Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) has recommended denying a petition filed by ranchers to pause the next gray wolf reintroduction until seven demands are met, the agency announced Saturday morning, adding that all seven items have already been addressed.
A notification about this recommendation was distributed to both CPW Commission members and the petitioners in the form of a formal letter from the director of CPW. CPW worked with the Colorado Attorney General's Office to respond to the petition.
The CPW Commission will meet on Jan. 8, where it will discuss CPW's eight-page recommendation and those seven items, among other topics. It will then take a vote on the petition.
The petition was filed in September.
The second cycle of wolf reintroductions is set to unfold in the next few months. CPW said it plans to capture up to 15 wolves from British Columbia and release them in Colorado sometime between January and March 2025.
"Rulemaking in this case is unnecessary because the seven conditions included have already been addressed," CPW said Saturday morning.
Saturday's announcement came just a few days after the one-year mark of the first wolf reintroduction. Denver7 published and aired an in-depth look at the ups and downs of the past year.
A full list of the petitioners, as well as the formal petition, is available here and below. The president of the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association presented the petition to the CPW Commission in mid-November.
The petitioners demanded the following conditions before the state released any more wolves:
- Adopt a definition of “chronic depredation”
- Evaluate alternative forms of non-lethal measures to keep wolves away from livestock and working dogs
- Develop a program to conduct site assessments of areas where wolves are interacting with livestock and working dogs, and educate livestock producers on implementing site-specific non-lethal measures
- Develop a range rider program to be implemented before the next wolf release, and acquire funding for the program
- Train a rapid response team to immediately respond to issues with wolves around livestock
- Develop best practices for carcass management
- Communicate with local county officials and impacted communities ahead of any future wolf reintroductions
Denver7 has been covering these developments over the past year and a half, since the Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan was finalized and published in May 2023.
Condition No. 1 from the livestock producers asked for a definition to "chronic depredation," which the 2023 plan does not include.
In mid-November, CPW Deputy Director of Policy Reid DeWalt told the CPW Commission that with the help of an Ad Hoc Working Group, CPW came to a broad agreement that when a wolf or wolves repeatedly cause conflicts in a small geography over a limited amount of time, it is appropriate to remove them from the landscape. The Colorado Attorney General's Office reviewed this to ensure it aligns with regulations and the 10(j) rule of the federal Endangered Species Act.
"'Chronic Depredation' means three or more depredation events caused by the same wolf or wolves within a 30-day period, provided there is clear and convincing evidence that at least one of the depredation events was caused by wolves," CPW said. "The other two events could meet either 'clear and convincing' or 'preponderance of evidence' standards."
CPW has been reviewing throughout the year various non-lethal tactics to keep wolves away from livestock, which was the petitioner's second condition.
"The Division has consistently supported and/or deployed a variety of tools (such as fladry, fox lights, and cracker shells) and methods (including range riders and carcass management practices) to prevent or minimize wolf-livestock conflict and intends to increase the availability of and education regarding these tools and methods moving forward," CPW's recommendation letter reads. "... The petition ignores the fact that other states with a long history of coexisting with wolves have navigated wolf conflict successfully using these tools and methods. There is no reasonable basis to believe that they won’t work here in Colorado."
Site assessments were created to identify the best methods at individual properties.
Those site assessments, which are free and voluntary, have been available to livestock producers since May 2023, in connection to the third condition in the petition, though some say it wasn't as well-publicized as it is now. CPW recently cleaned up the process and updated related paperwork, and is "currently deploying a site assessment training program to make the process more streamlined," CPW's recommendation reads. CPW's Adam Baca said 50 of these site assessments — which includes resource deployment — have either been completed or are in the process of wrapping up as of Dec. 18. These can be used proactively, or reactively if a depredation has already occurred. To apply for an assessment, contact your Area CPW Office.
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Want to learn more about Colorado's wolf reintroduction? You can explore the timeline below, which outlines all of Denver7's coverage since the very beginning. The timeline starts with our most recent story.
Early 2025 will mark the launch of the state's Colorado Range Rider program, which was announced earlier this fall and will use funding from sales of Colorado's wolf license plates — which has soared well beyond $500,000 — to hire contractors to work roughly five months, starting in mid-April, on the open range. This was the fourth condition in the petition. A range rider interest form is now available online.
CPW's recommendation letter reads that it plans to have two to four vendors in place by late February, before lambing and calving season begins. The rest will be in place by the end of March.
"The Division intends to contract with 2 range riders per county in Jackson, Grand, Routt, Eagle, Garfield, Pitkin, Summit, Rio Blanco, and Moffat counties," the recommendation reads. "CDA has already hired two staff members to work on non-lethal conflict avoidance who are available for range riding and is also planning range riding training events in late January and in late April."
In reference to condition No. 5 regarding a rapid response team, Baca told Denver7 on Wednesday that the state now has "quite a few" district wildlife managers who can respond quickly to reports of depredation. CPW has hired five wildlife damage specialists, with five more expected by the end of the year, to help improve response time to depredations. The letter reads that 13 field staff just spent two weeks of wolf conflict and investigation training out of state. Ranchers stressed the importance of a fast response, as carcasses are typically chewed on by other predators within 24 hours, making it challenging or impossible to determine if a wolf caused the death.
Carcass management, which was condition No. 6, is a common practice for handling and disposing of deceased ranch animals. It is another major aspect of ranching that is undergoing changes with the addition of wolves. Colorado officials talked with their counterparts in neighboring states to see what best practices they have settled on, and published a one-page summary of their findings earlier this month, which you can find below or here.
Lastly, CPW has acknowledged that ahead of a second wolf reintroduction, it needed to communicate more with the communities in that release area. This was item No. 7 on the petition.
"A big lesson learned is spending more time with county electeds and the livestock producers in the areas that we anticipate those releases," CPW Director Jeff Davis told Denver7 in an exclusive interview in September.
This fall, CPW, Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA), U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services, and CSU Extension held several workshops focused on non-lethal predator conflict mitigation across eight counties. More than 200 people have attended and learned about a multitude of different non-lethal tactics to keep wolves away from livestock.
CPW and Eagle County also held a Wolf Reintroduction Listening Session on Dec. 18, as Eagle County is one of the three counties where CPW may decide to release the wolves. The other two counties are Pitkin and Garfield.
CPW admitted in its letter to recommend denying the petition that the wolf reintroduction has been challenging, especially for producers who have suffered from multiple depredations. It noted one producer in Grand County who grazed cattle near the Copper Creek Pack den's site, and said their "stress and emotional hardship... deserves to be acknowledged."
The announcement of CPW's recommendation on Saturday was celebrated by pro-wolf groups, including WildEarth Guardians, Defenders of Wildlife, the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice and the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project.
The Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund, which is associated with the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, led support for Proposition 114, which put wolves on the ballot in 2020.
“From the development of a range rider program, to the wildly successful first year of the ‘Born To Be Wild’ license plate, to the good work of the ad hoc group, Colorado is showing the rest of the world what it means to be good stewards of our wildlife and good partners with our agricultural producers," said Rob Edward, president of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project.
Colorado is currently home to 14 known wolves: Two that moved south into Jackson County from Wyoming, seven surviving from the 2023 reintroduction, and five pups. One of the adult reintroduced females and four of her pups, all members of the Copper Creek Pack, were captured in September after multiple livestock depredation incidents and are at a large, secure and undisclosed enclosure while CPW evaluates them. They will be released this winter. A fifth pup could not be captured but appears to be healthy in the wild, according to CPW.
You can read CPW's recommendation regarding the petition in the document here or below.