WolfWays

🚨 BREAKING NEWS: Wolves in Wyoming and Yellowstone have dropped to their lowest numbers in roughly 20 years following a major outbreak of canine distemper, a virus that is especially deadly to pups. 💔💔🐺

According to Wyoming Game and Fish, the state’s minimum wolf population fell to 253 wolves and 14 breeding pairs at the end of 2025. Of the 87 pups documented, only an estimated 31–34 survived to year’s end: a survival rate of just 37%. Distemper was detected in 64% of sampled wolves in northwestern Wyoming. Adult wolves can sometimes survive the disease, but it is often fatal to young pups.

This is exactly why additional human-caused mortality: through trophy hunting, trapping, and government culling is so inhumane.

When wolf populations are already under pressure from disease, every breeding adult becomes even more important. Killing experienced pack members can destabilize family groups, reduce pup survival, and make recovery even harder.

Wolves are not numbers on a spreadsheet. They are highly social animals living in close-knit family units, and they are facing enough challenges without us adding to their suffering.

Please share this post to raise awareness and help us advocate for more compassionate, science-based management of wolves. 💔💔

Source: WyoFile reporting on Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s 2025 Wolf Monitoring Report.

A future where even our last true wild places are opened further to hunting and trapping should concern everyone who cares about wildlife conservation.

A new federal order pushes agencies to treat hunting and fishing access as the default on public lands unless there is a reason to restrict it. And now, some groups are already calling on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to go even further - including opening more protected areas and national park lands to hunting and trapping.

That should alarm all of us.

For many animals, protected lands are the only places left where they have even a small reprieve from constant pressure, persecution, and human interference.

Predators like wolves already face relentless hostility outside protected spaces. If these protections continue to erode, where exactly are wildlife supposed to exist safely?

Brian Nesvik has made his priorities clear. His push to open nearly all federal wildlife refuges and hatcheries to hunting and fishing, while reviewing whether protected sites still “align” with agency missions, sends a dangerous message: that conservation spaces only matter if they are useful to people first.

The wilderness does not need to be sanitized, controlled, or turned into another playground for killing predators and “managing” nature into submission. Wild places should remain wild. Ecosystems need balance, biodiversity, and areas where animals can simply exist without being relentlessly targeted.