JACKSON â State legislatures in Montana and Idaho have recently earned headlines for going over wildlife managersâ heads and adopting policies that require wolf populations be cut by as much as 90%. But in Wyoming, aggressive mandates to kill off big numbers of the large native canines would quickly jeopardize the stateâs ability to manage the species. The Equality Stateâs wolf population is essentially stable at a size that cannot shrink much without risking infringing on minimum numbers state wildlife managers agreed to when Endangered Species Act protections were revoked. That is by design. A âpredator zoneâ thatâs part of how Wyoming manages its wolves allows for unregulated killing on the fringes of the speciesâ range. That structure has worked to keep wolf numbers buffered above but also somewhat near the agreed-to minimums: 100 wolves and 10 breeding pairs in areas where the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has jurisdiction.