Wyoming wildlife managers plan to cut the number of wolves that can be hunted in half after a canine distemper outbreak drove the state’s wolf numbers to their lowest level in two decades.
The proposal would leave hunters with a 22-wolf cap, the fewest available to licensed Wyoming hunters since the state began allowing wolf hunting in 2012, after Endangered Species Act protections were lifted. Ken Mills, the state’s wolf program supervisor, said the move was blunt but necessary. “As far as the overall mortality limit, it’s exactly half,” he said.
The change comes after hunters killed 31 wolves in last fall’s season in the Greater Yellowstone area, where they had been allowed to take up to 44. Wyoming and federal biologists then tallied 253 wolves and 14 breeding pairs statewide at the start of 2026, down from 330 wolves and 24 breeding pairs at the end of 2024. That drop followed a year in which canine distemper was detected in 64% of the animals Wyoming biologists handled during routine capture work.
The numbers show a hard turn for a predator that had been relatively stable for years in parts of the state. The population in Wyoming’s trophy game area fell 19% to 132 wolves in 2025, below the state’s 160-wolf objective, even as the Cody, Lander and Pinedale regions held steadier. The largest reduction came in the Jackson region.
Wyoming classifies wolves as trophy game in the mountainous northwest corner of the state’s Greater Yellowstone area during the Sept. 15-Dec. 31 season, and the delisting agreement requires at least 10 breeding pairs in the trophy game area. Wyoming hit that floor exactly in 2025. The state is now proposing to reduce the limit for units 8, 9, 10 and 11 from 19 wolves to six, and to cut the limit in units 6 and 7 from five animals to no more than two.
The friction in the plan is that the state is still trying to rebuild a population that has already been hit by disease and hunting. Mills said managers want to add 28 wolves to the population, but the proposed reductions show how thin the margin has become. Wyoming’s wolf numbers were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in 1995-96, and the region has been managed with a close eye on breeding pairs ever since. The new limits suggest the state is moving quickly to protect what remains after the distemper outbreak spread through the area, including Yellowstone.
For hunters, the practical effect is clear: fewer wolves will be available in the coming season, and the largest cut will be in the Jackson region where losses were steepest. For the state, the question is whether a 50% reduction is enough to let the population recover from a season in which disease and harvest both pressed it down at once. The answer will shape whether Wyoming can stay above its breeding-pair floor while it tries to rebuild toward its management target.
