Clean the hiking boots and binoculars, Colorado: Looks like we’re going to get real, live, claw-dragging wolverines back in the state even quicker than wildlife advocates were hoping a few months ago.
All crucial parties, including Colorado Parks and Wildlife, are lining up behind bipartisan Senate Bill 171 that would authorize wolverine reintroduction, a local step required by the federal Endangered Species Act.
If the bill passes, which appears highly likely given the wide, coordinated support, Colorado could begin reintroduction after federal officials finish writing a rule protecting landowners’ rights to continue certain activities even if wolverines arrive in their area.
Colorado could support 100 to 180 of the solitary animals eventually, state wildlife researchers said, with the state’s high, snowy terrain likely to hold up better against climate change for wolverine habitat than lower, rainier northwestern states.
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Advocates expect far fewer conflicts between landowners and wandering wolverines than are playing out during the Colorado gray wolf reintroduction. Ski areas have asked some pointed questions about being able to continue their operations and expansions if there are rare wolverines moving into ski country. But wolverines, the largest members of the weasel family, tend to eat carrion and stick to their isolated, steep terrain, rather than lurk in forests near ranches or tread across busy ski areas.
The prospect of a hundred wolverines in Colorado is spectacular when you hear that only about 400 are known to remain throughout the Lower 48, said Megan Mueller of Rocky Mountain Wild.
“The really important thing here is that wolverines really need Colorado,” Mueller said. “Climate change is shrinking their snowy habitat across the West. So bringing them back to Colorado is the best way to help them survive.”
Wildlife advocates hope that reestablishing wolverines in more states will demonstrate the benefits of connecting protected land corridors across wide ranges to restore balance in varied ecosystems.
In backing the legislation, Colorado Parks and WIldlife noted the reintroduction would only go forward after a livestock compensation plan is in place, for the rare occasions a wolverine does attack livestock.
“I think it’s really neat to see bipartisan leadership and support for a wolverine reintroduction,” Mueller said. “That’s not very common in wildlife conservation.”
“Colorado is the right state to take on this work,” Parks and Wildlife Director Jeff Davis said in a release backing the bill. “The North American wolverine requires a high-elevation habitat with persistent, deep snowpack, and Colorado has some of the best remaining unoccupied wolverine habitat in the Lower 48 states. This legislation would put us on the right path toward a successful wolverine reintroduction effort in Colorado.”
Western Slope Sens. Perry Will, R-New Castle, and Dylan Roberts, D-Frisco, were among the prime sponsors on the reintroduction bill.
In a committee hearing last week, Will said he was proud to be on the bill and wished wolverines had been part of the state’s lynx reintroduction effort in 1999 and 2000. He said he wants the bill to thwart “ballot box biology,” like the effort underway — Proposition 91 — to ban mountain lion hunting.
Wolf reintroduction began with majority approval on the state ballot in 2020, though many rural counties went against wolf expansion.
“If we don’t do (wolverines) legislatively, we will get a ballot initiative,” said Will. “The people I represent, it’s not about the wolves anymore. It’s about the government and getting things anks crammed down their throats.”
The bill authorizes the CPW to use $750,000 from the Species Conservation Trust Fund for reintroduction, starting in the state’s 2024-25 fiscal year that begins July 1, the agency said.
Wildlife experts list many reasons for their fascination with wolverines, which were exterminated in Colorado in the early 1900s through poisoning and fur collecting.
One male wolverine holds a territory 20 miles by 20 miles square. Trackers of radio collars have watched a wolverine climb up a 1,500-foot avalanche chute in 20 minutes. Their relative rarity is on par with their weasel-family cousins, the black-footed ferret.
They scavenge deer, elk, moose or rabbits through frozen mountain valleys, and hunt at night. Wolverines were common in Colorado until the early 1900s, when trapping for their luxurious fur and poisoning by wary ranchers wiped them out.
As The Colorado Sun wrote in 2022, a radio-collared wolverine tagged as M56 wandered south into Colorado in 2009 and made it all the way down to the Leadville area in search of hunting grounds. That specimen then made the long trek to flat North Dakota.
That migration became the first known presence of a wolverine in North Dakota since 1889, and subsequent events might have explained why: In 2016, a ranch hand in McKenzie County shot M56.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials have studied the possibilities of wolverine reintroduction for years. One of the recent serious efforts at reintroduction was in the 1990s, but the division then got caught up in the more urgent reintroduction of the Canada lynx.
The federal Endangered Species Act requires that reintroduction of listed species be done in cooperation with states, and Colorado requires the legislature to approve it. State and federal agencies go through a public dialogue process to consider concerns of landowners and other interested parties. Ski areas, which often seek to do avalanche control, expand, or clear trees on federal land where species like the lynx need habitat (and now the wolverine), are frequently one of those “interested parties.”
A new wolverine planning process began in earnest again in 2010, Mueller said. The state came up with a plan, then largely shelved it to focus on the more controversial and complex effort to bring gray wolves back. Meanwhile, different presidential administrations flip-flopped on their support for listing the wolverine under the act.
If the bill passes and the later administrative boxes are checked, Mueller thinks Colorado will most likely source the new wolverines from Canadian habitat.
In the meantime, wildlife fans can start studying up on signs of wolverine life they might eventually see on a high country hike.
“If you really love the mountains, you can’t help but be impressed by the wolverine,” Mueller said.