A record number of Yellowstone wolves have been killed. Conservationists are worried

A pack of wolves are seen from a plane.

Courtesy of Yellowstone National Park

The wolves from the park were killed in the winter. The states surrounding the park changed hunting rules in order to reduce the number of animals. Wolf biologists inside the park are trying to understand what losing the animals means.

This was the winter of my discontent, as the senior wolf biologist at the park says while driving over a washboarded dirt road near the park's northern border.

He gestured to the invisible edge of the park just in front of us, where a lot of the controversy occurred.

When wolves set paw over the boundary into Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, they are fair game, at least during the hunting seasons that states are allowed to establish. About 20% of the park's population was killed by hunters this season. Smith says the wolf population varies throughout the year. He thinks the population is at a low point and will likely number in the 80s.

A radio-collared wolf is being tracked inside the park.

Nick Mott/MTPR

Smith is hoping to find a wolf that wears a radio collar. Smith says that his research team has collared more than 500 wolves over the course of 27 years, which is one of the largest wolf datasets in the world.

He looked at the distant hills as he gestured his antenna out of his car. He thinks he hears a signal, but he doesn't.

As the country was colonized, wolves were hunted to near extinction. The last pack of wolves was killed in the 19th century. They were reintroduced to the park in the mid 1990s along with mountain lions and bears.

That is a really cool thing to say in this day and age, when most environmental news is bad. Smith says that the park is as good as it has ever been, and a big part of that is the restoration of the environment.

About a decade ago, federal protections for wolves were dropped, and it became legal to hunt a limited number of them. Montana and Idaho have changed hunting rules to reduce wolf populations. Night hunting, trap baiting and neck snares are allowed in Montana. Limits on how many wolves hunters could kill were eliminated by Idaho. It is now legal to shoot them from ATVs and snowmobiles.

Smith got a signal suddenly. The beeps grow louder.

How do you like that wolf?

He claims to be detecting a lone wolf. Most wolves in the park are young. Smith says it is a mile and a half in the distance, even though it is out of sight.

More than 500 wolves have been captured and collared in the park. The park has been studying wolves for 27 years.

Courtesy of Yellowstone National Park

The hunting season was suspended in Montana as the number of wolf deaths increased. His request was rejected. Although he was cited for failing to complete a required trapper education course, it was legal for him to kill a collared wolf from the park. In a press conference last year, he said trapping is an important part of managing species.

He said it was a great honor to harvest a wolf in Montana.

Montana dropped limits on how many wolves can be killed in certain areas in order to increase wolf mortality. Over the last decade, the number of people killed in those areas increased from four to 19 this season.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering whether wolves in the Northern Rockies should be protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Trappers and hunters

Brian Stoner says there is a lot of panic when there is no need to be. I met him at the annual fur auction of the Montana Trappers Association. There were many animals at the event, and many of them were coming through the doors and piling up on the tables. The fairground hall will be filled with fur in the hours to come.

He said he would be surprised if we had a wolf by tomorrow.

He said that putting a value on each pelt is as important as a science. The example was used by him.

He said it has some spots in the center of the belly, but it gets weakened down here.

Stoner considers wildlife to be his livelihood. It is also a lot more than that. He said that trappers have a unique relationship with animals that other people don't understand and that they wouldn't support rules that would cause extinction. The love of animals is what motivates him.

He said that he knows the dynamics of the animals and that he is removing them from the population. I don't want to trap the last of anything. I want my kids, my grandkids to be able to do this.

He said this year's harvest numbers are on par with previous years. He says that if you are looking at the state as a whole.

He said that the wolves that are in the Yellowstone region got harvested more than they have in the past.

The number of wolves killed in Montana was the lowest it had been in a year, despite a record-setting year.

Stoner said the state sets guidelines based on science and provides backstops if the hunt gets out of hand. The wolf hunting season in Montana ended a month ahead of schedule in February.

He said that it was a lot of fuss about nothing.

Taylor Bland is a member of the ground crew. It is one of the three ways that officials keep an eye on wolves.

Nick Mott/MTPR

A small airplane about the size of a motorcycle with wings glides onto a small runway near the park boundary. The Super Cub is a plane that is meant to fly low and slow and is part of the research in the park that has been going on for more than 25 years.

The Wolf Project is great because we have been getting these counts for over 25 years, which is longer than I have been alive.

The research focuses on when and where wolves are eating. Jackson hikes out to areas where wolves are spending a lot of time to document the animals they kill. She will be in the plane tracking the wolves.

Jackson and the pilot are about to take off. They will zigzag over the park for three hours. They want to see somewhere in the order of 60 wolves.

Doug Smith, the leader of the project, says the hunt doesn't mean the wolves are going extinct. Many wolf deaths disrupt the animals deeper social dynamics.

Smith says that this winter was catastrophic mortality.

He says that the wolf project is vital to understanding the ecology. The wolves are a natural laboratory for studying. There are many studies that focus on wolves that are impacted by hunters. The population in Yellowstone is easy to observe and almost un-impacted by hunters and humans. That had been the case.

Wolf Research claimed to have the best data in the world in an unexploited-by-humans population. That is a shame and a tragedy.

Smith's team has more than one way of gathering data, including tracking wolves by plane and with the cluster crew. Taylor Bland and Jeremy Sunder Raj are members of the ground crew. They are out from dawn to dusk, watching wolves from the road.

Bland says that we get to see good behavior so it makes for good watching.

The two are looking at a patch of trees. They look for signs of life and movement in the landscape. There was no luck.

Bland, Sunder Raj and other members of the ground crew are busy interacting with tourists, who spend more than $30 million a year wolf-watching around Yellowstone, and also documenting what they see. They draw maps and record when wolves are traveling. All of the flights, the cluster crews and the documenting they are doing on the ground has allowed us to learn more about wolves than almost all of the other studies leading up to that.

The baseline data they gather can help answer questions about how to protect livestock from wolves and game animals that draw tourists and provide food for local hunters.

A bear forages in a national park. The area has recovered from the near extinction of wolves, bears and mountain lions a century ago.

Nick Mott/MTPR

Managers outside of national parks can use that information to make decisions about what to do about wolves.

Smith says that the unique nature of the wolves makes them vulnerable to hunting. Humans used to line the roads of the park, but now they don't hide from people. He says one wolf was shot just 40 meters from the park line.

Smith said hunting can help build tolerance for wolves. He said they need places like Yellowstone.

wolves can be wolves and nature can be nature.