Idaho’s wolf population likely is down by about one-third since 2021, according to state Department of Fish and Game officials.

Aug. 1 estimates included about 1,550 wolves from 2019 to 2021 followed by just over 1,300 in 2022 and 1,150 in 2023.

The 2024 estimate, to be presented to the Fish and Game Commission in July, is expected to be down slightly based on harvest in the preceding year, to around 1,000, “if we follow the trend line we were on,” said Shane Roberts, Fish and Game wildlife bureau chief.

The wolf population estimate for Aug. 1, 2024, will be a “new anchor point” for future projections that reflect impacts of a federal injunction that impacted wolf harvest during the 2024-25 hunting and trapping season, he said.

Federal Magistrate Judge Candy W. Dale in spring 2024 prohibited Idaho recreational wolf trapping and snaring in grizzly bear habitat in 19 counties during the bears’ non-denning season, from March through November. She upheld the decision Feb. 4 after Idaho asked her to reconsider.

Some 27% of the state’s wolf-trapping harvest from 2019 through 2023 was in the geographic area that the injunction impacts, Fish and Game director Jim Fredericks told the state Senate Resources & Environment Committee March 5.

“We’re not through the first year yet of seeing what the result is,” he said. “We are down in terms of our wolf harvest, and we are seeing less harvest in those areas because we are not able to trap when a lot of the harvest historically has occurred.”

Nevertheless, “we have other tools, and we do remain very committed to achieving our management objectives,” Fredericks said.

The department is considering appealing the federal ruling, he said.

As for Idaho’s wolf population and the department’s objectives for it, since 2019, “the trend line suggests that if we are able to maintain adequate harvest, we would be on a trajectory to meet the state’s management goal of a population fluctuating around 500 animals,” Roberts said. That population goal is set in the department’s 2023-28 wolf management plan.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in its 2009 delisting rule for the Northern Rockies said Idaho could manage an average of 500 wolves without reducing wild prey or increasing livestock depredation.

The Idaho Legislature in 2021 significantly increased allowed wolf take and authorized additional kill methods. Environmental groups took legal action.

Previously and since, Fish and Game has focused wolf harvest where livestock depredations are chronic or where elk populations are below management objectives.