From today’s Flathead Beacon . . .
Wildlife officials are closing down the gray wolf season in portions of western Montana where hunters have met the state’s annual quota.
Officials said hunting in Wolf Management Unit 130 was to end a half-hour after sunset on Monday because the area’s 12-wolf quota has been filled. That includes portions of Flathead, Lake and Missoula counties.
From today’s Missoulian . . .
Hunters across Montana had killed less than half the quota of wolves set by state biologists as of Sunday, the end of rifle season for deer and elk.
The state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks had recorded that hunters had shot 99 wolves by Sunday across 14 management units. The quota was reached in only one wolf district, the large unit that stretches from just east of Butte to the North Dakota state line.
Montana’s big game season will end as scheduled, but the wolf hunt will continue. So far, hunters have taken only 96 of the allowed 220 wolves.
Here’s the lead-in from an AP article discussing this . . .
Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials say Montana’s 2011 general big game hunting season will end Sunday evening, as planned, while wolf hunting will continue at least through the end of the year.
From the Daily Inter Lake . . .
Heading into the final week of the big game hunting season, the deer and elk harvest picked up but still lags behind last year’s numbers while the wolf harvest is approaching quotas for a few Northwest Montana hunting districts.
Northwest Montana has six wolf hunting districts with a combined hunting quota of 71 wolves.
For District 101 covering the area between Libby and Kalispell, hunters have taken down 15 wolves out of a quota of 19 for the district.
In District 130 covering the area east of Kalispell including the Swan Valley, nine wolves have been harvested; the quota is 12.
And in the North Fork’s District 110, one wolf has been harvested out of the quota of two.
This week, Larry talks about the ongoing wolf hunt, Becky Hardy, the former — and much appreciated — North Fork mail lady and the last bit of road maintenance before the weather closed in.
Still no snow to aid hunters, but near neighbors have managed to harvest another white-tailed buck and two bull elk. Another neighbor managed to get one of the five cow elk tags available by drawing. He is still looking.
The quota for North Fork wolves is two, and I have not heard of any being taken…
From today’s Missoulian . . .
With more than 150 wolves shot in the Northern Rockies so far this fall, a panel of federal judges on Tuesday is scheduled to consider an emergency halt to public hunts for the animals.
Congress cleared the way for the hunts last spring, when lawmakers took the unprecedented step of stripping Endangered Species Act protections from more than 1,300 wolves in Montana and Idaho.
Wildlife advocates sued to reverse the move and want the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to suspend the hunt while the case is pending. They claim Congress violated the Constitution’s separation of powers mandate by reversing prior court rulings that kept protections in place.
From an AP article posted to today’s Missoulian . . .
State wildlife officials want to extend Montana’s wolf hunting season to give hunters enough time to fill a 220-wolf quota that is intended to sharply reduce the predator’s population.
Ken McDonald with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks said Wednesday the season would be extended by a month, to Jan. 31, 2012.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks released end-of-month totals for hunting season so far. The Daily Inter Lake has the story, including the wolf numbers . . .
So far this hunting season, hunters have taken 44 wolves in Montana.
The overall statewide quota is 220 wolves spread across 16 hunting districts.
In Northwest Montana’s six districts, a total of 17 wolves have been harvested; the quota of allowable wolf kills is 71.
Not unexpectedly, the request by a number of environmental groups for an emergency injunction against this year’s wolf hunt was denied . . .
A federal appeals court has turned down an emergency request by wildlife advocates seeking to stop gray wolf hunts underway in the Northern Rockies.
In a ruling Tuesday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the emergency injunction sought by three advocacy group but said it would consider the request during oral arguments scheduled for next month.
From today’s Missoulian . . .
A group of wolf advocates have requested an emergency halt to wolf hunting in the Rocky Mountains, one week before the general rifle season begins in Montana.
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Clearwater and WildEarth Guardians want to return the gray wolf to federal Endangered Species Act protection.