GRAND JUNCTION — Colorado’s wolf reintroduction program is entering its most precarious stretch yet, as the program’s top administrator publicly announced his retirement Thursday — but not before telling commissioners he could not provide them with an estimate of when, if ever, wolves would be fully reestablished in the state.
During opening remarks to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission on Thursday, Eric Odell, CPW’s wolf conservation program manager, said a requirement of the agency’s annual report on wolf restoration “is to give an anticipated timeline to recovery.”
But at this stage, he said, “I cannot provide a definitive timeline, and that’s an honest reflection of where we are in the implementation of wolf restoration.”
Odell has led Colorado’s wolf recovery effort since it was mandated by voters in 2020. In his role, he oversaw the capture and release of 25 wolves from Oregon and British Columbia into Colorado’s Western Slope. The agency Thursday released its third annual report since reintroduction began in December 2023.
The report appeared grim: Just 18 reintroduced adult wolves are alive and 14 pups. But officials say those numbers aren’t surprising and that “in the last biological year, pup survival seemed to be relatively high.”
A CPW spokesperson said Odell’s job was posted in March. It’s now closed and “they are reviewing and/or interviewing applicants.” Odell will retire in July.
Odell’s update comes after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in October banned Parks and Wildlife from bringing new wolves to the state until the agency could provide a full accounting of all reintroduction efforts made to date. CPW met the deadline and the agency’s director, Laura Clellan, said they are “continuing to work with Fish and Wildlife.” But 15 wolves scheduled to be translocated from British Columbia in January didn’t come, leaving all future relocations this year uncertain.
The wolf management plan defines a self-sustaining population as roughly 150 to 200 wolves. It has a goal of releasing 30 to 50 wolves over a three-to-five-year period.
Odell said “we’re very much at an inflection point.”
With high survival and a high number of pups surviving each year, “the population of wolves could expand in both size and distribution, moving us towards the recovery goals that are outlined in the plan,” he added. But with even one year of lower survival, high mortality or a reduction in new pups birthed, “additional years of reintroduction may be necessary.”
“The key drivers to determining the timeline to recovery will be the survival rates of wolves of different ages, reproduction and wolf-pup survival rates and the reintroduction opportunities,” he said. “Until those variables become clear, the timeline to recovery will remain uncertain.”
Paws on the ground as of March 31
Brenna Cassidy, CPW’s wolf monitoring and data coordinator, told the commission that as of March 31, the minimum number of wolves on the ground is 32, including 18 adults and 14 pups.
Of those, 24 are members of established packs (10 adults and 14 pups) with the remaining eight dispersed. Cassidy said of the 17 pups CPW was monitoring in 2025, 14 were still alive at the end of March. She did not say how three pups died.
The packs have established territories in Jackson, Routt, Rio Blanco and Pitkin counties. Female wolves with packs have tended to stay near their packs while lone females, not associated with any pack, have ranged widely.
Cassidy said dispersed or lone wolves are dying at a higher rate than wolves in packs. Of the 10 known deaths in 2025-26, three were in packs and seven were dispersed. Of those, one died in an encounter with a mountain lion over a moose carcass, six died from known human causes and three deaths remain under investigation.
Territory size of the four wolf packs differs by habitat type, human presence, pack size and prey availability, Cassidy said. When wolves establish territories, they are “somewhat more predictable,” making it easier for wildlife officials to monitor them and prevent conflicts, she added.
And, she said, “one year of successful reproduction is a positive step to our long road of a self-sustaining population, but it is only one year. What the next years look like …will depend on future successful reproduction and any potential future translocations.”
Range riders covered 15,000 miles
In December, CPW hired a new wolf damage and conflict specialist, Rae Nickerson, who updated the commission on 2025-26 wolf conflict mitigation strategies. A CPW spokesperson told The Colorado Sun Nickerson brings extensive knowledge of wolf management in the West and is completing one of the most comprehensive studies on the effectiveness and best practices related to range riding, a nonlethal, proactive livestock management technique where personnel patrol grazing areas on horseback, to reduce large carnivore-livestock conflicts.
During the 2025-26 annual reporting season, Nickerson said eight range riders rode 15,000 miles over 4,000 hours serving 34 livestock producers across eight counties. They detected at least 15 deaths or injuries linked to wolves, she said, “which is important for getting livestock producers compensated for their wolf related losses.”
“This coming grazing season, we have 15 super-excited range riders” of which seven are returning, she added. Last week they completed a five-day range rider training she led in Grand Junction.
The increase in riders will allow CPW to cover more area and expand into the southwestern part of the state to prepare for the potential migration of wolves into new areas, Nickerson said.
Nonlethal mitigation an imperfect solution
Ethan Kohn, one of CPW’s wildlife damage specialists, said despite extensive efforts to prevent wolves from getting into livestock herds using nonlethal tools like turbo fladry — brightly colored flags draped on electric barbed wire fences — flashing lights and other scare devices, wolves in Pitkin and Routt counties proved difficult to deter.
The Copper Creek pack, whose territory includes the areas around Carbondale and Basalt, was particularly challenging. The landscape there includes large private residences, small hobby farms and approximately six to eight large livestock producers, Kohn said.
Elk and deer also use private lands year-round due to high-quality forage associated with agricultural production, he added. And “heavy year-round recreational use on adjacent public lands, including hiking, biking and winter recreation, pushes ungulates onto private lands where human pressure is lower, creating conditions that also attract wolves,” he said.
In 2025, CPW worked with three livestock producers experiencing consistent wolf activity on two large cattle operations and a smaller one with sheep and cattle. Throughout the 60- to 90-day calving period, they documented wolf tracks outside and inside fences draped with fladry as well as inside fladry enclosed pastures.
Elk frequently entered pastures at night to feed, tearing down fencing and reducing its effectiveness as a protective barrier. CPW also used a full-time range rider who worked across public and private lands. “This individual supported livestock monitoring, night watch and hazing during periods of increased conflict,” Kohn said. CPW and Colorado Department of Agriculture staff conducted coordinated night watch efforts for approximately three weeks.
Despite these efforts, multiple livestock losses occurred, beginning in March 2025 and continuing into April of this year.
“These experiences highlight the challenges of conflict minimization in high conflict areas like this,” Kohn said. “Intensive measures such as extended night watch, range riding and the use of thermal imaging are being implemented by both agency staff and producers. However, even with significant investment in nonlethal tools, conflict continues to occur under these conditions.”
Large-scale livestock operations, allotments up the challenge
Kohn said the King Mountain pack, whose established territory ranges from northern Eagle County to southern Routt County near the ranching communities of Burns into Toponas, have also continued getting into livestock.
Deterring attacks there is particularly challenging due to the scale of the operations, including large calving areas and extensive, expansive summer grazing allotments. In 2025, CPW implemented two fladry projects, along with additional scare devices and other nonlethal deterrence measures, he said. Range riding proved to be one of the most effective tools as it provided consistent human presence, improved livestock monitoring and quick detection and recovery of carcasses.
Two full-time CPW range riders were deployed during the 2025 summer grazing season. Yet wolf conflicts included the killing of a calf during spring calving season, multiple attacks in October and one in March.
“Wolves were observed in and around livestock,” he said. “This prompted a combined night watch with CPW staff, (USDA) wildlife services and a conservation district CPW range rider.”
But due to the size and scale of these operations, maintaining consistent coverage with nonlethal tools is difficult.
Colorado unlike any “comparable Western states”
CPW has approved more than $1 million in compensation for livestock killed or harmed by wolves in 2025-26, including $260,000 the commission approved Wednesday for wolf damage to two ranchers and $700,000 they approved at their March meeting.
But it has that funding and “this needs to be clearly stated,” Ray Aberle, CPW’s private lands program manager, told commissioners. He reminded them that the bill authorizing payments — Senate Bill 255 — was signed prior to finalization of the Colorado wolf restoration plan.
The timing is important, “because it points to the concurrence of these actions and the challenges in having accurate projections for the costs associated” with starting such a plan, he said. Colorado’s compensation plan “is exceedingly different from any other state’s” due to the decision to restore wolves coming by citizen initiative.”
Lastly, he pointed out that from a perspective of “topography, human land use and densities of livestock and people, Colorado is very unlike any of our comparable Western states managing wolves, such as Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and even Arizona.”
Colorado has the highest livestock inventory (of those states) with a resident population of more than 6 million and more than 98 million annual visitors, he added. In 2025, the Colorado livestock population was estimated at 2.6 million head. Nonetheless, Colorado experienced just 42 confirmed depredations of cattle, sheep and working dogs, he said.
Other updates
During the 2025-26 reporting period, CPW received 45 nonlethal wolf hazing permits and three chronic depredation permits. They issued all of the former and denied all of the latter.
Chronic depredation permits are issued when three or more depredation events are caused by the same wolf or wolves within a 30-day period, provided there is clear and convincing evidence that at least one of the depredation events was caused by a wolf or wolves, according to CPW.
They also conducted multiple wolf depredation investigation trainings, made continued investments in deploying conflict minimization resources and expanded their stockpile for upcoming seasons.
They conducted 78 site assessments (bringing the total site assessments conducted in Colorado to over 280), led 12 night watch events, and deployed 61 scare devices and more than 13 miles of fladry across 15 locations.
And research is ongoing into deer and elk activity in areas with wolves.
Odell moving on
Odell said retiring from CPW “is entirely a personal decision” that doesn’t stem “from external pressures, political or otherwise…despite what might be suggested elsewhere.”
“The past six years…focused on wolf restoration… have been among the most challenging, complex and meaningful of my career,” he added.
And he said he leaves the program “with full confidence in its future,” knowing it’s in the hands of “exceptional scientists and biologists, skilled conflict mitigation specialists, dedicated field and regional staff and professionals who are deeply committed to public service to the people and wildlife of Colorado.”