CONSERVATION BIOLOGY: Research Wolves of Yellowstone Killed in Hunt

Source: Virginia Morell, Science 23 October 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5952, pp. 506 - 507

On 3 October, a few weeks after Montana opened its first legal wolf-hunting season in decades, a hunter killed a female wolf in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, less than a mile from the border of Yellowstone National Park.

This brought to five the number of wolves from Yellowstone's most studied pack that have been killed by hunters. Researchers are essentially going to have to start over with another wolf pack after seven years of data collection.

The experience to date shows however that wolves were a keystone species in the Yellowstone ecology, and if we want to protect Yellowstone as the best example of pre-Colombian North America, we have to permit wolves to live there. Millions of visitors to Yellowstone would agree!

So what does Montana's Fish, Wildlife and Parks say about this?

"We didn't think that wolves would be that vulnerable in the backcountry, so the level of harvest there has been a bit of a surprise," says Carolyn Sime, FWP's wolf program coordinator in Helena, who added that the hunt was designed to target wolves that kill livestock, not wilderness or park wolves that have never caused problems in that area.

I don't think we can trust the governments of states dominated by agricultural interests to adequately protect world heritage!