Ranchers in Jackson County and beyond may have gotten help pushing Colorado Parks and Wildlife to define chronic depredation in wolves — a key step in allowing them to kill wolves preying on their livestock.
Rep. Julie McCluskie and Sen. Dylan Roberts sent a letter to Gov. Jared Polis and CPW Director Jeff Davis pushing them to address the issue and saying CPW’s refusal to help by defining when it is appropriate to kill a wolf is causing unnecessary hardship for livestock producers.
McCluskie and Roberts are the legislators in whose districts the first 10 wolves of Colorado’s wolf reintroduction program were released, Grand and Summit. They also represent Jackson County, where two collared wolves who wandered into Colorado from Wyoming have been attacking livestock.
The letter focuses on Don Gittleson, the Jackson County rancher who has been at the center of the wolf reintroduction controversy since the wolves, numbered 2101 and 2301, came into North Park. Since December 2021 the two have killed or injured at least 20 animals, including lambs, calves and working dogs owned by Gittleson and his neighbors.
“These killed and injured animals are not only the property of our constituents but they are key to their livelihood as agriculture producers,” McCluskie and Roberts wrote in their letter. Further, “Colorado’s agriculture industry is a crucial part of our state’s economy.”
Since wolves began preying on his livestock, Gittleson has filed for and received around $16,000 in compensation for six cows. Payment for a calf injured on Dec. 13 is still pending, he said.
Under the final wolf management plan, ranchers will be compensated for vet bills to treat injured animals, including herding dogs, with up to $15,000 for animal deaths. Introduced with bipartisan support, Senate Bill 255 last year created the Wolf Depredation Compensation Fund and appropriated $525,000 over the next two years to cover livestock losses.
Questions CPW won’t answer
Gittleson has been at ground zero in the conflict over lethal control and the questions have become more urgent since wolves were transplanted in Grand and Summit counties in December.
Coloradans in 2020 voted to reintroduce wolves west of the Continental Divide. The measure was the tightest statewide ballot issue of that election. CPW released the first five wolves, all from Oregon, on Dec. 18 in Grand County and another five in Summit County a few days later. The agency expects to release as many as 40 more wolves on state land or private property in the next three to five years.
In a phone call Tuesday morning, Roberts told The Sun he has been communicating with Gittleson since the Wyoming wolves first began attacking his livestock, when he “could hear in Gittleson’s voice that it was a major burden on his way of life and making a living.”
Gittleson leases 10,800 acres, or about 17.8 square miles of land, from the Colorado State Land Board, and has both bulls and mother cows. He said the kills have been happening in a roughly 4-square-mile area near his house.
Gittleson “genuinely wants to figure out a way to keep doing what he’s doing” and, to that end, “he has invested a significant amount of his time and money into different mitigation efforts,” Roberts said. “He’s done the donkeys. He’s done the fladry. He’s paid for people to stay up all night, watching his herd. And only when his efforts failed to deter the wolves from returning to his property did he ask for reasonable assistance for removal from CPW.”
That assistance, which Gittleson formally requested on Dec. 13, hasn’t come. Nor has a definition of chronic depredation, which would give Gittleson and other ranchers guidance on whether they can kill a wolf preying on their livestock. Gittleson began asking the agency to define chronic depredation at its commissioners’ meeting in April 2023, as that definition was needed to trigger the so-called 10(j) rule under the federal Endangered Species Act, which gives CPW flexibility on wolf management within Colorado. Wolves are listed as an endangered species.
In March, Roberts and McCluskie backed a bill in the Colorado legislature that could have prevented reintroduction from happening until the 10(j) rule was in place. Gov. Polis vetoed the bill, allowing CPW to start reintroduction in December of 2023 regardless of the rule’s status. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service then implemented the rule at the eleventh hour, while leaving the definition of chronic depredation up to the state.
In December, Gittleson pressed the agency on the legality of killing a wolf at night, if a wolf is attacking his livestock. “We’re talking in the dark,” he said, when, to get the most accurate shot, “you need spotlights or night vision or thermal imaging, something along those lines.”
Hunting regulations for many species, including beaver, bobcat, coyote, gray fox, raccoon, red fox, striped skunk and swift fox, state it is legal to use artificial light if those species are hunted on private property and with the property owners’ permission, according to CPW rules.
Artificial light may also be used on public land while hunting several species by permit under certain circumstances.
What Gittleson wants is for CPW to tell him whether or not he can use artificial light to legally kill a wolf preying on his livestock at night. “Otherwise, it’s shooting by sound,” he said.
And, he said, the state’s wolf management plan makes it impossible for him to determine chronic depredation because it doesn’t define how many kills in a particular period qualify as “chronic.”
On Dec. 22, CPW Director Davis sent Gittleson a response to his request for a definition of chronic depredation that still didn’t define chronic depredation. It also said CPW would not help the rancher with his depredation problem.
CPW declined to help after considering “the entire history of depredation events” in Gittleson’s region, including ones in November and December 2023 involving wolf attacks that left three lambs at Philip Anderson’s ranch, about 20 miles from Gittleson’s place, dead and one of Gittleson’s calves injured. That history, coupled with “a change in pack dynamics over the preceding year when most of the pack left the area and did not return,” along with a drop in the number and frequency of depredations in the area, factored in the agency’s determination.
Confusion remains as a wolf circles back
Gittleson said Tuesday that he has seen wolf 2101 on his property several times since Jan. 11.
“He was here then and on the 12th, and after I dropped my grandson at school this morning, I saw him on the way back. I don’t think anything’s amiss, but he continues to come through here and I don’t have deer or elk on the property,” he added. “The antelope aren’t here this time of year, either. So I was up last night about 1:30 a.m, because I was kind of concerned, especially since we have a full moon. Then I was up at 5 a.m., because I thought I heard something going on outside. But I didn’t know he was here until I came back this morning and picked up his tracks.”
Now Gittleson is on the alert again, believing he could legally shoot the wolf — by moonlight — if he catches it in the act of attacking his cattle. But the questions surrounding chronic depredation remain unanswered.
Roberts said he and McCluskie sent their letter to CPW on Monday and that Davis replied the agency was working on a response.
Roberts said he’d like CPW to give Gittleson “clear guidance on what can be done about the wolves in his area that have killed or injured at least 20 animals, and then come up with a clear and public response about the definition of chronic depredation.”
“The agency has the authority to make the definition by rule, or they could give a public answer as to why defining it is not a good idea,” he added. “There may be a valid reason why they want that definition to remain flexible and fluid, but they have yet to tell ranchers and livestock owners across Colorado. You know, they have wildlife biology experts that work for them who can say if there’s a valid scientific reason for why not defining chronic depredation is a good idea.”
In their letter, Roberts and McCluskie asked CPW to “immediately reconsider” its decision not to help Gittleson with lethal removal of the wolves killing his livestock, and to “take swift action to remove the depredating wolves that continue to kill and injure livestock and dogs in Jackson County.”
Additionally, they requested CPW “immediately publish a draft rule for the definition of chronically depredating or, at the very least, provide reasoning to the General Assembly and the public as to why a definition cannot be determined.”
If communication regarding chronic depredation doesn’t come soon, Roberts said, “we could work with CPW to understand more why they don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Or the legislature could introduce a bill that defines chronic depredation, which would have to be signed into law by Gov. Polis, he added.
CORRECTION: This story was updated at 8:20 a.m. on Jan. 24, 2024, to correct information about a bill Sen. Dylan Roberts and House Speaker Julie McCluskie backed in the Colorado legislature in March of 2023.