1. Plan detail

Idaho Fish and Game’s draft wolf management plan was attacked by the Humane Society of the United States as unnecessarily harmful to the predators and unlikely to achieve all of its goals.

The state’s wolf population is well above federal minimums to avoid relisting under the  Endangered Species Act. The 2023-28 plan, open for comment through March 6, aims to close the gap so conflicts with livestock are reduced and the wolf population is better balanced with prey species such as elk.

The plan “will significantly harm wolves and is an embarrassment to the state following years of international outrage at Idaho’s egregious wolf policies,” Amanda Wight, the Humane Society’s program manager for wildlife protection, said in a statement. “It is more important than ever that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service restore federal protections to wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains.”

The society and other environmental groups in 2021 petitioned Fish and Wildlife to relist wolves in the Northern Rockies.

Incentivizing and promoting wolf hunting, trapping and snaring are primary methods the draft plan uses to reduce the wolf population — but killing wolves can exacerbate livestock conflicts and harm wolf families and population dynamics, the Humane Society said. And policies that promote wolf killing can increase poaching, the group said.

Hunters and trappers are already killing wolf families and individuals including pups, and collecting bounties, Wight said. The state “seems determined to finish first in a race to the bottom by proposing a wolf plan propelled by severe misinformation rather than science or public values.”

Critics of Idaho Fish and Game have frequently predicted the demise of wolves under state management, “and just the opposite has occurred,” said Roger Phillips, the agency’s public information supervisor. The state met delisting goals in 2002 and strongly exceeded them since.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s 2009 delisting rule called for populations around 500 in Idaho, 400 in Montana and 200 to 300 in Wyoming. It instructed each state to manage for at least breeding pairs and 150 wolves in midwinter.

Idaho’s wolf population was 1,337 in August, down 13.3% from a year earlier, the state Department of Fish and Game reported last month. The camera-based estimate is taken before hunting and trapping seasons, and winter mortality, occur.

The plan provides guidance for staff and sets population-reduction strategies, to be carried out through setting hunting and trapping seasons and other management actions. It describes mechanisms for moderating wolf mortality as the population approaches 500, and improving monitoring techniques.