There’s a story in the Dec. 15 issue of USA Today saying that the gray wolf population in Yellowstone National Park has dropped to 116 animals, down 33 percent from an all-time high of 174 in 2003.

That decline is due largely to the fact that wolves have killed a heck of a lot of elk in Yellowstone—the park’s elk herd has dropped from 17,000 to 6,800 since wolves were reintroduced—and are now having a more difficult time finding food. According to Doug Smith, leader of the Yellowstone Wolf Project that studies and manages the animals, wolves are killing one another more frequently in the park as they compete for elk, their primary food source.

The story also points to other potential causes of wolf mortality, such as parvovirus, mange, and humans. Wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains were removed from the Endangered Species List earlier this year, and hunting seasons for the animals commenced in Montana and Idaho this fall.

But one line in the story, referring to state management plans for wolves, is troubling. The writer states that the group Defenders of Wildlife “faults the states' management plans to reduce wolves from 1,650 to 450.”

That is utterly false.

Montana’s wolf quota was 75, and hunters only killed 72 wolves—out an estimated statewide population of 500—in a hunt that ended in mid-November. Idaho’s quota is 220 wolves out of a population of 850 in that state. To date, approximately 120 wolves have been killed in Idaho in a season that is scheduled to run until March.

So, even if Idaho reaches its quota, hunters will have killed less than 300 wolves, which is nowhere near Defenders of Wildlife’s claim that the states will reduce the total wolf population from 1,650 to 450. (Wyoming has approximately 300 wolves, which are still protected by the Endangered Species Act and cannot be hunted.) Even when you factor in “problem” wolves, such as the ones that harass livestock, that have been or will be killed by state agents, you still don’t come close to the numbers offered up by the anti-hunters.

And when you consider that wolf populations grow by about 20 percent each year through reproduction, next spring’s pups will offset the wolves killed by hunters this year, resulting in population stability, not decline.