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In accordance with Montana statutes, FWP and the FWP Commission are charged and authorized to 

 protect people and personal property from damage and depredation caused by wildhte. FWP defines a 

 public safety problem related to carnivores as: any situation where an FWP employee reasonably 

 determines that the continued presence of a carnivore poses a threat to human safety, an attack has 

 resulted in the loss of livestock or personal pets, or that a human has been physically injured or killed. 



Table 20. Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks 2000 revenue from major deer and elk license and permits. 

 Source: FWP historical license sale records. 



Wolf-human Encounters 



Public safety is an important consideration because species such as the gray wolf, mountain lion, black or 

 grizzly bears are capable of injuring or potentially killing a person. Though wolves generally fear 

 humans, there are cases where individual wolves lost their fear of people and caused injuries, but no 

 fatalities have reported in North America (Mech 1998a, Route 1999). McNay (2002) provides a 

 comprehensive review of case histories of 80 incidents of wolf-human interactions in Alaska and Canada, 

 spanning from 1900 through 2001 . It appears most wolf-human encounters were not precipitated by the 

 wolf perceiving the human as prey because of how the wolves behaved, the presence of domestic dogs, or 

 the duration and type of interactions between wolves and humans leading up to the incident (Mech 1998a, 

 McNay 2002a, Carncs and Van Ballenberghe unpubl.). Instead, wolves losing a sense of fear of humans 

 seems to be a common thread running through most North American wolf incidents resulting in human 

 injury (Mech 1998a, McNay 2()02b). Of the 80 ca.ses reviewed by McNay (2002b), .^9 included elements 

 of aggressive behavior by healthy wolves, 29 were not aggressive, and 12 cases involved known or 

 suspected rapid wolves. Of the 16 cases in which healthy wild wolves bit people or their clothing, 10 of 



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