2 days Ago By BLAIR MILLER [email protected]
A bill that sought to establish an unlimited wolf hunting quota in Montana in order to reduce the population to about where it was 15 years ago failed to pass a Senate vote Monday, while two other bills aimed at cutting the population cleared the chamber and are close to going to the governor’s desk. The two bills that passed the Senate will have to go back to the House for a vote on whether the state’s representatives agree with the changes made to them by the Senate Fish and Game Committee — amendments the sponsors may agree with, but for which the full House might not have as much of an appetite. Dillon Republican Rep.
Shannon Maness’ failed to pass its final vote in the Senate on Monday in a 23-27 vote. Nine Republicans joined Democrats to oppose it. The bill seeks to create an unlimited wolf hunting quota when Montana’s wolf population is above 550; it currently sits around 1,100 to 1,200, according to the state.
The only area exempted from the unlimited quota would be the areas north of Yellowstone National Park that are currently Wolf Management Units 313 and 316, where hunting is restricted to only a handful of animals each season. The bill initially cleared the House when lawmakers changed language requiring the Fish and Wildlife Commission to adopt such a policy to a “may” – meaning it was optional. But the Senate Fish and Game Committee changed the “may” back to a “shall,” which drew bipartisan concerns on the Senate floor on Friday that the state was getting overzealous and might end up getting wolves put back under federal Endangered Species Act protections.
Sen. Bruce Gillespie, R-Ethridge, who has worked intensively on trying to get grizzly bears delisted the past several sessions, told his colleagues they might think he’s “going bonkers” because he opposed the bill over the livestock industry’s concerns and possible worry at the federal level that Montana was doing too much to limit its predator populations. “If we overdo this thing there’s a great likelihood the wolves get back on the endangered species list,” he said.
Several senators from northwestern Montana who supported the proposal said the wolf population there has been increasingly encroaching on the elk population in that area of the state. But Senate Minority Leader Pat Flowers, a former longtime Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks employee and Region 3 supervisor, said those complaints were being turned into a sweeping bill that wrongly applied to the entire state. He told the Senate he had been in the middle of what he called the first round of “wolf wars” in the 2000s and early 2010s when Montana was first allowed to manage the animal.
Flowers told senators the wolf population has been stable or declining for the past six years while multiple polls have shown Montanans have increasing tolerance of and support for the state’s wolves. Flowers showed that livestock losses to wolves have also been going down in recent years and echoed Gillespie’s sentiments that a state wolf policy that was focused too much on reducing the population might trigger the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service to come back in to manage the animal. “Why do we want to flip the table over and start all over?” he asked. Three GOP senators flipped from yes on Friday to vote against the bill on Monday, killing its progress for the time being and possibly for the rest of the session.
But the Senate did pass Rep. Paul Fielder’s and on their final votes in the chamber. The first bill from the Thompson Falls Republican seeks to align the close of wolf hunting season with that of bear hunting season, meaning the wolf season could run into either late May or early June when wolves are denning and raising pups.
The respective FWP regions would be able to modify their season to their own needs. The second, HB 259, would allow the Fish and Wildlife Commission to give wolf hunters on private property the option to use thermal and infrared scopes when hunting at night – a new addition to the already allowed night vision scopes. The Senate Fish and Game Committee changed the new scope allowances back to being an option for the Fish and Wildlife Commission to consider instead of a requirement.
That means the House will have to consider the bill again in its current form and either adopt it and send it to the governor, or hand it to a conference committee to be hashed out by members of both the House and Senate. The bill cleared the Senate in a party-line 32-18 vote, with all Republicans in favor. It also sent Fielder’s HB 258 back to the House with changes in a 31-18 vote, with Great Falls Sen.
Wendy McKamey the only Republican opposed. In the Senate Fish and Game Committee, lawmakers struck out language added before the bill passed the House that exempted areas around Yellowstone and Glacier national parks from the lengthier hunting season. Much of the debate over the bill on the floor on Friday surrounded the tourism in Montana related to wolf watching specifically.
Last year when FWP was setting its wolf regulations for this season, Yellowstone National Park’s superintendent that an analysis found tourism and wildlife viewing brings in about $80 million every year to Gardiner and the surrounding area. Several Democrats said people from other states and countries would be hesitant to come spend their money in a state trying to so drastically reduce the wolf population when that’s part of the reason they come to Montana in the first place. Multiple Republicans who spoke about the bill on the floor brushed those concerns aside, saying there needed to be a balance between wolf conservation and tourism and the conservation of other animals, like elk, for viewing and hunting opportunities.
“Since when did Montana care what the rest of the world thinks when it comes to determining what’s best for Montanans?” said Sen. John Fuller, a Kalispell Republican..
