Commission OK's wolf trapping

The Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission approved new wolf hunting rules July 12 that include trapping and a more liberal hunting season.

The 2012 fall bag limit will be three wolves, only one of which can be taken by hunting. Trappers would be required to take a special course before they can trap a wolf. State law limits hunters but not trappers to one wolf, something the commission could not change.

FWP received more than 6,500 comments concerning the more liberal season. Commission chairman Bob Ream said he hopes wolves some day will be managed like mountain lions, which see less opposition when it comes to hunting.

The agency is trying to reduce wolf numbers in the state. According to its modeling, if 377 wolves are harvested in Montana, population numbers would not drop below 485 wolves statewide.

“The goal is not to exterminate wolves. It is to manage them,” commissioner Dan Vermillion said.

Last year, the statewide quota was 220 wolves but hunters only harvested 166. Biologists estimate the statewide wolf population increased 15 percent last year to 653.

Under the new regulations, most of Montana would not see wolf hunting quotas. But in Hunting District 110, the North Fork of the Flathead River area, adjacent to Glacier National Park, the quota would remain two wolves. A similar quota of three wolves applies to a hunting district just outside Yellowstone National Park.

The North Fork quota is in deference to Glacier Park. Northwest Montana’s wolf population began its recovery from wolves that lived in Glacier Park and British Columbia in the late 1970s and 1980s.