Montana’s wolf population has been declining for years, according to the state’s updated model

Written By Matt Barnes

2026/07/23 | Montana

Montana’s wolf population has been declining for years, according to the state’s updated model

According to Montana FWP’s new annual report for 2025, using iPOM 2.0, the population has been declining since 2013, and is only about 725 wolves, not the nearly 1,100 reported in recent years.

By Matt Barnes

Montana's wolf population is lower than previously thought, and has been declining since its peak in 2013, according to the new annual report by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (Parks et al. 2026). The state's updated population estimation model, iPOM 2.0, involves changes to some of the major inputs, including calculations of wolf pack territory (larger than previously thought) and wolf pack size (lower than previously thought, and decreasing over recent years). The changes result in a reduced statewide population estimate from nearly 1,100 (as reported in the last several years using iPOM 1.0) to about 725.

Source for figures: Montana Gray Wolf Program 2025 Annual Report (Parks et al. 2026).

That’s not to say that the previous model was “wrong,” except in the sense that “all models are wrong, but some are useful.” Models produce estimates. Note that either iPOM model produces a higher estimate than the verified minimum number. Minimum counts are reasonably accurate when the population is small, but as populations grow, minimum counts are increasingly undercounts. Montana and Idaho started using models to estimate wolf populations many years ago; Idaho’s modeled numbers are almost certainly overestimates, but for different reasons than Montana’s. States with smaller populations, including Wyoming, still rely on minimum counts.

The iPOM 1.0 model, developed by the USGS Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit (Sells et al. 2022) integrates wolf distribution, territory size, and pack size. The model had been previously challenged by independent scientists, including Scott Creel of the Montana State University Department of Ecology, who argued that it underestimated territory size (Creel 2022); and Bob Crabtree of Yellowstone Ecological Research Center, who argued that it didn't sufficiently account for wolf movement (Crabtree 2023, Crabtree et al. 2025). The creators of iPOM argued that Crabtree’s critique was based on erroneous assumptions (Sells et al. unpublished).

I’m not a modeler, I hold all of the scientists involved in high regard, and I’m not taking sides here. But I’ll note that Montana FWP’s iPOM 2.0 appears to adjust territory size upward, much as Creel suggested. And the reduced estimate in iPOM 2.0 is very nearly the degree to which Crabtree had argued that iPOM 1.0 overestimated the population: the iPOM 1.0 estimate is about 150% of the iPOM 2.0 estimate.

Many more wolves are killed by hunting and trapping than all other sources of human-caused mortality, including lethal control in response to livestock predation. Human-caused mortality dwarfs natural mortality, which is lumped under “other.” Montana’s wolf hunting and trapping had appeared to be almost sustainable (using iPOM 1.0), even though the state was actually trying to reduce the population (for reasons more political than biological). But now (using iPOM 2.0) it is clear that it has been reducing the population for over a decade.

Montana’s wolf hunting and trapping season is in the winter, spanning two calendar years. The last season 2025-26 (license year 2025), had a quota 452 and a harvest of 247, the lowest in a decade. (The calendar year 2025 harvest, from portions of two seasons, was 264). Montana FWP’s new proposal reduces the license year quota to 250. Note that harvest was below that threshold until 2016, then above it from 2017-2024, and dropped just below it in 2025. It makes sense to reduce the quota, because if the state actually harvested over 450 wolves, the population would be reduced well below the state’s minimum population of 450. A harvest of 250 is not the same as a reduction of 250, which would reduce the population to about 475, or just above the minimum.

Clearly, Montana’s proposed reduced quota is not intended to make the harvest sustainable; it is intended to reduce the population further, but not enough to risk relisting and losing control to the federal government. This isn’t about harvesting and selling wolf pelts for fur. It has nothing to do with carrying capacity. It isn’t about growing the elk population, which Montana’s data shows to be at a record high in recent years. And it has little to do with reducing wolf-livestock conflicts, which have been declining since the state took over management after federal delisting and ramped up lethal control efforts. Agency lethal control is far more effective at reducing conflicts (at least at a local scale and temporarily; DeCesare et al. 2018) than public hunting—because the former is targeted, the latter is indiscriminate.

So, what is the harvest quota debate about? It’s about worldviews, values, and visions for the future. But at least now we have better science to inform decisions that are about so much more than science.

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