife species” because they can’t be hunted is absurd.

Let’s not forget why wolves had to be protected under the Endangered Species Act in the first place: government funded wolf killing.  Are we destined for history to repeat itself in such a cycle that gray wolves will never be removed from the Endangered Species Act?

Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service