HISTORY
The people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, New England's largest colony and one of the country's first, were the first of many to establish wolf bounties. In the first year of their settlement, 1630, they began handing out these said monetary rewards for slain wolves. These animals were hunted with dogs, shot, trapped, dug from their dens, and poisoned by carcasses that humans tampered with. The settlers, however, defended their actions by asserting that the wolves were killing too many of their livestock. Before the arrival of the colonists, it is estimated that two million wolves roamed the land that later become the United States of America.
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Other states adopted not only personal bounties but also Wolfers - professional and civilian wolf hunters with an affinity for poison who slaughtered at least 700,000 wolves between 1870 and 1877 - who pretty nearly wiped out all wolves east of the Mississippi River by the turn of the 20th century.
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Following the United States' victory in the Mexican-American War in 1848 and the gold rush in California in 1849, a substantial number of settlers began to migrate west. Soon afterward, in 1862, the Homestead Act started offering anyone 160 acres of free land if they built a home and farmed it for five years in the West. As a result, even more people traveled to the west in order to work as farmers and ranchers. Only a few years after the second migration, in 1874, barbed wire, the first deliberately designed nonlethal wolf deterrent, was invented, and ranchers began to enclose their pastures with it so that wolves would not eat their livestock.
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It's important to understand why wolves began to prey on ranchers' livestock in the first place. At the time of colonization, approximately 30 million bison roamed the lower 48 states, but they began to be hunted for clothing, food, fuel, and sport beginning in the late 1600s. This was rendered possible by hunters killing and wearing the pelts of the wolves that bison had become accustomed to, allowing them to approach them. Only 325 wild bison remained in the Lower 48 by 1884, with two dozen of those living within Yellowstone National Park, where hunting was prohibited. Additionally, when more humans moved west to become ranchers, the other ungulates that gray wolves preyed on were driven away since they ate the available grass for livestock. When wolves inevitably went hungry, they discovered a new source of food in various species of livestock.
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At the same time, throughout the 1800s, several stories about wolves being harmful to people and livestock were penned and disseminated. "Little Red Riding Hood," "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," and "The Three Little Pigs" are just a few well-known examples of this kind of narration. All of these stories, from the time they were written until now, have reinforced the public's fear of wolves and desire to eradicate them.
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It wasn't just the general public who wanted to get rid of wolves, though. On July 1, 1915, the US government employed its first federal wolf hunters, who killed a total of 24,132 wolves before being disbanded on June 30, 1942, more than 30 years later. That same first year, in 1915, the National Park Service initiated a predator management effort, which culminated in the total eradication of wolves in Yellowstone National Park by 1926. Despite the fact that this park was established to preserve wilderness and protect wildlife, wolves and other predators in the park were not given legal protection at the time of its creation.
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Individual hunters, state-managed hunters, and federally-managed hunters continued to hunt and trap gray wolves all throughout the 1900s. Various methods of killing wolves, such as aerial shooting or snowmobile tracking, were also put into practice over this time. However, due to the drastically reduced number of timberwolves in 1965, Michigan passed the first-ever state law mandating complete protection of any subspecies of gray wolves. Timberwolves were thought to occupy only 3% of their former range in the contiguous United States at the time the law was passed. What's more, is that the timber wolf was identified as "endangered" in the contiguous United States in 1967 as a result of the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966, which provided them with limited protection on federal lands.
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Later, in 1973, the US Congress approved the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and the US Fish and Wildlife Service immediately began to implement it throughout the nation. The gray wolf, as well as two of its individual subspecies, namely the eastern timber wolf and Rocky Mountain wolf, were added to the ESA in the lower 48 states and Mexico in August of the following year, 1974. Within the coming years, all of the other gray wolf subspecies were added to the Endangered Species List as well. Prior to the passage of this law, though, only 700, or 0.035%, of the original wolves in the United States remained, and they were all hidden in northern Minnesota and Isle Royale in Michigan.
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Wolves began to increase in numbers again after receiving federal protection, regularly updated recovery plans, and additional safeguards during other animals' hunting seasons, and the first recorded wolf reproduction in the United States since the 1950s occurred in 1978, indicating that the wolves were on the road to recovery.
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Over a period of two years, 1995 and 1996, a total of 31 wolves originating from Canada were introduced into the United States. These wolves were brought in Idaho's Frank Church Wilderness and Yellowstone National Park, specifically. These wolves were considered experimental, though, which meant that ranchers were permitted to kill them if they harmed their livestock as long as they reported the attack within 24 hours. Despite this, this reintroduction was a success, and wolves have since dispersed into Montana, Washington, Oregon, and California.
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Gray wolves' status had been altered from "endangered" to "threatened" by 2003, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service had accepted Montana and Idaho's proposed state-management plans for their wolves in 2004. Wyoming also filed a management proposal, but it was rejected because they claimed that they would classify their wolves as "predators," allowing them to be killed everywhere throughout the state except Yellowstone. These three states, collectively known as the Northern Rockies, became the first states to have wolves officially removed from the Endangered Species List. This removal took place in March of 2008, after several years of appeals and adjustments to Wyoming's management plans. The Northern Rockies wolves would be both removed from and reinstated on the ESA several times over the next decade.
To elaborate, the gray wolves of this region had their ESA protections renewed in July of that year, during the fall hunts, because over 100 of their 1,645 wolves had been killed in just the few months that they were under state management. Following the conclusion of the hunts, the protections for these wolves were withdrawn once more in only Montana and Idaho. In September 2009, a federal district judge issued an order finding that the delisting of wolves in the Northern Rockies was likely illegal, but they refused to suspend wolf hunts in the two aforementioned states, Idaho and Montana, both of which lost over 500 wolves during their wolf hunts in 2010. However, after following significant population declines in the previous two years, gray wolves were reinstated on the ESA on August 5, 2010. Nevertheless, just under a year later, on August 3, 2011, Congress officially removed ESA protections for the Northern Rockies, marking their first time removing any species from the ESA. Nothing changed, though, seeing as how 166 wolves were killed in Montana and 379 wolves were killed in Idaho during the 2012 Montana and Idaho wolf hunting and trapping seasons. On August 31, 2012, Wyoming's 328 wolves were once again delisted. Wolves in Idaho's Frank Church Wilderness got their protections restored in 2014. Gray wolves got their protections restored in Wyoming on September 23, 2014, after 219 of their 328 wolves were killed under Wyoming's supervision after their delisting in 2012. Wyoming's wolves were delisted for the last time on April 25, 2017.
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Ultimately, on January 4, 2021, the Trump administration officially removed all gray wolves in the lower 48 states from Endangered Species Act protections, with the exception of Mexican gray wolves. All states with existing wolf populations gained state management over them as a result of this withdrawal.
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For the Northern Rockies Wolves, this meant that Idaho passed legislation that took effect on July 1, 2021, that relaxed trapping rules and redirected funding from the state's Department of Fish and Game to hire professional exterminators to kill up to 90% of the state's wolves in all developmental stages. Moreover, on August 19, 2021, it allowed the state of Montana to approve an increased quota for hunters to kill 40% of the state's wolves, which could be accomplished through a variety of previously outlawed methods, such as baiting those from Yellowstone and killing them after they cross the border onto state land.
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Presently, an overwhelming amount of wolf conservation organizations and individual advocates prompted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Center to conduct a year-long review beginning in September of 2021 of Idaho and Montana’s recently enacted laws that call for the killing of up to 90% of their wolves to see if they are seriously threatening the wolves' ongoing recovery. The conclusions of this review have yet to be released.
