A federal judge has denied a last-ditch effort by ranchers to block wolf reintroduction in Colorado.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife plans to begin capturing gray wolves in Oregon as soon as Sunday and could release the predators as soon as Monday following a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Regina Rodriguez on Friday.
The Colorado Cattlemen’s and the Gunnison County Stockgrowers’ associations argued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should have conducted an analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act before inking an agreement with Colorado Parks and Wildlife over management of endangered species in the state.
The service argued its agreement with the state did not require intensive review. The federal service and state have reached two similar cooperative agreements since voters approved wolf reintroduction in 2020 and neither involved review under the National Environmental Policy Act.
The ranchers were asking the court to temporarily halt the state’s reintroduction plan, which was mandated by voters in 2020 who approved a proposition directing Colorado Parks and Wildlife to return wolves to the state by the end of 2023.
The ranchers, Fish and Wildlife Service and Colorado Parks and Wildlife argued their cases before Rodriguez in a nearly three-hour hearing in Denver on Thursday. Lisa Reynolds with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office told the court “it would be almost impossible to describe the level of logistics that have led to this moment to comply with voters’ requirements.”
Colorado Parks and Wildlife has biologists in Oregon ready to capture and fly wolves to Colorado and Rodriguez said she would try to issue a ruling on the ranchers’ request for a temporary restraining order on Friday.
Rodriguez ruled that the rancher groups’ arguments did not qualify for an emergency injunction to halt a reintroduction process that began more than three years ago.
“The court finds that, while the petitioners who have lived and worked on the land for many years are understandably concerned about possible impacts of this reintroduction, neither these possible impacts nor their assertions … are sufficient for this court to grant the extraordinary relief they seek,” Rodriguez wrote in the 19-page ruling that came down at 7:25 p.m. Friday.
In May CPW approved a final plan for wolf reintroduction, after hosting 47 meetings with 3,400 residents across the state. The plan calls for releasing as many as 50 gray wolves in the first three to five years. The plan offers ranchers who lose livestock and working dogs to wolves as much as $15,000 per animal. The state plan also allows ranchers to kill wolves that are threatening livestock.
That right-to-kill is possible after the Fish and Wildlife Service on Dec. 8 designated an experimental population of wolves in Colorado under the Endangered Species Act’s so-called 10(j) rule.
That 10(j) designation and the agreement between Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Fish and Wildlife Service is at the center of the ranchers’ lawsuit. The federal agency conducted an environmental review of its 10(j) decision, but there was not a National Environmental Policy Act analysis of the cooperative agreement with the state or the reintroduction plan.
At Friday’s hearing, the state said it is planning to release five wolves from Oregon as soon as Monday. Colorado Parks and Wildlife said earlier that the first release would be on private or state land in Eagle, Grand or Summit counties.
“I’m relieved that the court saw right through the livestock industry’s self-serving and meritless arguments,” said Alli Henderson, southern Rockies director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement late Friday. “Both science and Colorado voters have very clearly told us that wolves belong here. Once wolves are reintroduced, they’ll help restore balance to our state’s ecosystems.”
One rancher is already asking for lethal intervention
The ability to kill wolves is top of mind for rancher Don Gittleson. On Wednesday, he went out to feed his cattle on his ranch near Walden and found a calf bleeding from her hindquarters and neck.
Gittleson has already lost seven cows to wolves that migrated down from Wyoming in the last two years. Gittleson suspects the attack was by a wolf collared by Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials in February. It’s one of two collared wolves that have been connected to killing dogs, cattle and lambs in Jackson County.
“It’s got a lot of trauma to its hind leg, what some refer to as walking dead,” Gittleson said of the calf in an interview with The Sun early Thursday.
Gittleson said a CPW wildlife official conducted an investigation and they are confident it was a wolf attack.
“They told me if I caught the wolf in the act of harming another animal, I could kill it,” Gittleson said. “I told them I didn’t want to be the one to do that. I wanted them to do that. In Colorado they don’t have a definition for what a problem wolf is.”
He’s asking Colorado Parks and Wildlife and Fish and Wildlife about how he could kill a wolf.
“Are there any restrictions? We’re talking about at night — that means the use of artificial light or something else, which would not normally be legal for hunting,” Gittleson said. “So I asked those questions because after the fact you don’t want them asking, ‘Why did you do that?’”
Gittleson suspects it’s wolf No. 2101, a male that was collared by Colorado wildlife biologists in in northwestern Colorado, judging from tracks in the snow and the collar signal showing the animal near his ranch the morning after the attack.
He said once Colorado Parks and Wildlife confirms the wolf attack, he will ask the agency to come kill it. That has been allowed since Dec. 8, when the Fish and Wildlife Service granted Colorado an exemption under the Endangered Species Act to use lethal management of wolves that are threatening livestock.
But if the wolf comes back for more of his cattle, Gittleson said he will not shoot.
“Because I want that to be their decision. It’s their wolf, their problem, they need to deal with it. So if they’re not willing to deal with this situation, that is going to be a big red flag for the rest of the state,” he said.
If Colorado Parks and Wildlife agrees with Gittleson, wildlife officials could be killing wolves at the exact same time they are releasing Oregon wolves into the state.
“So with these wolves, their timing is nothing but miraculous,” Gittleson said. “It always has been.”
Colorado Sun reporter Tracy Ross contributed to this report