Northern Rockies and Yellowstone Area Wolves
The northern Rockies region (which includes wolves in the Great Yellowstone ecosystem) is home to the largest wolf population in the American West, with more than 1,600 wolves once again inhabiting this rugged landscape. We’ve helped lead wolf recovery efforts here for decades, and we’re still at it.
Defenders In the Field
Since their return to Yellowstone and the Northern Rockies, hundreds of wolves have been killed in response to livestock predation incidents. Defenders is taking proactive steps with resource managers, ranchers, and other community members to prevent deadly conflicts between wolves and livestock.
Management and Policy
Despite the recent landmark success of wolf recovery efforts in Yellowstone and the Northern Rockies, the wolf population remains at risk. We support management and policies that will protect wolves now and into the future.
The gray wolf is once again protected under the Endangered Species Act, thus eliminating the hunting season for wolves in the northern Rockies for 2010. Montana and Idaho continue to find loopholes in the law so they can maintain state management and reduce wolf population through systematically killing them in certain regions of their respective states. Montana and Idaho are both pursuing avenues and loopholes, while Wyoming is reassessing its current wolf management policy, which basically is see a wolf, shoot a wolf. Hunters are driven to kill off wolves period, while wildlife advocates for the wolf stay determined with great passion to save the wolves and promote the need for the wolf in the ecosystem, not just for the northern Rockies, but throughout all of North America.