On shaky ground
Amid 10 dead wolves and federal interference, Colorado's reintroduction is struggling

Colorado’s wolf restoration program is struggling amid federal roadblocks over where the state can source new wolves for reintroduction and the death of a 10th translocated wolf.

The latest wolf fatality, announced Nov. 7, puts the survival rate for the reintroduced wolves at 60%. That’s well below the anticipated survival rate of 70% to 85% for the early years of Colorado’s wolf reintroduction program, according to the Colorado Wolf Management Plan. CPW released 10 wolves in December 2023 and another 15 in January 2025. 

Luke Perkins, Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesperson, said the agency is “committed to fulfilling the will of Colorado voters in restoring a sustainable wolf population” and is evaluating all options to support wolf releases this winter. But an order by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director has limited those options.  

Colorado signed a contract Oct. 3 with British Columbia to pay its government up to $400,000 for 10 to 15 wolves to bring to Colorado in December and January. But a week later, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Director Brian Nesvik said CPW violated special permitting in the Endangered Species Act – known as the 10(j) rule, which established Colorado’s wolves as a “nonessential population” – in sourcing wolves from outside the United States. Colorado wolves must come from northern Rockies states, Nesvik told CPW Director Jeff Davis in a letter Oct. 10. But most of those states – including Idaho, Montana and Wyoming – have said they do not want to be part of Colorado’s reintroduction project.

CPW’s most recent request is to the state of Washington, which will discuss the matter at the Washington Fish and Wildlife commission’s meeting Nov. 15. 

Colorado sourced wolves for its first releases in December 2023 from Oregon, unleashing a controversy when it was discovered that two had come from a pack blamed for predation. Colorado’s wolf management plan says wolves with a history of chronic depredation should be excluded as a source population. But CPW spokesperson Travis Duncan said at the time that any wolves that have been near livestock will have some history of depredation, including all packs in Oregon, but that didn’t mean the two in question had a history of chronic depredation. 

“If a pack has infrequent depredation events, they should not be excluded as a source population, per the plan,” he said. 

Eight months later, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Nation in Washington rescinded its offer to give Colorado wolves, stating “necessary and meaningful consultation was not completed with the potentially impacted tribes” in Colorado when the state created and implemented its wolf reintroduction plan. 

Last year, Gov. Jared Polis blamed ranchers for the high cost of wolf reintroduction, which has cost taxpayers around $8 million since Proposition 114 was passed in 2020. He said the state wouldn’t have had to go to British Columbia if ranchers hadn’t said, “don’t get them from Wyoming, don’t get them from Idaho.” But statements from Wyoming and Idaho officials suggested that wasn’t true, which drove a deeper wedge between the governor and ranchers. 

CPW said one of the reasons it sourced wolves from British Columbia was to obtain animals with no prior interaction with livestock, thereby minimizing the potential for wolf-cattle conflict. Rob Edward, president of Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, said in the 11 months since their arrival, the British Columbia wolves have killed no livestock his group is aware of, “beyond wolf 2505, that was killed in Wyoming for supposedly preying on sheep.” So the block on wolves from Canada has left many scratching their heads and surmising that it was purely political. 

The 10(j) rule, approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in November 2023, declared Colorado wolves an experimental population and authorized certain management techniques, including lethal removal.

Tom Delehanty, an attorney with Earthjustice, says the 10(j) rule at the heart of Nesvik’s block has nothing to do with where CPW can source wolves.

Rather, the rule is “purely about post-release wolf management” in that it replaces Endangered Species Act protections with customized protections to provide greater flexibility wolf recovery in collaboration with partners, especially private landowners, he said. 

The rule also applies only to gray wolves found in the wild within the boundaries of Colorado. And because it “simply changes wolves’ legal status in Colorado, it does not, by its nature, apply to capture activities elsewhere.”

To continue reading, please visit go here ...