Montana is gearing up to slaughter hundreds more wolves

Hunting season in Montana is in full swing, and dozens of wolves have already been hunted and killed.

But Montana isn’t stopping here. Led by Gov. Greg Gianforte, the state has released a new draft management plan that would double down on killing even more wolves.

It’s time to end the Montana wolf hunts — before it’s too late.

Montana is already one of the worst dangerous places that a wolf can live. The legislature has already called for wiping out 90%.

Montana plans to wipe out hundreds of its wolves.

This year alone, the state has set a goal of killing more than 300 wolves.

All too many of those wolves are being lured out of the safety of Yellowstone National Park’s invisible, man made boundaries. Hunters are playing the sounds of howling wolves, or putting out bait, to entice wolves and their pups out of the park and into the parts of Montana where they can legally be trapped, hunted and killed.

But this latest plan would be even worse for wolves.

Wolves were almost completely exterminated once before.

Before the European colonization of North America, wolves roamed every corner of the continent — from the island of Manhattan to the Gulf of Mexico, from the shores of Hudson Bay to Baja California.

But in the 19th and 20th centuries, extreme hunting policies brought that all to an end. After forming a cornerstone of ecosystems for millennia, by the 1970s wolves in the contiguous United States had been almost completely wiped out, with the exception of one small sliver of northern Minnesota.

Gianforte’s plan could be in place for decades.

The current draft would mean slaughtering hundreds of wolves. Today, Montana estimates that around 1,100 wolves live in Montana. Now they’re trying to wipe out all but a few hundred.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is accepting public comments until Dec. 19. We need to raise our voices and show them that we won’t stand for more wolf hunting.

Join our howl: Sign our petition calling on Montana to adopt a management plan that ends the wolf hunts.