Colorado Parks and Wildlife rejects pleas from ranchers to kill wolves attacking livestock

Colorado Parks and Wildlife on Tuesday told ranchers no "lethal" help is coming on the heels of wolves killing at least four yearlings in 72 hours last week.

The state agency's decision was backed by Gov. Jared Polis, who supports the wolf management program.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife has been hit with an onslaught of letters from stockgrowers and other organizations from all over the Western Slope, requesting that the state lethally take out two wolves that ranchers believe are responsible for some of the seven deaths of cattle and calves in Grand and Jackson counties in April.

An environmental group that supports the wolf restoration refers to the killing of livestock by wolves Wednesday as "harvesting."

According to the Tuesday letter sent by Parks and Wildlife Director Jeff Davis, no lethal help is coming.

In the letter, Davis said the male of the pair of wolves believed to be attacking livestock is "denning," as is a female, which means the animals are about to reproduce.

Davis cited the pending births as a reason not to go after the wolves, saying that removing the male wolf "would be irresponsible management" and could potentially result in the deaths of the presumed pups.

"This is not a desirable result, and I am therefore not going to take action at this time to lethally remove this animal," Davis wrote.

Based on previous information from the state wildlife agency, those pups will not be collared, meaning ranchers will have no idea where these pups are hunting once they're old enough to be on their own.

In response to the letter, the Middle Park Stockgrowers said it is "disappointed and discouraged" by the director's response.

"Although we are not surprised by it, we are not done yet. We have to keep fighting for agriculture and fully expected CPW to follow ALL of the parts of the wolf plan," the group said.  

Polis also rejected the specific help being sought by the Grand and Jackson county ranchers.

“It is widely known that wolves are opportunistic hunters and Colorado voters were fully aware of the diet of wolves and made the decision to reintroduce wolves," Polis said through a spokesperson Tuesday. "Now CPW and [the Colorado Department of Agriculture] will work with ranchers on how to successfully and non-lethally deter predation, as is being done successfully in many other states that have both vibrant and successful ranching sectors and a much larger population of wolves than Colorado."

WildEarth Guardians applauded Davis' decision on Wednesday.

The group said six cattle have been "harvested by wolves since Colorado began restoring the native keystone species to the state in December 2023."

The group noted that the owners of those livestock are eligible for “100 percent fair market value compensation,” based on the Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan, although to-date, no compensation claims have been submitted.

Lindsay Larris, conservation director for WildEarth Guardians, insisted that Davis is "right to allow these wolves to live."

"Killing them would not only decimate Colorado’s wolf population but could lead to more livestock-wolf conflict down the line by disrupting pack structure. Colorado has eleven known wolves right now and some 2.8 million cows," the group said. "We are sympathetic to the livestock owners’ losses, but that’s why there is a robust compensation program. We ought to be celebrating the fact that these wolves are denning and hopefully going to have pups. This is what Colorado voters wanted and what restoration looks like.”

The ballot measure in 2020 that resulted in the wolf reintroduction was rejected by virtually every rural county in Colorado, including the counties in which the wolves were reintroduced. Proposition 114 was supported almost entirely by urban and suburban voters, who are unlikely to encounter a wolf. The vote was close — 50.91% to 49.09%.

The compensation program is inadequate, according to one of the letters this week from agricultural groups.

The Colorado Wool Growers Association told Davis and the governor on Tuesday that the "failure to manage wolves because of capitulation to political pressure continues to damage relationships with landowners and imperil livestock."

Compensation for livestock is wholly inadequate to address the impacts of wolves on the landscape, according to many ag groups, the letter said. While their job as livestock owners is to protect their livestock, those tools have been stripped away, they said. And while wool growers appreciate that there is a compensation program, they said it "pales in comparison to the anger, fear, exhaustion, and the financial and emotional toll on ranchers that are trying to protect their livestock from these lethal predator attacks."

In Tuesday’s letter to the Middle Park Stockgrowers, which is based in Grand County and which represents ranchers who have lost livestock to wolves in recent weeks, Davis denied the wolves that killed the cattle come with a history of chronic depredation.

That's despite the Oregon's Fish and Wildlife Service reporting that wolves from a pack that later showed up in Colorado were involved in multiple incidents of killing or injuring livestock in 2023, as recently as last July, just a few months before they were brought to Colorado.

The Oregon agency reported three separate incidents involving wolves from the Five Points Pack that resulted in injury and death of livestock. Two wolves from that pack were among the first five wolves brought to Colorado last December.

Davis noted that the letter from Middle Park claimed the wolves’ attacking livestock in Grand County came from depredating packs.

"To continue to state that we brought known problem wolves into the state is a falsehood," Davis wrote.

He said the wolves selected "may have come from packs that were historically chronically depredating packs," but, he insisted, action taken by Oregon and in the months leading up to their relocation to Colorado showed they were not from recently depredating packs. 

The state's wolf plan plainly states that "no wolf that has a known history of chronic depredation should be translocated, and sourcing from geographic areas with chronic depredation events should not occur."

A letter from the Associated Governments of Northwest Colorado Tuesday pointed out that Colorado Parks and Wildlife had promised such attacks on livestock would be "incredibly rare."

CPW released an updated wolf map Wednesday, which shows wolves have now crossed into the west Boulder County watershed.