Legislating bounties to kill wolves or trap them inhumanly is bad for Montana’s $3.7 billion tourist economy. Visitors spend $10 million dollars daily on average, generating over $265 million in
state and local tax revenues. Yet legislators in Helena are considering eight bills that would severely reduce Montana’s wolf population—a reason many tourists visit our state. Why infuriate 13 million annual visitors to appease a few hunters, trappers, and ranchers?
My family runs Howlers Inn and Wolf Sanctuary in the Bridger Canyon. Each year hundreds of tourists flock to our inn to see wolves. Guests we’ve recently spoken to are appalled that our state is
considering bounties on wolves, expanding cruel methods of trapping, and giving trappers permission to set traps on private land.
Most Montanans believe wolves kill lots of cattle. But the government’s own data show that the real killers of cattle are coyotes, illness, and weather. Yet, the predation myth has contributed to
a paramilitary assault on wolves. The livestock predation myth is a misperception imposed on the public by the cattle industry.
These bills should be voted against: HB 224 (wolf snaring), HB 225 (expanding wolf-trapping season), SB 98 (loosens language around killing grizzlies), SB 267 (promoting wolf bounties), SB 314
(reducing the wolf population, allowing unlimited wolf bag limit per hunter, and wolf night hunting), SB 337 (undermines grizzly recovery), HB 468 (black bear hounding), and HB 138 (eliminates
the requirement of written permission to trap animals on private property and the requirement of trapper’s contact information on traps).
The topic of wolves is a hot issue, and both sides need to be heard. However, there are plenty of solutions already for both sides to exist peacefully together without decimating Montana’s wolf
population.
Thomas Burns
Bozeman
Bozeman Daily Chronicle Letter to the Editor 4/20/21