Wolf
Photo courtesy of Dennis from Atlanta/Flickr
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Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks will hold public hearings across the state on Thursday to discuss proposed new rules to establish a voluntary wolf management stamp for anyone to make a donation to Montana's wolf management program. FWP spokeswoman Vivica Crowser said the proposed rules would direct FWP to establish a $20 wolf stamp and would define how the voluntary donations would be allocated to wolf management activities.

"Right now we're in the middle of an extended public comment period," Crowser said. "We're looking for input on a proposal for some new rules that would establish a voluntary wolf management stamp that anybody can purchase if they wanted to make a donation to the wolf management program in Montana. We're also holding public hearings around the state, this Thursday, August 14."

Crowser said the Missoula hearing will be at the FWP office on Spurgin Road beginning at 6 p.m. Hearings around the state will also begin at the same time.

"A major purpose of Thursday night's hearing is to collect comment," Crowser said. "Between now and then, there's opportunity to look at the proposal. It's under the 'public notice' tab on our website. You can go in there and look at the proposal for the rule. You can submit comments right there, so if it's just something that you feel like you can see the information that you need, and submit a comment right away, by all means do so online."

Crowser said under the new rules, money received from the sale of wolf management stamps would be considered a donation and must first be used to pay for the cost of administering the stamp program. The remainder would be required to be equally distributed for livestock loss reduction program grants, wolf monitoring, habitat projects, scientific research, public education and outreach, and law enforcement.

For more information on the proposed wolf stamp rules, visit the FWP website.

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