Montana’s wolf population increased 34 percent over the past year, to an estimated 422 wolves in 73 packs, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks reported Thursday.
The wolves are nearly equally distributed between northern and southern Montana, according to the agency’s annual wolf report, although the bulk of the population growth was in northwestern [...]
A Montana biologist has withdrawn his claim in a recent study that a rabbit species has disappeared from the Yellowstone area.
Joel Berger, a senior scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, said Thursday that he has been contacted by at least six biologists and naturalists refuting his conclusions about the white-tailed jackrabbit. He said they provided [...]
Eleven conservation groups have notified the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that it violated the Endangered Species Act by removing gray wolves from the endangered species list.
The groups contend that populations in the Northern Rockies do not have adequate genetic diversity, and that the states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming have not made meaningful commitments [...]
Criticism of Montana’s capture and slaughter program for bison leaving Yellowstone National Park is growing as the death toll mounts. So far this winter, more than 700 bison have been captured as they sought food at lower elevations outside Yellowstone’s boundary.
State livestock officials captured 51 more bison Tuesday with plans to ship them to slaughter [...]
The Northern Yellowstone elk herd population appears to have stabilized, and the animals seem to be gradually moving north of the park, biologists said Tuesday.
State and federal biologists said 6,279 elk in the Northern Yellowstone herd were counted during an annual aerial survey conducted Feb. 14. That number is similar to the counts of 6,588 [...]
The Bush administration on Thursday announced an end to federal protection for gray wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, concluding that the wolves were reproductively robust enough to survive.
“Wolves are back,” said Lynn Scarlett, the deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior, in a telephone conference call with reporters. “Gray wolves in the northern [...]
Due to structural damage from a single vehicle accident on the Carbella/Tom Miner County Bridge over the Yellowstone River, the Park County Commission has closed the bridge to all vehicular and pedestrian traffic for an indefinite period of time. The Montana Department of Transportation (MDOT) recommended closure of the bridge after a safety inspection by [...]
Forty-four bison, including 12 calves, were trucked to slaughter from Yellowstone National Park on Thursday morning.
So far this week, 127 have been taken to slaughter facilities in Montana as part of a state and federal effort to keep bison that wander out of the park from transmitting brucellosis to neighboring cattle.
Forty-eight more bison were being [...]
A jackrabbit found throughout much of the West has disappeared from the Yellowstone area, although the reason why remains a mystery, a new study concludes.
Whatever the cause, the study suggests the white-tailed jackrabbit’s disappearance has wrought major changes to Yellowstone’s food chain. Coyotes and wolves, which could have depended on the rabbit as a significant [...]
State proposals for wolf hunts this fall continue to move forward in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho in advance of the anticipated removal of gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act later this month, and all three states include public hunting as an integral component of their federally approved wolf management plans.
But hunters might not want [...]
