10/16/2026
ALERT: BUYER BEWARE DO NOT BE FOOLED MONTANA WOLF ADVOCATES!
Idaho based "nonprofit", Foundation for Wildlife Management (F4WM) has a really good gig going based on emotions, falsehoods, and now deceptive advertising with a Montana wolf design license plate in order to raise more money for bounties to kill more wolves in Montana and Idaho.
First off their name, Foundation for Wildlife Management. How is paying a bounty of $1,000, $1500, and $2,000 per dead wolf with receipts for outdoor clothing, gas, or truck payments, a foundation to manage wildlife?
Where is the science supporting ~ 157,000 elk in Montana, ~60,000 over management objectives, and only amongst maybe 600-800 wolves as a sound foundation for wildlife management? What other species under FWP and Fish & Game agencies have as their foundation to manage wildlife that includes killing the young of the year, including newborns, shooting over bait, trapping, snaring, night hunting with infrared and thermal, killing year-round, the utilization of domestic canines, aerial gunning, and collecting $1,000, $1500, and $2,000 per animal, after the kill? Aka, a bounty. What wildlife biology program teaches this for wildlife management, as ours certainly did not?
Secondly, how does F4WM receive over a million dollars in donations? By eliciting a highly emotional and very profitable response in promoting utter falsehoods to these states with high numbers of elk hunters, i.e. "Save the Elk", because "Wolves are decimating all the elk," ----"Wolves must be managed." Disgruntled and passionate elk hunters both likely fall for it. The over a million dollars in contributions speaks for itself.
The F4WM and their supporters also neglect to disclose states like Idaho and Montana have tens of thousands more elk today then when wolves were returned 30 years ago. Montana, for example, has ~ 157,000 elk in comparison to 90,000-95,000 when wolves returned, but, shh, it's a secret worthy of staying tight-lipped over.
F4WM further embellishes their powerful myths, by claiming how many big game they saved by the killing and bounty paying of a wolf. They withhold the success rate of a wolf kill is only 3-14% and that is generally with the pack. Whereas, the average elk hunter success rate in Montana is around 20%.
F4WM evades telling that the number of elk killed annually by wolves are estimated at 16-20 elk and omits that it is commonly with other pack members. Devoid in their propaganda, hunters in Montana kill on average 25,000 elk annually. There are more than enough big game for humans and wolves in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Research findings are wolves target older, weaker, sickly prey and help keep their natural prey, such as elk, strong and healthy.
Of course, F4WM excludes the fact that wolves evolved with elk long before we were on the landscape and wolves hunting elk are not without significant risk of injury, even death. Wolves fail far more often in the hunt then they succeed.
Furthermore, F4WM falsely makes the claim of all the big game and livestock they saved, 426,000, by killing the wolf over a wolf's "7-year" life span. Yet, wolves inside protected areas like Yellowstone National Park average life is about 4 to 5 years, while wolves living outside the park face high human-caused mortality and average living only 2 to 3 years. Let the findings show in Montana 2025, we had almost 500,000 deer, and wolves killed .003% of the over 2 million cattle and sheep.
F4WM represses acknowledging the highly social workings of wolves. They ignore the impacts of the surviving wolves in the packs' ability to successfully hunt and especially related to the very wolves they killed, i.e. their age, status, role, and the pack size. Never mind, the harm caused in the killing of a dispersing or a collared wolf. Instead, they celebrate, fabricate, and profit off the kills.
F4WM does not expose the lengthy elk hunting seasons, damage control elk hunts, that elk are hunted in Montana 6-months out of the year and that the Montana legislature mandated a reduction in the elk population in our state. It would completely contradict their highly effective and profitable scam.
Why tell the facts, when you have a great lucrative scheme going?
Now their last trick. Create a wolf license plate in Montana, although they are Idaho based, and raise funds off it. How? By making the entire license plate that of a wolf. Who is going to buy it? Those, unknowingly, who care and/or love wolves. They will not know the full size image of a wolf on their vehicle funds the $1,000-$2,000 bounties to kill wolves.
F4WM website claims, they have paid for 75% of the wolves killed in Idaho and 55% of Montanaβs wolf kills each season. F4WM writes, "We have helped remove 3,049+ wolves with just over $3.2 million in membership and sponsor funds." They lack the nerve to even say, kill. You remove your shoes. You do not remove wolves.
One cannot help but wonder if karma will take a big juicy bite out of anti-wolfers who do purchase the plate to support F4WM, and "accidentally' or intentionally have their vehicle vandalized by the naive vengeful other anti-wolfers. Wolf advocates often avoid publicly displaying their support of wolves due to fear and retaliation.
If F4WM were to show one iota of integrity, they would have put a bullseye on the wolf like many anti-wolfers and trappers have done in the past. That, or depicted a wolf with blood stained baring teeth as their go to image.
Do not be fooled by these tactics!
Pass it on!
Please SHARE.
Montanans, DO NOT Buy this license plate that funds bounties to kill wolves in our state and Idaho! Tell your family and friends.
