State wolf hunt begins next week

Initial hunting will open in backcountry areas

With a federal judge ruling that wolf hunts in Montana and Idaho can proceed this year, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials expect permit sales to increase in the weeks to come.

Since they went on sale last week, 7,187 permits have been sold at $19 each for resident hunters and 29 have been sold at $350 each to nonresidents.

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy of Missoula on Wednesday denied a request from environmental and animal-welfare groups to stop the first legal wolf hunts to be held in decades in Montana and Idaho.

"We expect that [permit sales' will probably pick up because the injunction is off and the season will open up in the backcountry areas on Sept. 15," said Neal Whitney, license bureau business analyst for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in Helena.

The Sept. 15 season applies to hunting districts 150, 151 and 280 in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.

For the rest of the state, which is divided into three separate wolf management units, the season runs from Oct. 25 through Nov. 29, coinciding with the general big game hunting season.

A quota of 75 wolves has been set for the entire state, with subquotas for the three management units: 41 wolves in the northern tier of the state (including Northwest Montana); 22 in the extreme southwestern part of the state and 12 in the southern tier of Montana.

Once quotas are reached, the season will close in each wolf management unit.

There are strict reporting requirements.

Hunters who harvest a wolf must call 1-877-FWP-WILD within 12 hours to file a report. Hunters are urged to call 1-800-385-7826 to check on the latest quota counts. When quotas are reached, the season will be closed within 24 hours.

There are restrictions on how wolves can be hunted.

The use of dogs, bait, scent, lures, traps, lights, electronic tracking devices or any recorded or electrically amplified bird or animal calls to attract wolves is prohibited.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officially estimated that at least 500 wolves inhabited the state at the end of 2008.

The recovery goal for wolves in the Northern Rockies was a minimum of 300 individual wolves and having 30 breeding pairs for at least three consecutive years.

Those numbers were first met in 2002 and the wolf populations in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming have increased every year since then.

Wolves were removed from protection under the Endangered Species Act earlier this year in Montana and Idaho, allowing for the hunts to proceed.

Although Molloy denied an injunction to stop the hunts, a lawsuit aimed at restoring endangered species protection for wolves has yet to be decided.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com