Is Wolf Hunting Effective? It Depends on the Context

In the week since the study was published (and NRP released the radio episode one day later), the research methods and the manner in which the results were reported have raised concerns about bias amongst the wildlife conservation community.

To summarize, the study did show that wolf hunting decreased livestock predation—albeit by a small amount—however, the researchers turned to the media with another finding from their analysis: that hunting failed to decrease the number of lethal wolf removals necessary in Montana and Idaho to protect livestock. That ultimately led to the paper’s simplistic conclusion: wolf hunting is not an effective management tool, if the goal is to reduce negative human-wolf interactions.

Those results have raised more than a few eyebrows. To understand the context of the issue—and the study—MeatEater reached out to Justin Webb, Executive Director at the Foundation for Wildlife Management in Idaho, and Jim Heffelfinger—a wildlife biologist working on wolf recovery.

Webb warns that using lethal removals as the only metric for wolf-hunting success is pulling the whole issue out of context. “Using this narrative to dismiss the value of properly managing wolves through sportsmen effort requires generalizing wolf behavior as well as sportsmen effort, which is not at all how any of this works,” Webb said. “Although wolf hunting has a less than 1 percent success rate, the argument that hunting has a small impact on livestock depredation is situational at best. If the wolves that have gotten accustomed to feeding on livestock are not the wolves being removed by hunting efforts, that’s clearly not going to solve the problem.”

Heffelfinger explains something similar, from a more management-based standpoint: “The finding is not surprising at all because lethal removal by government agents happens on individual problem wolves, so we should not expect general hunting to necessarily remove these specific problem individuals. General wolf hunting across large landscapes is not intended to, and will never, replace the need to remove a problem individual that repeatedly kills livestock.”

Bigger picture, the issues raised by the research study come down to a matter of perspective. In other words, how we measure the efficacy of wolf hunting depends entirely on the context of the analysis. Is the end goal to provide hunter opportunity, or is it to keep elk herds on their toes? Is it to have wolves out there in the mountains, or is it to “balance” the ecosystem? Point being, the metrics of success are inevitably tied to the desired objective.

And if that objective is to decrease the number of problem wolves—as is argued for in the research paper—then wolf hunting doesn’t appear to be effective. But if you were to look at other metrics, like wolf population stability and an overall reduction in cattle predation, then wolf hunting appears to have a positive impact—and that’s been shown in the data. By comparing numbers from Montana and Idaho (both of which have generous wolf-hunting seasons) with those from Oregon and Washington (neither of which have seasons) the researchers estimated a 2.34% percent decrease in expected livestock predation for each wolf killed.

They also mention that in parts of Idaho and Montana, wolf hunting might be the reason for stable populations. “Without public hunting, it is possible that wolf populations would increase and that livestock depredations and lethal removal instances would increase in turn.”

Yet despite these findings, the paper focuses on how hunting is not helping to achieve wolf conflict management goals. The researchers also point out a perceived concern over the cost to taxpayers of removing problem wolves. “Since government agencies are largely funded by taxpayer money, there is constant pressure to be economically effective,” they write. “Our results suggest that legalizing wolf hunting may not address the concern over the taxpayer cost of wolf management.”

Heffelfinger—and other biologists in his network—take issue with those findings and the way they’re presented. “The scientific literature on wolves is so full of advocacy, it is becoming worthless to the uninformed,” says Heffelfinger, who also points out that one of the researchers in the manuscript has declared affiliations to Project Coyote, the International Wildlife Coexistence Network, the Wolf Conservation Center, and Panthera—all of which oppose wolf hunting to various degrees. With regards to the point of taxpayer dollars spent managing wolves, Heffelfinger highlights another incongruity: hunting only occurs when wolves are under state management, which operates on license revenue, not taxpayer dollars.

Specifics aside, wolf hunting is a contentious subject, and it can be tough to discern fact from fiction. To make things more difficult, even scientific results can change or be manipulated based on the time frame, spatial frame, or context being looked at. This research paper is a case in point. “We’re not necessarily saying that we shouldn’t be hunting and I want to be clear about that, because there are other motivations for hunting,” said Leandra Merz—the lead author—in a press release, “but if the goal is to reduce livestock predation and we’re using hunting for that, it’s not as effective as we would like.” It’s a statement that captures the essence of the paper: a pretense of neutrality, but an anti-hunting sentiment that shines through nonetheless.

As hunters, we have a unique, more grounded perspective on the issue than most people do. We see the impacts of wolves on our hunting spots, and we probably understand their behavior better than any other group of people. We know that wolf hunting can help achieve some management goals, but that it’s not a silver bullet solution. That’s why, as hunters, we need to look past the catchy headlines and dig into what the data really says. After all, the devil is in the details.