Wolf hunting in western US does little to prevent livestock losses, study finds | Hunting

The hunting for the legalized wolf in the western United States had only a minimum impact on the prevention of the loss of cattle, suggests a new study conducted by the University of Michigan.

Research, published in Science Advances, compared the data from Montana and Idaho, two states where the public hunts of wolf have been authorized, with Oregon and Washington, where hunting remains illegal.

“Hunting, on the whole, does not remove the negative impacts associated with wolves. It has an effect on the loss of livestock, but the effect is not particularly coherent, widespread or strong,” said Neil Carter, principal author of the study, at the University of Michigan News.

Montana and Idaho launched their first hunts with the wolf regulated in 2009. At the time, those responsible hoped that the wolf population cut would facilitate conflicts with breeders who lost livestock and predation sheep. The hypothesis was that fewer wolves would mean fewer deaths of cattle.

But the data does not seem to support this theory. The researchers examined trends in the number of wolves, government eliminations and the depredation of livestock between 2005 and 2021. Their analysis showed that the elimination of a wolf included only 7% of a single cow.

In other words, about 14 wolves should be killed to save a cow. The current wolf populations are estimated at around 1,100 in Montana and more than 1,200 in Idaho.

The study also revealed that fauna state and federal agencies are not called less often to remove wolves, even when public hunts take place. In 2024, Montana hunters and trappers killed 297 wolves, while breeders have always declared that they had lost 62 livestock animals against wolves, according to Montana Fish, fauna and parks.

The wolf hunt itself has been the subject of current legal disputes. In 2020, the US Fish and Wildlife Service said that the gray wolves had recovered sufficiently to be struck off from the endangered species law, but a court has denied this decision in 2022.

However, researchers do not aim for their results to be used in the wolf hunting debate. “This document does not concern whether we must hunt or not,” said Leandra Merz, co-author of the study at NPR. “We are talking about finding a management tool that will help breeders manage the predation of cattle.”