KALISPELL, Montana — The gray wolf population is robust enough in Montana that officials are preparing to extend hunting season on the state’s most controversial animals and allow snare traps that grab them by the neck.

And in next-door Idaho, where hunting and trapping season is pretty much year-round, hunters can use night-vision goggles and ATVs to chase down gray wolves in the dark on private land. To keep that state’s 1,500 wolf population steady, about 40% are killed off each year through hunting and trapping, and by the Idaho Fish and Game in retaliation for livestock attacks.

Both northern states reintroduced wolves after they had been gone for decades. Their advice to Colorado as it prepares for a voter-approved reintroduction of the gray wolf is the same: Expect the wolf population to repopulate quickly, as long as the new predators of the forest have the right habitat with plenty of deer, elk and moose to eat.

“I’m guessing that once wolves get established there, they will take off and do pretty darn well,” said Neil Anderson, a wildlife manager for the northwest region of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. “They will take off pretty quickly, is my guess.”

Nature is already proving the case.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife confirmed last year that a gray wolf had roamed into the northwest corner of the state from a Wyoming pack near Yellowstone National Park. Then wildlife officials announced the wolf had a mate. And last week, CPW announced that the collared wolves known as John and Jane now have six pups.

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