Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines joined California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff on August 4 to introduce federal legislation that would direct up to $20 million a year toward non-lethal methods of protecting livestock from wolves and bears. The measure, called the Human-Wildlife Conflict Reduction Act, would fund tools such as range riders, guard dogs, and electric fencing across the Northern Rockies and other predator-conflict zones.

A Longstanding Tension on the Range

The bill arrives against a backdrop of decades of conflict between ranching families and recovering wolf populations. Gray wolves were reintroduced to the Greater Yellowstone region in 1995, and disputes over livestock losses followed almost immediately. Defenders of Wildlife launched a privately funded compensation program for ranchers as early as 1987, eventually expanding it alongside the federal reintroduction effort before winding it down in 2010.

Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming subsequently established their own state-level livestock-loss compensation programs. Between 1995 and 2021, a combination of federal, state, and private funding paid out more than $6.5 million to ranchers for wolf-related losses across the region. The three states together support an estimated 6 million cattle and 500,000 sheep — and combined wolf populations that now stand at roughly 1,100 animals in Montana, 1,129 in Idaho, and approximately 300 in Wyoming.

What the Numbers Show

The scale of the problem in Montana remains significant but concentrated. Wolves killed 68 livestock animals in the state in 2025, prompting the Montana Livestock Loss Board to pay ranchers $92,917 for federally confirmed kills. At the same time, Federal Wildlife Services agents lethally removed 43 wolves in response to those livestock incidents — a figure the bill’s supporters argue illustrates why prevention investments could reduce both animal losses and predator kills.

“This bill will expand funding to implement more nonlethal ways to keep our communities safe from predatory wildlife,” Daines told the Montana Free Press.

Dan Moss of Defenders of Wildlife framed the issue similarly from the conservation side, telling the Montana Free Press, “Ranchers absolutely suffer real economic losses from livestock depredations, but lethal solutions do not have to be the automatic go-to solution.”

Bill Provisions and Limits

The legislation authorizes up to $20 million per year through 2031, though actual disbursements would still depend on annual congressional appropriations — meaning the authorized ceiling and the eventual spending may differ substantially. No more than 10 percent of any appropriated funds could be spent on new research, keeping the bulk of the money directed toward on-the-ground, operational deterrents.

The bipartisan pairing of Daines and Schiff is notable given the senators’ otherwise divergent politics. Wildlife conflict has occasionally served as a rare point of agreement between rural Western legislators and urban environmental advocates, particularly when the focus shifts from population management to coexistence tools that can reduce losses on both sides.

What Comes Next

The bill now heads into the Senate committee process, where its prospects will depend on committee scheduling and the broader congressional calendar heading into the fall. Authorization bills of this type frequently face delays in appropriations even when they clear the authorization process, so ranchers and wildlife managers should not expect immediate funding flows even if the measure advances.

For Montana’s agricultural community, the legislation represents one potential tool in a broader toolkit. Ranchers across the state have increasingly weighed supplemental income options — including energy development arrangements — as the economic pressures on livestock operations continue to mount. Federal support for predator deterrence, if appropriated at meaningful levels, could offset a share of the ongoing losses that compensation programs have historically covered only after the fact.

Daines, who faces no statewide election this cycle, has made agricultural and natural resource issues a consistent focus of his Senate tenure. The Human-Wildlife Conflict Reduction Act adds a prevention-focused dimension to federal policy in an area that has long relied primarily on reactive compensation and lethal control.