Learn about the various methods of weighing and measuring the different animals in the Zoo. Contests will be held to guess the weight and height of selected animals with prizes for the winners. Wolves Threatened with De-listing Wolves from Canada recolonized northwestern Montana in and around Glacier National Park in the late 1970s and first reproduced in the area in 1986. The wolves in northwestern Montana are a wild population that receives full protection under the Endangered Species Act. The federal government has killed about 40 endangered wolves in northwestern Montana since the wolf recovery program began in 1987.
Environmentalists say that number is far too high.
Recently the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Humane Society of the United States, A Hunter's Voice and the Center for Biological Diversity submitted a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services division. The letter details how the agencies have violated the Endangered Species Act by killing dozens of wolves over the past decade in response to livestock predation. The letter followed the federal government's recent proposal to down list wolves throughout the United States, including a motion to reclassify wolves in Montana from endangered to threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Conservation groups say it is far too early to consider reclassification. But Ed Bangs, the Wildlife Service's wolf recovery coordinator for the northern Rockies, said the wolf recovery program has been a success.