Montana House votes down bill that would have allowed wolf hunting into late spring

The Montana House of Representatives voted down a bill Friday that sought to extend the state’s wolf hunting season into May or June, which would have allowed hunters to kill wolves in the middle of their denning and nursing period. , sponsored by Rep. Paul Fielder, R-Thompson Falls, went down 44-54, with 13 Republicans joining all voting Democrats to sink it.

Montana’s wolf hunting season currently ends on March 15. Fielder’s bill would have extended the season to align with the close of bear hunting season, either May 31 or June 15 depending on the share of female bears killed during the hunting period. The bill did contain guardrails that would have given FWP’s regional managers the ability to close the wolf season early either in particular wolf management units or regions if they felt it was necessary.



But the measure largely drew opposition for two reasons: Because wolves typically start their denning season, in which they give birth to and raise their pups, in early-to-mid April, and because people in communities surrounding Yellowstone National Park depend on wolf-watching tourism and other wildlife tourism to get by each year. “The extended time is a time where wolf pelts are poor quality, and this time period also includes the time when recreationalists, people from throughout the state, like to get out and start to enjoy the wild and everything Montana has to add, including the watching of wolves,” said Rep. Jamie Isaly, D-Livingston, during the final debate on the bill Friday.

Fielder, a former wildlife biologist, had early on in the bill’s journey through the Legislature told the House Fish, Wildlife and Parks Committee he had little worry about the hunting season aligning with wolves’ reproductive season. “When I spray weeds to control weed problems, I not only spray the mature weeds, but I spray the seedlings. When I spray hornet nests, I not only spray the adult hornets that are in there, but I spray the larvae,” he said during the February hearing.

“The idea is to reduce a population, and that’s what the goal is.” The Senate Fish and Game Committee had taken out an amendment from Rep. Scott Rosenzweig, a Bozeman Democrat, added in the House earlier in the session that implemented tight wolf hunting quotas in areas surrounding Yellowstone and Glacier national parks where wolf-watching tourism is prevalent.

But after hours of contentious debate about HB 258 and several other bills that sought to cut the state’s wolf population in half throughout the session, there was relatively little on Friday. Fielder told the chamber he agreed with the Senate’s move to remove the quotas in those buffer zones based on feedback from "sportsman's groups and ranchers," and urged his fellow representatives to send the bill to the governor. Rosenzweig spoke to his constituents — he represents the area north of Yellowstone, including Gardiner and Cooke City — from the floor, saying he’d been naïve and had heard plenty both good and bad about his effort to work with Fielder on the bill.

“I’ll continue to look for bipartisan solutions and am happy to work with anyone to make any bill better,” he said. After adopting the Senate changes in an initial vote Friday, the chamber then voted the final version down, meaning it is effectively dead for this session. Another of Fielder’s, which in its final format merely gives the option to the Fish and Wildlife Commission to allow wolf hunters to use thermal and infrared scopes on private land, did pass the chamber 56-43 and now heads to Gianforte for his consideration.

An earlier version of the bill would have required the commission to allow for the use of the devices..