Several conservation groups Aug. 4 petitioned the federal government to disqualify Idaho and Montana from Pittman-Robertson Act funds based on wolf legislation the states passed in 2021.

The act supports wildlife and habitat conservation projects, and hunter education. The U.S. Interior secretary distributes the money from a firearms and ammunition excise tax to states.

The Center for Biological Diversity said Idaho in the past five years received more than $75 million in funding authorized by Pittman-Robertson and its companion Sport Fish Restoration Act. Montana received more than $99.2 million from 2015 to 2019.

The group is one of 27 that petitioned Interior through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agencies “should disqualify Idaho and Montana from such conservation funds because they have passed legislation creating anti-predator wildlife management programs aimed at drastically reducing their ecologically important wolf populations,” the petition said in part.

“Montana and Idaho have relied on anti-wolf rhetoric to pass aggressive laws permitting the widespread slaughter of wolves with zero basis in ethics or science,” Andrea Zaccardi, the center’s carnivore conservation legal director, said in a release. The laws “run completely contrary to conservation goals, and they should disqualify both states from receiving federal funding.”

Idaho Senate Bill 1211 established year-round trapping of wolves on private property, allowed unlimited purchase of wolf tags and increased allowed methods of take. It also allowed the state to hire contractors to kill wolves, which has not been done. Supporters including the livestock industry cited wolf population growth well above federal targets.

The Idaho Fish and Game Commission in 2021 extended hunting seasons and increased allowed methods on public land in units where elk populations are below objectives or where chronic livestock depredation persists. On private land, it allowed foothold traps and expanded hunting methods year-round with landowner permission.

The state has been managing wolves for 11 years. Fish and Game says its estimated population — about 1,600 after pups are born in the spring and less than 900 in late winter due to hunting, trapping and other causes of death — has stayed steady in the last few years despite harvest changes.

Zaccardi said in an interview elk populations are above objectives in most of the state, even where they share the landscape with wolves.

While Fish and Game has said the wolf population has not decreased, “there are scientists that are questioning the methods that Idaho uses to estimate the wolf population,” she said. “And it defies logic that killing hundreds of wolves every year on some level wouldn’t decrease the population.”

The center said the Idaho law allows hounds, all-terrain vehicles or snowmobiles to be used to kill wolves. The Montana law increases allowed take, allows night-vision scopes and spotlights at night on private land, strangulation snares on public and private land, and the use of bait.

Zaccardi told Capital Press the laws are “clearly anti-wolf legislation.” In Idaho, she said, the law allows unethical methods of killing wolves, and the Department of Fish and Game contributes to an organization to pay bounties.

“Montana and Idaho have proven they’ll stop at nothing to eradicate wolves across the landscape,” she said in the release.

An Idaho Department of Fish and Game spokesman said Fish and Wildlife addressed the issue in 2021.

The conservation groups in May 2021 sent letters to Idaho and Montana officials, and copies to Fish and Wildlife, contending the states were ineligible to receive the funds because of the new laws. Fish and Wildlife, in a July 2021 letter in response to concerns about the Idaho law, said it does not violate the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act.

The agency said Pittman-Robertson requires states to pass wildlife conservation laws that prohibit diversion of license fees paid by hunters. It evaluates a state law only as to loss of control and diversion of funding, not conservation value. When it acts to fund projects and programs through grants, environmental review occurs under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Zaccardi said the NEPA process is procedural “and does not override the direct language as expressed by Congress in the Pittman Robertson Act.”