The Garfield County Board of County Commissioners held a public meeting with Colorado Parks and Wildlife about how wolf reintroduction is going in Colorado. 

Travis Black, the Northwest Region Manager of Colorado Parks and Wildlife, was the main representative at Tuesday night’s meeting in New Castle, speaking to the crowd about the wolf reintroduction initiative Colorado began last December.

He presented information and findings about the wolves they’d released while also providing background on the voter-passed ballot measure that began the process in Colorado.

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“There are a lot of things we could talk about here,” Black said. “One that I can’t talk about, I can’t change, is Proposition 114. That passed…became state law, which then required Colorado Parks and Wildlife to follow through with that law. I can’t get into re-litigating that, I know as much as folks want to, I can’t do that.”

Black then went through the history of the first year of wolf reintroduction in Colorado.  

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“There are currently nine wolves monitored by CPW biologists, eight adults and one pup,” he said. “We also have five wolves currently being held in a non-disclosed location, which is one adult and five pups for the Copper Creek pack.”

The wolves are being tracked with GPS collars, sightings and visual confirmations. The collars take a location every four hours and every four locations, that information is sent to CPW. They keep track of this with an interactive map that can be downloaded at cpw.state.co.us/wolf-sightings. These maps are updated every month. 

The map is being marked by how the wolves interact with the watersheds; if they’ve gone near a watershed, then the entirety of the watershed lights up, however, it doesn’t necessarily mean the wolves have traveled extensively in a particular watershed. 

The nine wolves are holding some semblance of territory that ranges from Walden in Jackson County to Meeker, on the edge of Garfield and Rio Blanco counties, to exploring deep into Lake County and almost getting to Granby in Grand County. 

The wolves are mostly exploring the mountain range, their territory hasn’t been quite established yet, but they’ll go explore then turn right around and go back to near where they were released. 

One wolf finally crossed I-70 late this year after multiple attempts and one wolf made it near north of Rifle while another went further north near Wyoming and yet another went farther west towards Utah. 

“Anytime you take a bunch of wolves that are not related to each other, they don’t necessarily get along, so eventually they disperse and look for other wolves,” Black explained about wolf movements. 

After a presentation on what they’re currently doing, Black spoke about the plan to introduce more wolves into Colorado, as per meeting the requirements of the law that was voted in.

“We have to put them somewhere,” he said. Right now, CPW is trying to identify state park land that isn’t right next to the other wolves while still being within the Colorado mountain range. The wolves they’re looking at for this second round come from Canada and have never seen livestock before. 

Wolves, when they form packs, establish boundaries with each other and will patrol those boundaries, Black explained. 

After the presentations, CPW fielded public questions about the wolf reintroduction. 

Questions focused mostly on when ranchers’ livestock: if they’re killed by a wolf, will they get compensation?

CPW confirmed that ranchers or farmers will be compensated for livestock killed by wolves, much like when they’re killed by bears or mountain lions. Some people were worried there would be push back on this compensation. 

Others had questions about if they saw wolves on their land: what do they do and what can they do?

“Part of our goal with these wolves on the landscape is to change bad behavior,” Black said. “If you see a wolf on your land, we are going to ask you to haze that wolf.”

If wolves are sighted on someone’s land, they need to get a permit from CPW to allow them to threaten the wolf with cracker shells, rubber bullets or other deterrents, so that the wolf associates bad experiences with going near livestock. 

There are two different permits, injurious hazing, and non-injurious. The first makes physical contact with the wolf, like the rubber buckshot and non-injurious is for making noise to force the wolves away. 

CPW also confirmed that if a wolf is actively attacking livestock or a person, no permit is needed to kill the wolf on sight. CPW has a retroactive permit that they will issue after the fact. 

Another question that came up was how to keep wolves out of towns, cities and other populated areas if there are food sources in those areas. 

“Generally speaking, as wolves approach a populated area, they’re going to shy away from those areas, even with deer and elk in that vicinity,” Black said. “Yes, they’re going to come in, they’re going to hunt deer, hunt elk, but as they get close to human activity, like traffic on highways, they generally tend to shy away from that. That one wolf testing I-70, she was really afraid of that big stretch of interstate because of all that activity on the interstate.”

Black also said that while wolves are federally protected right now, the listing could change down the road as they reintroduce wolves, to concerns about the wolf population rising uncontrollably in the future. 

“I can’t predict the future,” Black said. “What happens next, unless that federal listing changes, it still ties our hands on what we can do with the wolves in the state of Colorado. That said, our intent is to try and manage those wolves.”

Editor’s note: This story was corrected to reflected state lands, not national park lands, are being considered for wolf reintroduction.