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

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. These numbers matter because they inform wolf management; 725 is below the state’s population level when wolves were delisted under the Endangered Species Act by congressional fiat in 2011, but above the state’s minimum population objective of 450 wolves.

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 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 Dr. Scott Creel of Montana State University Department of Ecology, who argued that iPOM 1.0 underestimated territory size of individual packs (Creel 2022).

Dr. Robert Crabtree of Incline Conservation (and formerly Yellowstone Ecological Research Center) argued that the way the model relies on hunter observations is problematic, and that the model doesn’t sufficiently account for wolf movement between “grid cells” that serve as a basis for the state’s estimates. (Crabtree 2023, Crabtree et al. 2025; see Crabtree’s 2025 post on Incline Conservation’s Substack).

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 Fish Wildlife and Parks’ iPOM 2.0 adjusts territory size upward, much as Creel (2022) suggested. And the reduced estimate from iPOM 1.0 to 2.0 is proportionately greater than the putative overestimate in iPOM 1.0 that was argued by Creel (35%) but significantly less than was argued by Crabtree (150%).

Montana’s updates to the model don’t directly reflect the critique of Crabtree et al. (2023, 2025), so if they are correct, even iPOM 2.0 would overestimate wolf populations, which then has implications for state policy pertaining to allowable wolf hunting and trapping. Such “harvest” does not include lethal control in response to, or to prevent, livestock depredations.

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 (based on 15 breeding pairs, per the state’s wolf plan; Montana FWP 2025). A harvest of 250 is not the same as a reduction of 250, because there is also reproduction. Nevertheless, a reduction of 250 would bring the population to about 475, or just above the minimum—assuming that iPOM 2.0 is accurate.

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. The Montana state legislature mandated liberalized wolf hunting and trapping in 2021 (§ 87-1-901, MCA), despite the objections of many biologists and conservationists (including me).

This intensive wolf harvest isn’t primarily about harvesting and selling wolf pelts for fur. It has nothing to do with carrying capacity. It isn’t really about growing the elk population, which Montana’s data shows to be at a record high of over 157,000 elk in 2025. Of course on a finer scale, there are areas where long-term elk abundance has increased, and others where it has decreased, including parts of northwestern Montana.

And the intensive wolf harvest has little to do with reducing wolf-livestock conflicts. About one of every five packs is known to kill one or more head of livestock each year. Wolf-livestock conflicts have been declining since 2009 and especially after the state took over management after federal delisting and ramped up lethal control efforts, often with full-pack removal. 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.

Wolf-livestock conflict in Montana peaked in 2009. Wolves were delisted briefly in 2009, relisted in 2010, and delisted since 2011. Even though Montana’s lethal control in response to livestock conflicts often involves full-pack removal, the number of wolves killed is far less than the number killed in public hunting and trapping (see Figs. 10, 15).

So, what is the debate over Montana’s intensive wolf harvest really about? It’s about competing worldviews (traditional, modern, postmodern), their attendant values (utilitarian, pluralistic, mutualistic), and how those manifest as different visions for the future of the American West.

Wildlife policy decisions are always about so much more than science, but we need strong science to inform those decisions. The updated wolf population model is most likely stronger science. But as is usually the case with science, it probably isn’t the final word.

References

Crabtree, R. L. 2023. Misleading overestimation bias in methods to estimate wolf abundance that use spatial models. Preprint. agriRxiv 2023: 21 p.

Crabtree, R., M. Conner, and A. Treves. 2025. Misleading biases in methods for estimating wolf abundance using spatial models. Academia Biology 2025(3): 20 p.

Creel, S. 2022. Methods to estimate population sizes of wolves in Idaho and Montana. Unpublished white paper. 17 p.

DeCesare, N. J., S. M. Wilson, E. H. Bradley, J. A. Gude, R. M. Inman, N. J. Lance, K. Laudon, A. A. Nelson, M. S. Ross, and T. D. Smucker. 2018. Spatial and temporal patterns of wolf-livestock conflict in Montana and the effects of wolf management. Journal of Wildlife Management 82: 711–722.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. 2025. Montana Gray Wolf Conservation and Management Plan. Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. Helena, Montana. 120 p.

Parks, M., K. Podruzny, W. Cole, T. Parks, N. Lance, S. Zielke, M. Thorpe 2026. Montana Gray Wolf Conservation and Management 2025 Annual Report. Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. Helena, Montana. 70 p.

Sells, S. N, K. M. Podruzny, J. J. Nowak, T. D. Smucker, T. W. Parks, D. K. Boyd, A. A. Nelson, N. J. Lance, R. M. Inman, J. A. Gude, S. B. Bassing, K. E. Loonam, and M. S. Mitchell. 2022. Integrating basic and applied research to estimate carnivore abundance. Ecological Applications 32(8): e2714.

Sells, S., J. Gude, K. Podruzny, M. Parks, B. Wakeling, and M. Mitchell. No date. Erroneous assumptions by Crabtree et al. yield misleading and invalid conclusions. Unpublished. USGS Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit. Missoula, Montana. 3 p.