Learn more about Mollie’s Pack and find contact information for Wyoming wildlife officials through Wyoming Untrapped. With Wyoming’s wolf hunting season opening September 15, 2026, now is the time to make your voice heard.
Lisa Robertson, founder of Wyoming Untrapped, in her Guest Shot in last week’s News and Guide, implored the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and its Commission to spare the famous and oldest remaining line of survivors, the Mollie’s Pack, of the original reintroduced line of wolves, the Druids, in Lamar Valley, Yellowstone in 1995. Mollie’s Pack was named after Mollie Beattie, the first woman director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, who was instrumental in the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone.
The Druid wolf pack died off from mange, conflict with other packs, and legal trophy hunting outside the park. The last wolf of the direct line of Druids, named Big Brown, was killed by a hunter in November 2016 in Montana’s Unit 390 outside the park. The park boundaries and trophy hunt boundaries are invisible to the wolves, so the wolves establish territories, hunt areas and dens that cross into the trophy hunt zones unknowingly, where they are legally killed by trophy hunters.
Under these extreme circumstances, the Wyoming Game and Fish, and their claim of adaptive management, when there is a need to change management, could easily close the area where the Mollies denned and currently have five pups and five adults. Hunters would still have 85% of the state of Wyoming open to those who feel the “need to kill“ innocent, sentient, intelligent, emotional, and social beings just like us. Animals who feel pain, suffering, loss, and joy.
The trophy hunt areas are just outside the park. With 85% of the rest of Wyoming open to wolf hunting, where there are few or no regulations. No license, no limits, and no season. They and coyotes, and other non-game species can be run down and run over multiple times by snow machines until dead, shot with any weapon, trapped, snared, and poisoned. President Trump recently signed an order to rescind the ban on the use of M-44 cyanide bombs on BLM and other public and private lands. These traps are known for killing any animal or pet dog that tugs on the sweet-smelling bait, which blows cyanide in their faces. A cruel, painful, and diabolical death and practice.
If the WGFD, its Commission, legislature, senators, representatives, and governor are incapable of protecting such a wondrous pack of wolves as the Mollies, for all stakeholders, they certainly have no business managing grizzly bears or petitioning the federal USFWS to change or remove the endangered species protection of the grizzly, or any other species, to be managed by the states of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho!
I just returned from spending three days waiting for wolves to come to a bison carcass south of Hayden Valley. Neither wolves nor bears came, but thousands of people did. Locals and visitors from all over the world stopped and many stayed all day, as I had, just to have the rare opportunity to see a wolf in the wild! During those three days, I estimated more than 5,000 people stopped in hopes of seeing a wolf or bear!
For a single hunter with a single high-powered bullet, sanctioned by the WGFD, to kill any wolf, let alone any of Mollie’s pack, is inhumane, cruel, pathetic, and very sad!
I invite you to join me in urging the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and the Commissioners to close Wolf Trophy Hunt Area 1 to wolf hunting. To find contact information, please visit Wyoming Untrapped “Take Action” page. There you will find more information about the issue and a comprehensive list of who to contact.
Learn more about Mollie’s Pack and find contact information for Wyoming wildlife officials through Wyoming Untrapped. With Wyoming’s wolf hunting season opening September 15, 2026, now is the time to make your voice heard.
