Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s pipeline for bringing wolves into the state is approaching collapse and if that happens, it could create “significant ecological, genetic and social risks” for the program that has an estimated 20 adult wolves on the ground and pups born to four packs, agency spokesperson Luke Perkins said.
But a moratorium on introducing more wolves is exactly what the program’s opponents want. And, it turns out, one of Colorado’s most vocal wolf advocates — who is a close friend of First Gentleman Marlon Reis and who “provides scientific input on certain matters” to Gov. Jared Polis — says a pause may not be as bad as some think, if it comes with a moratorium on killing.
Marc Bekoff is professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado and co-chair of the Jane Goodall Institute’s ethics committee. A friend of Goodall’s for decades before her death in October, Bekoff advocates for “compassionate conservation” and a no-kill policy for all sentient beings.
He says one of the reasons northern Rockies states and Washington have declined to give Colorado wolves is because “we can’t take care of the ones we’ve been given.”
Several groups inside Colorado have been fighting to pause reintroduction, starting with a coalition of Western Slope ranchers, legislators and local leaders in November 2024 and continuing with other groups through September. Among criticisms leveled against CPW: inadequacies in implementing effective nonlethal control programs, lack of transparency and failure to follow the wolf management plan approved by the CPW commission, according to Merrit Linke, a longtime rancher and Grand County commissioner.
Perceptions worsened when the agency announced in November that Director Jeff Davis had stepped down only to have it revealed that he did so in lieu of suing the agency over his proposed firing and with the stipulation that he would take a new job in the Department of Natural Resources. They degraded further in December, when a wolf from a pack with a known history of killing livestock traveled into New Mexico, which has a memorandum of understanding with CPW to return any Colorado wolves to the state. CPW relocated the wolf to Grand County without alerting ranchers or commissioners.
Bekoff said he didn’t support any of the petitions to pause reintroduction because they “were pretty blatant attempts” to stop the wolf program. But he believes reintroduction could sustain a temporary pause, “because the sheer number of wolves on the ground is likely enough to have a sustainable population” even though “it would take more time than if more wolves were brought here and not killed.”
“Right now, you’ve got Colorado wolves doing what we want them to do,” he added. “We have around 30 wolves, and the babies are going to grow up and have babies. There’s going to be natural deaths due to sickness, or competition or them wandering into Wyoming. But as of today, we have a nucleus for a stable and sustaining population in a few years…if the wolves are allowed to be wolves and aren’t subject to lethal control.”
CPW maintains that pausing reintroduction would “introduce long-term costs and complications that far outweigh any short-term logistical or political benefit.”
They say “a consistent, science-based release schedule as outlined in the Wolf Restoration and Management Plan is not only a commitment to ecological success, but to public transparency, stakeholder confidence and long-term conflict reduction.” And it would disrupt the wolf plan, which calls for the translocation of 10 to 15 wolves every year for 3 to 5 years with a goal of translocating 30 to 50 wolves.
But what if CPW could put a pause on killing them?
Could a killing pause happen?
If a moratorium sounds far-fetched, Linke says it isn’t, citing times Davis has deviated from the wolf management plan.
An early example: his decision to trap the first pack of relocated wolves — the Copper Creek Pack — after the adult male and possibly the female preyed on livestock on two Grand County ranches.
While that move didn’t violate the plan, which follows a federal rule that designates Colorado’s wolves a nonessential experimental population and gives the agency flexibility in managing them, what ensued a few months later did. After the male wolf died in captivity, and CPW failed to capture one of five pups born in the spring of 2024, Davis directed the agency to rerelease the pack near several ranches in Pitkin County.
The plan states wolves from packs with known histories of killing livestock cannot be relocated. The Pitkin County release ended in personal hardship for two ranchers who spent months trying to keep wolves out of their cattle herds and lost multiple calves.
The agency then rereleased one of the Copper Creek wolves into Grand County. “So this plan isn’t statutory, it is not obligatory and it’s not binding,” Linke said.
Theoretically, that leaves the door open for the CPW commission to place a moratorium on killing, except, as one commissioner put it, “how do they deal with a chronically depredating wolf that has killed you name the number of cattle, and it gets to the point that the state can’t pay for (compensation)?”
Bekoff says the only way to protect the wolves that are here and Colorado’s wolf program in the future is to never kill another wolf again. “I said six years ago that wolves are going to dominate the landscape literally and figuratively for the duration. So it seems to me that we just firmly need to say, ‘We’re not killing wolves. We’re going to keep the wolves here alive.’ And then just start negotiating with people who hate wolves or who don’t want them.”
If that doesn’t work, to keep wolves from being killed, other measures would be needed.
Using the tools in the toolbox
Bekoff opposed CPW’s trapping of the Copper Creek pack, saying, “science clearly shows they should not have interfered at all in pack dynamics, because the wolves were doing what we wanted them to do, namely they formed a family group and the youngsters were doing well and were the DNA for future Colorado wolves.”
He also called the agency’s attempt to change the pack’s eating habits once they were in captivity by feeding them game meat “naive.”
And he thinks the situation with the Copper Creek pack could have been worked out had CPW “left it alone” and “worked with anti-wolf people to protect their livestock without lethal management.”
Plenty of ranchers believe otherwise, including Linke, who said even with nonlethal wolf deterrents, like range riders, who have been used on Colorado ranches for years, “the problem is the wolf is still hungry,” and if livestock is an easy food source they’ll continue trying to eat it.
Rob Edward, president of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, said the best way to keep Colorado’s wolves alive is through “a redoubling of efforts” to prevent depredations from occurring to the point where lethal control occurs.
Those include ensuring that as soon as CPW knows wolves are in an area with livestock present, particularly during the spring calving season, they get to the site, do a site assessment if one hasn’t already been done, let ranchers know wolves are in the area and get them to start thinking about how to protect the calving grounds with nonlethal coexistence tools, Edward said.
And Mike Phillips, a biologist and former Montana legislator who was instrumental in the wolf reintroduction program that started in 1995 in Yellowstone National Park, said CPW should be open to trapping offending wolves and feeding them game to keep them from preying on livestock.
There’s nothing wrong with trapping
“A better question than could CPW put a moratorium on killing is what could you do, that is the nth degree, to keep wolves from getting in trouble,” Phillips said.
That answer, when he worked in Yellowstone National Park, was trapping two separate packs “not because they had done anything wrong, but because it was just a matter of time” before they did.
When the Copper Creek wolves started preying on livestock in Pitkin County, CPW killed one yearling and attempted to kill another. But when new pups were born, after the Copper Creek female bred with a wolf from British Columbia also released in Pitkin County, Phillips advocated for trapping and re-relocating the new pups.
It would have been easier than trying to trap the pups when they were older and more mobile, he said. And he wasn’t talking about problem wolves; he was talking about wolves without a record.
He’s also a longtime advocate of diversionary feeding to reduce wolf-livestock conflicts and increase the chances of reintroduction success, he said, because “common sense suggests that wolves might be less interested in hunting, including livestock, if their bellies are full, right?”