Gray wolves return to Colorado. Will they be accepted?

A new era dawned in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains on Monday with the release of five gray wolves. 

The reintroduction of the wild canines to Colorado fulfills a voter-passed plan to begin restoring the endangered species here by the end of 2023. The first batch of furry predators, flown in from Oregon, bounded out of crates in Grand County, Colorado, across an undisclosed meadow. 

Wolves are contentious in the western United States, with disagreement about the threats they may pose versus their ecological benefit. A judge last week denied a last-minute lawsuit from the Colorado cattle industry seeking to block the release.  

Despite the culture-war status of wolves, their release has also spurred cooperation. Many ranchers, wolf advocates, scientists, and wildlife officials have engaged in knowledge-sharing and strategizing around conflict reduction. 

“Much of the conflict around wolves isn’t necessarily direct conflict between people and wolves,” says Kevin Crooks, director of the Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence at Colorado State University. “Rather, it’s conflict among people, different stakeholders with really different opinions.”

Still, much remains to be seen about how the Canis lupus will affect Colorado. 

Why is Colorado reintroducing gray wolves?

In 2020, Colorado voters approved this through a ballot initiative. It won by a whisker: 50.91% to 49.09%.

Gray wolves, wildlife experts say, are native to the Centennial State. Killed off in Colorado by the 1940s, some have since migrated here across state lines. Colorado biologists recorded the birth of wild wolf pups in the state’s north in 2021. 

The animal is subject to a patchwork of protections. Listed as endangered in Colorado, for instance, the gray wolf loses that status once it crosses the northern border into Wyoming. Gray wolves are protected nationally under the federal Endangered Species Act, with exceptions in the northern Rocky Mountains. 

After the 2020 vote, Colorado got special permission from the U.S. government for its state restoration plan. This generally allows management flexibility in Colorado, such as killing wolves that attack livestock.

The Colorado cattle industry sued state and federal wildlife agencies last week seeking to block the rollout of the plan. The Gunnison County Stockgrowers’ and Colorado Cattlemen’s associations argued that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to produce a certain environmental study on wolf impacts that federal law required.

On Friday, a U.S. district judge denied the plaintiffs a temporary restraining order. Their arguments, the court found, didn’t merit halting Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s wolf plan, which “would be contrary to the public interest.” 

Thirty to 50 wolves could be reintroduced on Colorado’s Western Slope over the next three to five years, according to the state’s wolf management plan. 

The Western Slope, a largely rural area, sits west of Denver and several other population centers, which carried the pro-wolf vote. The outcome underscored an urban-rural divide in a Democratic-led state that used to trend more purple.

Why is the plan controversial?

Supporters, including environmentalists, argue for restoring a natural balance. 

“Wolves, for millennia, have been one of the primary engines of evolution and the drivers of ecological health throughout the Northern Hemisphere,” says Rob Edward, strategic adviser at the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project. 

He cites an example in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. An abundance of elk there has depleted vegetation “in the absence of their primary predator, gray wolves,” says Mr. Edward, who’s advocated for the return of wolves to the state since the 1990s. 

Critics, including agricultural producers, raise concerns about predation of wild and cultivated animals. 

“There’s obviously the concern with the impacts to our own livestock, both financial and emotional,” says rancher Greg Peterson, a member of the Gunnison County Stockgrowers’ Association. “It’s traumatizing when that animal suffers.”

Though wolves are well studied, the behavior of new packs in Colorado depends on a variety of factors, says Dr. Crooks at the Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence.

Wolves may help reduce elk overbrowsing and bolster habitat diversity, he says, based on research in national parks like Yellowstone, which reintroduced gray wolves in 1995. But the science also suggests that “wolves were likely not solely responsible” for ecosystem changes there.

And while wolves could harm individual livestock, he says, in terms of ranching concerns, research shows that a rebound of wolves is unlikely to have a major economic impact on the cattle industry. Yet that’s cold comfort to one Colorado ranching family that’s already seen several livestock deaths and injuries from wolves since 2021, reports The Washington Post.

In an effort to bridge trust gaps, Dr. Crooks’ center has compiled peer-reviewed research and crowdsourced funds for nonlethal wolf mitigation, like fencing or guard dogs. The university has also engaged Western Slope stakeholders like Jo Stanko, who runs a ranch with her husband near Steamboat Sp​​rings in northwestern Colorado.

As a voter, Ms. Stanko says she cast her ballot in 2020 against wolf releases. Though she still has concerns, three years later she holds an attitude of acceptance – and hope for solutions around wolves and ranchers sharing land. Her family continues to train livestock dogs and install new fencing, and Ms. Stanko hosted a dialogue with wolf advocates and other ranchers last year. 

“We’ve got to learn to have – and relearn how to have – civil conversations with each other,” she says.

How will the state manage the new wolf packs? 

Under its wolf plan, Colorado Parks and Wildlife is charged with managing the carnivores – and monitoring them through GPS collars. The agency doesn’t envision wolves as threats to humans. Studies find that’s rare. 

“They’re very fearful of people, and so we don’t expect them to come into populated areas,” says Eric Odell, species conservation program manager at Colorado Parks and Wildlife. The state is sharing tips for recreation in “wolf country.” As “habitat generalists,” wolves are known to roam across various landscapes.

Humans aside, however, Mr. Odell does expect some conflict between wolves and livestock. There’s a state compensation program for livestock producers who’ve suffered confirmed wolf attacks, though Mr. Peterson, the Gunnison County rancher, says that’s an insufficient remedy.