Two days after announcing it chose four counties for the next wave of wolf reintroduction set to begin in December, Colorado Parks and Wildlife pulled Rio Blanco County from the list, citing the high number of sheep in the area, along with concerns about winter elk habitat and proximity to the Utah and Wyoming borders.
And that came just hours before the parks and wildlife commission, at its meeting Thursday in Lamar, faced pushback to wolf reintroduction, when rancher Tim Ritschard presented a petition for public hearing with a rule change that would pause further wolf reintroduction until certain stipulations were met.
Colorado voters narrowly passed Proposition 114 in 2020, with 51%, primarily urban areas, voting yes. The program has been plagued with problems since the program was implemented, most notably with wolves in Grand County repeatedly attacking livestock, and CPW refusing to agree to ranchers’ requests to kill them.
“Colorado’s wolf introduction program has not gone well,” Ritschard said. “There’ve been 24 confirmed depredations between three counties. There are more deaths and missing livestock that are suspected or were suspected to be wolf-related. Montana has 70 times more wolves, and I’ve seen similar death counts.”
The Middle Park Stockgrowers Association first filed the petition to halt the program in September. It listed 26 co-petitioners, including Club 20, which represents 22 counties west of the Continental Divide, the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, the Colorado Farm Bureau and the Colorado Wool Growers Association. Colorado Counties, Inc. whose members include 63 of Colorado’s 64 counties, also submitted a letter.
What they want, the fifth-generation Grand County rancher said, is to pause the program until CPW adopts a definition of chronic depredation, implements a program to conduct site vulnerability assessments, creates a widespread range riding program, starts a carcass management program, and hires and trains a rapid response team to respond to reports of depredating wolves. They also want communication with livestock producers in advance of any wolf introduction that could affect them.
But that’s much of what CPW officials said they were doing, just prior to Ritschard’s presentation.
The Colorado Department of Agriculture also reported it has funding for $20,000 grants for producers, to implement practices, host trainings and acquire the resources they need to implement nonlethal tools.
And Matt Barnes, a research associate with the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative, had presented his findings on successful wolf mitigation practices from Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
But during a lengthy public comment period Thursday, it was clear that many were unhappy with how the program was going.
Many echoed Ritschard’s comments: “Your mandate is to manage wolves. You should be willing to change your approach to issues as they arise.”
However, John Matter of the Attorney General’s Office, which represents CPW, said even though Colorado’s Administrative Procedure Act enables a citizen to petition the government to change or adopt a rule, a statutory provision says the petitions are at the discretion of the commission.
“And granting a citizen petition does not mean that the proposed rule contained in the petition is automatically adopted,” Matter added. “It’s a request that you get your rule-making wheels in motion.”
CPW director Jeff Davis said the agency has a responsibility to review the petition, and from that review, develop a recommendation to the commission.
But because the agency is still “in the review process,” he couldn’t say how long a recommendation would take.
CPW Commissioner Murphy Robinson also pointed out that the board has several petitions it needs to review ahead of the one Middle Park Stockgrowers submitted, “and I don’t want to be in a position where they say you’re picking what you believe is the most important.”
But Robinson wanted to know if, given the fact that so many counties weighed in on the wolf reintroduction issue, Davis could give the commissioners an update on the recommendation “even if you’re still in process?”
“Yeah, absolutely,” Davis answered. Then he added, “I’m trying not to be defensive.”
“But we have learned a lot,” he said, “and we’re doing things differently already.”
As an example, he mentioned the four counties the agency had been in touch with because they were being considered for the next release. He also said there were a lot of things CPW learned from the Middle Park Stockgrowers situation and from their interactions with rancher Conway Farrell, who lost eight sheep in one day to wolf attacks.
“I didn’t count them, but there were about 500 emails that came in on the other side of this saying, ‘Hey, reject the petition,’” he added. “So, as I mentioned in my earlier comments, that’s the privilege and honor of being a public servant. How do you balance these? And it’s not lost on us, CPW, the longstanding work that went into good relationships with our rural landowners and ranching community in particular.”
Davis concluded by acknowledging how emotional the issue is, “whether you’re directly impacted as a rancher, whether you worry about being directly impacted, or whether you’re a person that voted ‘yes’ on Prop. 114.”
Commission chair Dallas May closed the discussion without taking action on the petition, and saying the commission needs to follow its normal rule-making process, make sure it protects the integrity and structure of its policy “and make the right decisions.”
But after the meeting Ritschard said there’s no telling what could happen with the petition, “except if they release the wolves before it’s resolved, it’s going to be dismissed.”
Rio Blanco gets reprieve
Late Wednesday night, CPW announced that it would not consider Rio Blanco County for the next wolf release, which is expected in December. That leaves Pitkin, Eagle and Garfield counties on the agency’s list.
Last week, CPW limited the number of commissioners who could attend the invitation-only meeting to alert the four counties it was considering for the location of the next wolf release, Rio Blanco County Commissioner Doug Overton said.
Overton tried to take the president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association to the Nov. 8 meeting, but he said he was told he couldn’t.
Only one commissioner and two county employees were allowed. When Overton asked why, CPW didn’t give him a good reason, he said. He said he supposes it’s because “they didn’t want a bunch of people jumping up and down.”
“I think they got some flack in Jackson County for not notifying the commissioners there when they released the first wolves, so I think they were just checking the box with us,” he said.
That’s all ancient history now. Davis, the CPW director, emailed Overton on Wednesday night to say Rio Blanco County had been removed from the list.
Overton was relieved. Earlier Wednesday he told The Colorado Sun that game herds in his region were still recovering from the massive dieoff during the deep-snow winter of 2023 and still too fragile for the introduction of wolves.
Of the 3,800 Rio Blanco County residents who voted in 2020 on Proposition 114, 87.8% voted “no” and 12.2% voted “yes.”
That Rio Blanco was being considered for the next release “turned my stomach, because other states have had their deer and elk herds cut in half by wolves,” Overton said. “This is one of the greatest elk herds in North America. We have a lot of hunting and recreation around here because of that. And they’re just throwing it away because somebody wants to go out in the woods and see a wolf that they’re never going to see anyway.”
But “they listened to us. Their reasons coincide with our concerns,” Overton said Wednesday evening.
Down to three counties
But Eagle, Garfield and Pitkin counties remain in play for the second wave of reintroduction.
Marcia Gilles, director of open spaces and natural resources for Eagle County, who attended the meeting, said there is far too little state land for a sustainable wolf release in her county, and state land — or private land, with permission — is a requirement in the Wolf Management Plan.
Just over 28,000 Eagle County residents voted on Proposition 114, with 53.4% voting “no” and 46.6% voting “yes.” About 80% of the land in Eagle County is federal land, said Gilles, “so right there you shrink (available land for release) to 20%. And then, I think I have the number right, 14% of that land is private land, and not a lot of folks are probably going to raise their hand and say, ‘I’ll let you drop wolves off right here.’”
Elk herds in Eagle County are also struggling, with wildlife officials in 2023 saying numbers may not be sustainable over the next 20 years.
“CPW is trying really hard to find the best location, but it’s just really limited and constrained in what’s going to meet survivability,” Gilles said.
Around 30,000 people voted on Proposition 114 in Garfield County, with 63.2% voting against it.
Commissioner Tom Jankovsky said he and his two Garfield County counterparts oppose release in their county for the same reason wolves shouldn’t be released in Eagle County — lack of state land.
And while he believes CPW will release the mother and four pups from the Copper Creek pack they captured in August, he hopes they will reconsider the release of a second wave of wolves altogether. CPW is supposed to release 10 to 15 wolves on the Western Slope annually for three to five years or until a sustainable population is established.
Francie Jacober, a rancher and Pitkin County commissioner, attended the Nov. 8 meeting and said Garfield and Rio Blanco county commissioners “impugned CPW unnecessarily” by accusing them “of mismanagement and poor communication. That it’s their fault that animals are being depredated, which is a ridiculous thing to say.
“I tried to remind them that CPW didn’t propose the legislation,” she said. “They’re only enacting the law as they’re required to do. And, you know, cooperation is a lot more helpful than adversity.”
More than 11,000 people in Pitkin County voted on Prop. 114, with 61.7% voting “yes.” So commissioners there could have an easier time than in other western Colorado counties supporting the next release. “We would like to cooperate with CPW and help them find a place for wolves knowing that in many instances, where they are released is definitely not where they end up, right?” Jacober said.
Pitkin County has different geographical constraints than the other counties, however. More than 83% of the land is federally owned, and Jacober said the county is “primarily very high and the range is difficult in the winter for the elk and therefore for the wolves.”
The elk herds in the Crystal River Valley, where she ranches, also have a low birth-survival rate, she said, with only 30% to 35% of elk calves surviving their first year of life. Elk survival rate is higher near Aspen, she said.
Jacober said that her son Tai, who was appointed to the CPW commission in August and also ranches, “isn’t aligned with most of the other producers in the state. Although he doesn’t want to lose animals to wolves, he believes the facts, that the depredation rate is less than 1% and that the compensation rate is very generous if there is depredation.”
Some producers are more open and more reasonable, she said, and some are trying to use the nonlethal mitigation techniques and apparatus CPW is making available.
The bottom line for any of the counties on CPW’s list, however, is “if it’s on state land, the commissioners can express their disapproval or disagreement, but it doesn’t mean they won’t be released there,” Jacober said. “I think we would like to comply with the wishes of the constituents in the various counties, but CPW also has a job to do. And I think the majority of people in Pitkin County would not be averse to wolves being released here.”