For Daniel Curry, his 12 to 18 hour days mitigating livestock and wildlife conflict as a range rider is a form of catharsis. 

“I like the hard work. I like being outside, the fresh air, I like living with the elements,” Curry said. 

But it’s not the extensive time spent in the wilderness that he finds most fulfilling — it’s helping producers who are dealing with livestock depredation.

“I really have found it extremely rewarding to meet people in a situation where they’re at their wits end, they have no options to help them,” Curry said. “They go from the only good wolf is a dead wolf to these animals are beautiful and I can see the reason why they’re needed.”

On Thursday, audiences can step into Curry’s boots and experience the challenges and triumphs of range riding through a free screening of the short film ‘Range Rider’ at 6 p.m. in the Third Street Center, 520 South Third St., Carbondale. The film will be followed by a discussion and question and answer session with Curry. 

The screening is another Coexistence Works event hosted by the Sierra Club and Colorado Wild, two environmental advocacy groups working to bring nonlethal wolf and livestock coexistence methods to the Western Slope. Colorado Parks and Wildlife plans to release up to 15 more gray wolves in Garfield, Eagle or Pitkin counties this January. 

Over 20 agricultural and livestock organizations submitted a petition in October asking for the state to pause reintroduction efforts until more tools are implemented to mitigate conflict with livestock. CPW is currently reviewing the request. 

“If you’re interested in finding ways through very polarizing subjects, it’s really important,” Curry said of Thursday’s event. “If you’re interested in wildlife and helping return these ecosystems back to their healthy state, it’s important. If you’re looking to really find out what it’s like to be a rancher and find out the hardships and how we can help that community, it’s important.”

Curry switched to range riding in 2012, after 20 years of working with wolves in sanctuaries and the wild. The career change was inspired in part by the ongoing issues Washington state had with the Wedge wolf pack, whose last members were lethally removed by the state in 2020.

“As taxpayers, we paid an exorbitant amount of money for that. From my point of view, everybody lost in that situation,” Curry said. “It was an opportunity to take my knowledge of wolves and landscape and the demographics of that area, horseback, the culmination of all my skills and put them into something that was going to be of service.”

‘Range Rider’ is a glimpse into Curry’s work over the past 12 years and his relationship with the first ranch he rode for. “It’s not a film that says everything’s alright,” Curry said. “It’s a film that shows everything will be alright if we apply this landscape. It’s definitely a scenario of how to bridge a divisive subject with this kind of method, with this kind of hard work, with this kind of mentality.”

In 2023, Curry started Project GRIPH, a wildlife conflict mitigation nonprofit that trains and deploys range riders, at no charge to ranchers, in the western United States.

Project GRIPH is primarily funded by grants and private donors. The nonprofit’s numbers are small — a lead rider and a couple of volunteers — but Curry is working to expand funding sources through state and federal backing so he can hire more personnel. 

While the only current chapter of Project GRIPH is in Washington, Curry hopes that Thursday’s screening will be the first step to expanding into Colorado. “Colorado, it’s gone through the wringer,” he said. “The ranchers and the wolves have been through a lot so far in the reintroduction phase for Colorado. We hope to show that this is a possibility and to convey that this is something that we want to be a part of.”