Colorado Parks and Wildlife currently has staff on the ground in Pitkin County working to locate and kill a second member of the Copper Creek pack following another attack on livestock in the area. 

Luke Perkins, a public information officer for the wildlife agency, confirmed in an emailed statement that Parks and Wildlife has been attempting to locate the wolves since Sunday, July 20.

“The terrain is challenging at best, and staff have not been able to get close to the wolves after multiple attempts,” Perkins wrote. “Staff will continue to monitor locations and attempt to intervene if possible.” 

Since March, the Copper Creek pack has been connected to seven confirmed livestock attacks in Pitkin County, the most recent of which took place on July 18. 

Parks and Wildlife staff already killed one of the pack’s yearlings, 2505, on May 29, following the pack’s involvement in a string of livestock attacks in Pitkin County over Memorial Day weekend. 

According to the report released by Parks and Wildlife following the wolf’s death, the agency targeted 2405 for removal because the animal was not breeding, was known to have been directly involved in one of the depredations alone, and, as a yearling male, was “less crucial to the success of a population than other members.” 

To euthanize the yearling, Parks and Wildlife used electronic calling to draw wolves to the area where the May depredations took place. Once the wolf was identified as the male wolf 2405, agency staff shot the wolf with a rifle, according to the report. 

In killing one member of the pack, the goal was to shift the pack’s behavior away from preying on livestock. However, since the yearling’s death, producers in the region have reported continued conflict with the pack and additional suspected livestock depredations. 

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On July 18, Parks and Wildlife confirmed the first livestock depredation connected to the Copper Creek Pack since the wolf yearling was killed in May.

Following this depredation, the agency made the decision to undertake “additional lethal control efforts in accordance with applicable legal requirements” starting on July 20, according to the statement emailed by Perkins.  

Killing another member of the wolf pack is contemplated by the agency’s chronic depredation management directive and allowed by a special 10(j) rule it has from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

The management directive recommends Parks and Wildlife take an “incremental approach” where, after killing one wolf responsible, it closely monitors the pack to see whether the pack’s behavior positively changes. From there, should the pack continue to kill and attack livestock, the agency can kill another wolf.  

Parks and Wildlife will only kill another wolf that the agency is “confident was involved in depredation and is intended to change pack behavior by discouraging continued targeting of livestock as a prey base while also leaving the pack with the best chance of reproductive success in the future,” according to Perkins’s statement. 

The Copper Creek pack has been embroiled in controversy since its initial formation in 2024. 

Parks and Wildlife captured the pack last August and September after being tied to multiple livestock attacks in Grand County, where it initially denned. While the pack’s original patriarch died shortly after capture in the wildlife sanctuary where they were taken — from injuries related to a gunshot wound it obtained in the wild — the matriarch and four of the pack’s yearlings were released in Pitkin County in January. The adult female then bred with one of the British Columbia wolves this spring and had additional pups. 

The first confirmed livestock depredation in Pitkin County came in March.