New wolf-killing laws prompt push to revive protections

Wildlife advocates pressed the Biden administration on Wednesday to revive federal protections for gray wolves across the Northern Rockies after Republican lawmakers in Idaho and Montana made it much easier to kill the predators.

Republican state lawmakers pushed through legislation in recent weeks that would allow hunters and trappers to kill unlimited numbers of wolves using aggressive tactics such as shooting them from ATVs and helicopters, using night-vision scopes and setting lethal snares that some consider inhumane. Wolves in the region lost federal endangered protections in 2011 under an act of Congress after the species had rebounded from widespread extermination last century. Hundreds of wolves are now killed annually by hunters and trappers. Yet their population has remained strong because the animals breed so successfully and can roam huge areas of wild land in the sparsely populated Northern Rockies.