The intent of the evening wasn’t to criticize ranchers, but some of the attendees at Wednesday’s wolf talk did.
In the crowd of around 100 gathered in the Governor’s Residence at Boettcher Mansion (not actually where Gov. Jared Polis, his husband, Marlon Reis, and their two children live), they wanted to know why ranchers don’t do a better job of protecting their calves when wolves are around, like you would chickens with raccoons around.
They wanted to know why ranchers don’t adjust the time they breed their cows to coincide with the time elk drop their calves, to deter wolves from eating the cow calves.
And they wanted to know why a rancher would mourn the loss of a calf, when they raise cattle to have them slaughtered for money.
But the reason Reis had invited them to the mansion for the fourth event in his monthly speaker series on animal issues was to give them an opportunity “to listen, to learn, to question, to challenge and hopefully be more inspired than ever to appreciate carnivores and why they are so important,” he said.
It was also because he’d become frustrated by stories in the media that portray animals “as unthinking or unfeeling and perpetuate negative stereotypes that are dangerous and destructive.”
And because “stories matter,” along with how and why we tell them, he said.
Then he introduced the evening’s speakers on the topic of wolves and wolf reintroduction: Rebecca Niemiec, a researcher on human and animal behavior and co-director of Colorado State University’s Animal Human Policy Center, and Marc Bekoff, a professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Bekoff is deeply involved in the study of compassionate conservation, which argues all conservationists should respect the rights of individual sentient animals and implement practices that avoid direct harm to them. Before asking him to kick off the conversation Wednesday evening, Reis presented him with a proclamation by Polis declaring Saturday Marc Bekoff Day, for his 50 years of “groundbreaking research revealing that carnivores are highly sentient, emotional and intelligent beings with unique personalities.”
Compassionate conservation and following the science
Currently, wolves in Colorado are up against ranchers who want them gone and a media establishment that has been unfriendly to wolves, which Bekoff called “the primary stakeholders” of Colorado’s reintroduction.
“We brought them here. We’re responsible for that, and it’s all part of redecorating nature, moving animals around,” he said.“But the one big difference, of course, is unlike couches and dining room tables and TVs, these animals are sentient, feeling beings who really care about how they’re treated, how their families are treated and how their friends are treated.”
After the first 10 wolves from Oregon were released into Grand and Summit counties in December 2023, “they went off on their own, did exactly what we wanted them to do,” he said. Two wolves, one from each place, mated and “mom and dad had children. And they were doing really well, except they like to eat things that are easy servings, room service, and that includes livestock.”
Indeed, the male and possibly the female from Colorado’s first established wolf pack, the Copper Creek pack, killed more than a dozen cows and sheep on two ranches in 2024 in Grand County. But because Colorado Parks and Wildlife had yet to define the number of times a wolf could harass or kill livestock before wildlife officials could kill the wolf under a federal rule that establishes them as a nonessential experimental population, they trapped the adults as well as four of their five puppies.
Some praised the move, but not Bekoff, who imagined the feelings of the Copper Creek pack toward the adult male, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says someone shot before the pack was trapped and relocated to a private location. (Necropsy results have not been released because the case is still under investigation.)
“The father was put in a holding cage and died. Imagine the terror the family was feeling. You know, when dad’s gone, the pups are all over the place,” said Bekoff. And he chided people who accuse him of being anthropomorphic or “feminine” when he talks about wolves this way, because “the life of every single individual matters, because they’re alive, because they have what we call intrinsic or inherent value. It turns out there’s nothing wrong with being compassionate and feeling for the animals.”
Later, Bekoff also criticized CPW for their treatment of the Copper Creek pack, saying the agency claims “they follow the science, but they don’t,” and that “messing with a pack has been shown to be very bad for the pack. A long-term research project out of Yellowstone showed that if you kill one member of the pack, the pack can just dismantle itself.”
Now Colorado faces a “big question,” he said. “Are we going to bring more wolves here at their own peril, and kill them when they behave like wolves?”
The state is expected to move more wolves to Colorado in December.
But perhaps biologists should work with the animals already here and develop nonlethal methods. “They’re available … and a lot of communities around the world have come to peaceful coexistence with the carnivores with whom they share their homes,” said Bekoff. “It’s just a fact.”
While he was writing his speech before the event, he said he was thinking of the myth of Sisyphus, “and how this whole project is like Sisyphus on steroids. You go up three steps or two steps, and you come back three instead of up two and back one. But that’s really what’s happening. And remember, we are below the scientifically valid survival rate of 70% (for reintroduced wolves) and just a couple of weeks ago, (CPW attempted to) kill a wolf that was just being a wolf.”
Bekoff’s advice to start fixing the problem? “Work hard with your friends and ‘the other side'” to foster coexistence.
That may be challenging,”but we don’t want what’s been happening to continue into the future,” he said. “We need to just talk about a new way. I believe compassionate conservation can work. There’s countless examples of it working.”
Coexistence, the media and management
Up next, Niemiec offered a definition of coexistence by Kevin Crooks, a professor in the Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology Department and the Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence at Colorado State University.
“It’s a paper that basically said coexistence is sustainable carnivore populations (alongside) human endeavors with minimal human-predator conflict or social conflict,” she said.
Social conflict is between people, she continued. “And one thing I want to say about the word coexistence, is that people say it’s controversial. But it shouldn’t be. I think we can all strive toward coexistence. The question is, how can we get there?”
Before answering, she asked audience members why they thought there is so much conflict over wolves in Colorado.
Their answers ranged from “a perception from hundreds, even thousands, of years ago that a wolf is something religiously devious that cannot be tolerated for one reason or the other,” to “a narrative that the urban elite are ruining America and that the rural are suffering as a result,” to “wildlife does not have rights, and we run up to this hard wall, and people don’t want to compromise.”
The problems Niemiec listed since the first wolves were released nearly two years ago and a second batch in January were many.
“Wolves have been removed from the wild,” she said, referring to the animals that have been killed by humans and predators.
Compensation for wolves preying on livestock has totaled more than $650,000. Western Slope lawmakers tried (and failed) to pause wolf reintroduction with a bill introduced during the special legislative session. Niemiec also noted a group proposing a ballot initiative to end reintroduction by 2026, although the group behind it failed to gather the signatures needed to get it on the ballot.
Other things standing in the way of coexistence include how politicized wolves have become, according to a study conducted by CSU researchers that found the strongest predictor of people’s vote for wolf reintroduction was their support of the Democratic candidate in the 2020 presidential election. Colorado voters that year directed CPW to begin reintroducing wolves west of the Continental Divide and also voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump, 55.4% to 41.9%
And the media has given the lion’s share of coverage to negative aspects of reintroduction.
Niemiec’s data showed 74% of media articles about conflict over wolf reintroduction in 2024 focused on human-wolf conflict in the form of depredation of livestock, 29% on nonlethal options to reduce depredations and only 12% on compensation.
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Similarly, ranchers were the most commonly discussed stakeholder group (covered in 81% of articles) while “only 29% discussed conservationist perspectives and 33% focused on conflict.” And while one-third of the articles discussed social conflict between stakeholder groups, only 14% “discussed stakeholder groups working together or contained messages of hope about the future of the conflict,” says the study.
But Niemiec wanted to remain hopeful, so she presented the audience with a list of tangible actions society can take for “peace-building and coexistence.”
These included holding the media accountable “for their role in escalating conflict over this issue” and training them in “peace-building journalism” developed for journalists reporting during wars or post wars on ethnic and religious conflict. “They basically say as a journalist, you need to recognize you have an influence,” she said. “You’re actually affecting the conflict. So you need to report on peace efforts, not just the conflict.”
They also included investment in compensation and nonlethal strategies for preventing depredation (currently happening) along with funded regional collaborations like Montana’s Blackfoot Challenge, to implement those strategies.
And coexistence would have to involve “creating new social norms of what ranching is in Colorado,” Niemiec said, which will require ranchers working together and “changing what it means to ranch in Colorado.”
The last may prove to be difficult.
But wolves have a right to live, said Bekoff, “just like we do.”