Footloose Montana

06/19/2026

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is investigating a graphic video where an alleged Wyoming man tortures a seemingly wounded coyote. The video shows a…

06/19/2026

A conservation group is appealing the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to cancel bison grazing permits on seven public-land allotments in Phillips County.

06/19/2026

No, Yellowstone wolves are not “invasive Canadian superwolves.” They are gray wolves.

A recent WyoFile article tackles one of the most persistent myths pushed by anti-wolf voices: that the wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone were somehow a different species, “too big,” or “invasive.” This claim is misinformation.

The wolves restored to Yellowstone were gray wolves, Canis lupus , the same species that historically lived across the Northern Rockies before government-sponsored extermination campaigns wiped them out from most of the Lower 48. Reintroduction did not bring in an exotic predator. It return a native carnivore to part of its historic range.

So why are Yellowstone-area wolves often larger than wolves in places like the Great Lakes?

Wolf body size varies naturally across landscapes. Wolves that live with and hunt larger prey like elk, moose, and sometimes bison, tend to be larger than wolves living mostly on smaller prey like white-tailed deer. Climate, genetics, prey base, age, and regional adaptation all influence body size. Larger wolves in the Northern Rockies are not evidence of a different species. They are evidence of a highly adaptable native species shaped by the environment around them.

Calling Yellowstone wolves “invasive” is especially misleading. Invasive species are organisms introduced outside their native range that cause ecological harm. Wolves are native to this landscape. Their absence was not natural, it was the result of eradication. Their return restored a missing member of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s native wildlife community.

Let’s clear the air: Yellowstone wolves are not “Canadian superwolves.” They are gray wolves, restored to a place they never should have been erased from.

Read the full article from WyoFile.
https://bit.ly/3PWBIKu

06/18/2026

TAKE ACTION: Tell FWS to Protect Wildlife Refuges, Not Turn Them Into Hunting Grounds

National Wildlife Refuges were created for wildlife. Now, the federal government is proposing the largest expansion of hunting and fishing access in the history of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, opening or expanding more than 1,450 opportunities across refuges and hatcheries nationwide, and making over 95% of National Wildlife Refuge System lands available for hunting.

This is a sweeping political move that prioritizes expanded killing access over refuge, restraint, and wildlife protection.

Across the country, this proposal could open the door to more hunting pressure on lands that should serve as safe habitat for migratory birds, native predators, threatened species, and the many wild animals already pushed to the margins by development, habitat loss, climate stress, and state-sanctioned predator persecution.

In Montana, where mountain lions are already pursued with hounds and predators are routinely treated as expendable, expanding hunting access on wildlife refuges raises serious ethical and ecological concerns. Refuges should not be used to normalize more pressure on animals already subjected to aggressive state wildlife policies. Wildldife refuges are not just another place to hunt. They are some of the last places where wildlife should come first.

FWS must not rubber-stamp broad hunting expansions without rigorous, site-specific review, public transparency, enforceable safeguards, and clear proof that each proposed opening is compatible with the purpose of a wildlife refuge.
Comments are due June 26

Tell the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service:
Do not sacrifice wildlife refuges for political optics. Protect refuge lands for wildlife, habitat, quiet recreation, and future generations.

ubmit a comment by June 26 by going to regulations.gov, searching docket FWS-HQ-NWRS-2026-1223, clicking Comment, and urging FWS to reject this expansion.

06/17/2026

All right in the heart of grizzly country.

The Lolo National Forest has identified a 345,000-acre “shared stewardship landscape” in the Blackfoot and surrounding areas, a phrase that may sound harmless, but deserves public attention.

A shared stewardship landscape is a large area where the Forest Service, the State of Montana, DNRC, and selected partners coordinate forest projects across public and private boundaries. In practice, that can mean faster-moving logging, thinning, burning, and road projects across huge landscapes, sometimes with less transparency and fewer opportunities for meaningful public input. These are still public lands. And this is not just any landscape.

The Blackfoot watershed is home to grizzly bears, wolves, elk, native trout, and some of Montana’s most important connected habitat. Public lands need public oversight.

https://missoulacurrent.com/lolo-forest-projects/

The Lolo National Forest publicized two initiatives that allow more state involvement and less public input in logging projects. Some citizens claim it’s a return to “logging without laws” from the 1990s.

06/16/2026

Faunalytics’ recent article on animal ethical mourning gives language to what so many of us are feeling after the horrific coyote torture footage.

It is grief, not because we personally knew this animal, but because we know he/she suffered. Because we know the fear was real. Because we know that life mattered, even in a culture that has worked so hard to convince people otherwise.

When someone grieves a dog or cat, we understand. But when people grieve a coyote, wolf, fox, bobcat, skunk, beaver, or other wild animal, that grief is often mocked, minimized, or treated as an overreaction.

We are told to toughen up.
That it is “just nature", predators are pests, that cruelty is an isolated incident and that our grief may be misplaced.

But there is nothing weak or irrational about refusing to become numb.

The grief many of us feel goes deeper than feeling for one animal. It is about the language, laws, and culture that place certain wild lives outside the circle of compassion before the harm ever happens. It is about a system that can label an animal a “varmint,” “predator,” or “problem” and then act surprised when people treat that animal as disposable.

This is why we cannot separate individual acts of cruelty from the broader culture that excuses them.Mourning wildlife is not sentimental but is moral clarity.

It is the part of us that still recognizes suffering as suffering, even when the victim has fur, teeth, claws, or a species label that makes them easier to dismiss.

Our grief is not the problem. The problem is a society that keeps asking us not to feel it.

Read the article here: https://faunalytics.org/animal-ethical-mourning-why-animal-grief-is-disenfranchised/

06/15/2026

Content warning: disturbing graphic footage of animal cruelty.

We do not share this video lightly. We share it because turning away has allowed this violence to continue in silence.

When Cody Roberts tortured and killed the wolf in Wyoming, Brian Nesvik, now the Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was the Director of Wyoming Game and Fish. Roberts’ initial penalty was a $250 fine. He reportedly laughed at the fine and said it would buy a round at the Green River Bar in Daniel. That response showed the offhanded leniency toward cruelty reaching the highest levels of wildlife governance today.

Now, once again, we are confronted with graphic footage of a wild animal being tortured, this time a coyote, in a video reportedly under investigation by Wyoming Game and Fish.

How many more incidents will it take?

Footloose Montana and others will continue fighting to end this savage behavior toward sentient wild animals. It is long past time to fully protect wild animals under animal cruelty laws.

We should not have to watch this footage. But we cannot look away from the cruelty our laws continue to allow.

06/14/2026

A disturbing new report from says Wyoming Game and Fish has launched an investigation into a graphic video allegedly filmed in Wyoming, showing a wounded coyote being tortured and taunted.

We will not share the video. We do not need to.

The details are horrific enough, and they point to something much larger than one person’s actions.

Across the West, coyotes and other native carnivores are still treated by many laws and hunting cultures as if they exist outside the bounds of basic decency. They can be called “varmints,” “predators,” or “nongame,” and with those labels, cruelty is too often softened, excused, or defended.

This is the dangerous outcome of a system that normalizes unlimited killing, killing contests, indiscriminate trapping, and public messaging that portrays native carnivores as problems to be removed rather than wildlife with a role on the land.

Our state has seen the same rhetoric used to justify expanded trapping, longer seasons, more aggressive wolf policies, and fewer protections for animals deemed inconvenient. Cruelty is built into much of our wildlife policy, and because of this, cruelty shows up in behavior.

No animal should have to be popular to be protected from torture. No species should lose its claim to humane treatment because of a legal classification. And no society that calls itself ethical should look at cruelty toward coyotes and shrug.

06/14/2026