Alanna Gillis

Opinions Editor

amg7393@psu.edu

In what is definitely not his first controversial hunting incident, Montana governor Greg Gianforte confirmed that he hunted and killed a monitored mountain lion in late December 2021. He used hunting dogs to chase it up a tree, where he cornered it and shot it with a rifle. 

The death of this mountain lion is a blow to the National Park staff who were monitoring it. The big cat was five years old, and was being monitored by Yellowstone staff. The mountain wore a tracking collar, and as is common with monitored wildlife, was known by the number M220. 

Gianforte’s press secretary confirmed that “The governor and friends tracked the lion on public lands. As the group got closer to the lion, members of the group, who have a hound training license, used four hounds to tree the lion once the track was discovered in a creek bottom on public land.” 

This is not Gianforte’s first time hunting a collared animal, nor is it his first time hunting animals who call Yellowstone their home. In February 2021, he killed a collared black wolf 10 miles away from Yellowstone. The wolf was known as 1155, and had been monitored by Yellowstone since 2018. 

Though his hunting of the mountain lion may have been technically legal because he possessed the proper license, his killing of the wolf was not. In blatant violation of state rules, rules which he would have known about given his penchant for hunting, Gianforte killed the wolf without taking the mandatory trapping class beforehand. 

The punishment he received for it? A written warning.

I am both someone who has been to Yellowstone and someone who has a desire to conserve nature where, when, and how we can. I strongly believe the rules about hunting big game like wolves and mountain lions needs to change, and not just in Montana. 

The animals who call Yellowstone and its surrounding areas their home are incredible. Elk, bison, moose, mountain lions, wolves and others are a sight to behold. The National Park is a region where their lives are protected, but the second they cross the boundary of the line, their lives are quite literally fair game. 

Valid hunting license or not, hunting big game like mountain lions and wolves should not be allowed in any state for any reason. Many of these animals are either endangered or just on the brink of  it. The Yellowstone wolf population alone dropped by half  between last year and this year due to hunting. This is especially concerning considering how small their population numbers were already. Wolves are not the only wildlife populations suffering blows from the hunting laws currently in place.

There is no reason people hunt these animals aside from sport, and maybe, in the rare cases they are antagonized to violence, for safety. The fact that Montana laws permit people to hunt any type of animals who roam from the protection of Yellowstone Park boundaries, boundaries which they cannot possibly be expected to know, much less understand, is absolutely absurd. The hunters that kill them are doing so for sport or because they want the trophy of a mounted head on their walls. These animals are doing nothing but existing on the land they inhabited long before humans came along. 

Montana, along with every state who has similar laws in place, needs to abolish these laws, but with a governor like Gianforte in charge, I have a sinking feeling that will never happen.