Wolf 1090F — the 12-year-old elder of Yellowstone’s historic Mollie’s Pack — is still alive. So are the other members of the pack that became the center of one of the ugliest wildlife controversies I’ve covered in quite some time.
Part of that survival may be owed to four wolves from other packs being killed.
Hunters filled Wyoming’s four-wolf mortality limit in Hunt Areas 1 and 2 just days after the September 15 opener. Wyoming Game and Fish officials confirmed that none of the wolves killed belonged to packs previously associated with Yellowstone National Park.
For the people who had spent months advocating for Mollie’s Pack, the news was cause for celebration. The famous wolf survived. The pack survived. The immediate threat from hunters in that part of Wyoming had passed.
And almost immediately, the narrative for wolf advocates became one of victory.
But what about the four wolves that died? Their deaths became a footnote in a story about the survival of another animal. They had no international following, no viral social media campaign, and no $10,000 reward attached to their identities. At least, none that drew anything approaching the attention afforded to 1090F.
There’s no evidence that any of the four were killed out of spite or to provoke the outrage surrounding Mollie’s Pack. Yet the attention given to the wolf that lived — and little to none for the wolves that died — is pretty damn remarkable.
And it raises a question that seems to have gotten lost in all the noise: When did the popularity of an individual wild animal become a measure of its value?
Beyond the Famous Wolf
Mollie’s Pack has a history stretching back to Yellowstone’s original wolf reintroduction in 1995. Originally known as the Crystal Creek Pack, it’s now the park’s longest-running pack, though its members and leadership have changed considerably over three decades.
At roughly 12 years old, 1090F is exceptionally old for a wild wolf. Yellowstone’s 2025 report identified her as a lead female, though more recent accounts suggest a younger female may have taken her place. After losing a breeding female (1411F) and all its pups in 2025, the pack produced another generation this summer. Researchers documented five adults and five pups.
The wolves had spent considerable time in Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest, within Hunt Area 1, but largely returned to Yellowstone’s Pelican Valley around the September hunting opener. Whether that movement or the quick filling of Wyoming’s quota kept them from being killed is impossible to know.
But they aren’t necessarily beyond the reach of hunting pressure for the year.
Montana’s 2026-27 wolf season opened September 15, with separate one-wolf quotas in Wolf Management Units 313 and 316 along Yellowstone’s northern boundary. WMU 313 closed September 25, while WMU 316 remained open as of October 6. Several other Montana units also allow wolf hunting.
Should Mollie’s Pack travel north into an open unit, its members could once again encounter hunters.
The Yellowstone boundary offers protection inside the park, but wolves aren’t particularly concerned with our imaginary lines. They follow prey, defend territory, and move through the landscape without regard for hunting seasons or the people arguing over their fate.
What We Lose When We Make Wildlife Human
People have a strange habit of making wild animals familiar. We name them, follow their offspring, and build stories around individuals we’ve watched through camera lenses and spotting scopes. That connection can do tremendous good for conservation. But somewhere along the way, recognition gives way to anthropomorphism, and we begin stripping away the wildness we claim to admire.
1090F doesn’t know she’s famous. She has no idea she’s become a symbol of conservation, that strangers are rooting for her survival, or that others have threatened to kill her precisely because of that attention.
She’s just a wolf. She hunts, competes with other wolves, loses offspring, and will eventually die. None of those things becomes more tragic or triumphant because there’s an audience.
And frankly, I think it’s unfair to turn that life into a spectacle she never signed up for. We assign her human qualities, cast her as a hero or a victim, and develop expectations about how her story ought to end.
There’s nothing wrong with caring about an individual wild animal. But when that attachment begins dictating which animals deserve our concern, which deaths deserve outrage, and which outcomes constitute a victory — we’ve wandered a long way from understanding wildlife on its own terms.
When the Wolf Becomes Our Argument
Over the summer, hunters publicly threatened to kill 1090F, some apparently motivated by the outrage her death would generate. As a hunter, I find the idea of killing an animal simply to antagonize people absolutely reprehensible. There’s nothing ethical about it, regardless of whether the hunt itself would be legal.
Wolf advocate Jonas Black responded with a $10,000 reward for identifying anyone who legally killed a member of Mollie’s Pack, along with the promise of making that hunter internationally infamous.
I criticized the reward, arguing that the threat of public notoriety might encourage the very people Black hoped to deter.
That didn’t go over particularly well.
Black and I exchanged some heated words, publicly and privately. He eventually withdrew the reward, and somewhere along the way, we managed to find something resembling middle ground. We’ve since recognized the usefulness of speaking with someone on the other side of an issue.
When I spoke with Black for this story, he offered a perspective that I think deserves consideration.
“Coexistence doesn’t mean every wolf gets a friendship bracelet. It means we address actual conflicts, respect the people living with predators, and exercise restraint where killing serves no compelling purpose.”
We could probably spend an afternoon arguing over what constitutes a compelling purpose, but that’s a conversation worth having.
The larger controversy, however, had become far more about the people involved than the wolves themselves. Hunters were threatening to kill an animal for the notoriety, while advocates were threatening public retribution against anyone who legally killed it.
Somewhere in that fight, 1090F became a symbol for competing beliefs, and stopped being a wild animal with its own agency.
The Lives We Know and the Lives We Don’t
The four wolves killed in Wyoming had histories, territories, and relationships every bit as complex as 1090F. We just don’t know their stories. There’s no evidence their deaths were illegal or unethical, and their anonymity doesn’t make them any more tragic.
But that anonymity says something about us.
We’ve devoted months to arguing over the fate of one wolf while knowing almost nothing about the others in the same landscape. We’ve turned a wild animal into a celebrity, assigned her a role in our human arguments, and watched as her survival was declared a victory.
I don’t think that’s doing her, or the species, any favors.
Knowing an individual animal’s story should deepen our understanding of the wild, not narrow our concern to the animals we’ve grown attached to. Hunting ethics and wildlife management shouldn’t be judged by the popularity of the animal involved. And our respect for wildlife shouldn’t depend on whether we know a wolf’s collar number or anything about its life.
1090F lived. Four other wolves died. If we’re being honest, there really is no great moral victory in that outcome, regardless of how desperately some people want one.
For me, I find it hard to shake the image of those celebrating. I imagine them atop a proverbial winner’s podium, built from hundreds of pounds of dead wolves nobody knew, hoisting the symbolic weight of 1090F’s survival overhead.
I can’t help but wonder if any of them have bothered to look down.
