State wildlife managers are capturing and relocating wolves that have been killing livestock in northern Colorado, state officials said in a surprise announcement Tuesday night that is a blow to the state’s controversial wolf reintroduction plan.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife said it has begun an operation to capture wolves from the Copper Creek pack, which has been feeding on cattle and sheep in Grand County near Kremmling. The pack includes two adult wolves and at least three pups, but CPW did not say whether it was relocating all of them.
The decision to remove the wolves from the area comes after Colorado Parks & Wildlife denied a request from a local rancher to take lethal action to protect his livestock. And it comes only about nine months after 10 wolves were brought to Colorado from Oregon and released by wildlife biologists.
Wolves were introduced in Colorado in December west of the Continental Divide, after Colorado voters narrowly passed Proposition 114 in November 2020. The ballot measure, passed mainly by urban voters, directed state wildlife officials to begin reintroducing them by the end of 2023.
The Copper Creek pack is a family group started by two of the 10 wolves that were relocated to Colorado late last year. The two wolves had at least three pups, which were captured on video this month playing in a rain puddle with an adult nearby.
They were the first births of gray wolves since the animals were reintroduced.
Wolves in Grand County have killed nearly two dozen cattle and sheep and the mating pair of the Copper Creek pack killed at least eight sheep in one go in July on rancher Conway Ferrell’s cattle operation, west of Granby.
Some of the livestock kills are listed as confirmed on CPW’s website, but “there were more sheep killed that are missing and it’s still under investigation,” said Tim Ritschard, president of the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association.
The rancher has been asking CPW since early April for help with the pack’s continued killing of his livestock. Dallas May, chair of the CPW commission, said the wolves were in an “untenable situation” as they were placed “in the dead of winter with very little if any food source” and they “are only doing what they were created to do and that is survive.”
In announcing the trapping and relocation plan, Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Jeff Davis said he wasn’t setting a precedent by authorizing the trapping.
“The decision to capture and relocate the Copper Creek pack was made with the careful consideration of multiple factors and feedback from many different stakeholders,” Davis said in the news release that was emailed around 8 p.m. “Our options in this unique case were very limited, and this action is by no means a precedent for how CPW will resolve wolf-livestock conflict moving forward.”
The agency refused to answer further questions. State officials also would not say where the wolves were being trapped or relocated, only that it would provide details when the operation is complete.
“The ultimate goal of the operation is to relocate the pack to another location while we assess our best options for them to continue to contribute to the successful restoration of wolves in Colorado,” Davis said.
Wolf advocacy groups blasted the trap-and-relocate plan.
“This decision is being driven by politics, is not rooted in science-based management and stands to significantly delay the progress of the reintroduction program,” said Mike Senatore, Defenders of Wildlife senior vice president of conservation programs, in a statement. “All parties involved in the events that led to this deeply flawed decision should be held accountable for failure to effectively utilize proven coexistence tools. CPW and area livestock producers need to demonstrate clear ownership for developing and executing plans to avoid this type of scenario from happening in the future.”
And the Center for Biological Diversity called it a potential “death sentence” for the pack’s pups.
“I’m really worried that moving the Copper Creek wolves into unfamiliar territory is a death sentence for the pups, especially if the wolf family isn’t kept together,” said Alli Henderson, the center’s southern Rockies director. “Those ranchers who fail to clean up their act are the real problem, and they’re setting us up for repeated conflict. Relocating wolves to placate them only rewards the uncooperative and poor practices that contributed to conflicts.”
Colorado’s own wolf plan says relocation of the transplanted wolves is not ideal. “To be effective at reducing further depredation events, lethal and non-lethal responses for resolving conflict should be applied quickly and properly,” it says. “Relocation of depredating wolves has little technical merit.”
Rancher dealing with Copper Creek pack had asked for permission to kill wolves
The Copper Creek pack was linked to the killings of three yearling cattle April 17, and deaths of three other yearling cattle in April and May. It was also linked to the July 17 killing of a sheep, according to a letter from CPW denying the rancher’s request that the wolf be killed.
When the wolves were released in December, they were wearing tracking collars and wildlife officials have been observing their movements. They believe the female wolf was hiding in a den in April, and then in June, CPW announced that at least one pup had been born. The rancher reported seeing the male wolf carrying parts of livestock in its mouth, likely back to the den.
In an April 24 letter, the rancher had requested a permit that gives the permit holder authority to kill wolves if they are chronically killing livestock and hazing has not worked.
In its response, the state wildlife agency said the rancher likely could have avoided some of the livestock losses if he had accepted help sooner from the Colorado Department of Agriculture, which offered to pay for a range rider in early April. The rancher accepted the help at the end of April, after losing five cattle within 12 days, the letter said.
The rancher also tried cracker shells, fox lights and other hazing techniques to scare away the wolves, and allowed CPW to conduct night-watch operations, the letter said. However, Colorado wildlife officials learned on April 22 that Ferrell kept an “open dead pit” on his property for disposal of dead livestock, but that the rancher did not bury the pit until May 8 even as wildlife officials warned it might be attracting wolves.
Wolves are protected under the Federal Endangered Species Act and the Colorado Threatened Species Conservation Act, but as an experimental population the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or state wildlife managers can kill wolves preying on dogs or livestock in limited circumstances.
But this requires a definition of chronic depredation — or repeat killing by wolves — and CPW has yet to define one. That has left ranchers with their hands tied, as Ferrell was when he asked for help.
On Aug. 14, the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, Middle Park Stockgrowers Association, North Park Stockgrowers Association and Routt County Cattlemen’s Association wrote a joint letter criticizing the agency’s reasons for denying Ferrell and accusing CPW and Gov. Jared Polis of supporting “a troubling trend of prioritizing wolves over the legitimate needs and rights of livestock producers.”
The letter went on to say “protections of depredating apex predators should not come at the expense of livestock producers who have demonstrated a clear and ongoing threat to their livestock and livelihood.”
May, chair of the CPW commission, said wildlife managers and ranchers deserve applause for their efforts.
“Anybody who has enjoyed watching that video of the three pups playing in the rain puddle while their mother watched should appreciate what not only CPW has gone through to get to this point but what the producers who have paid the price have done to make sure this was possible,” he said. “They should be applauded.”
Federal wildlife managers are helping Colorado with the trap-and-removal operation, CPW said.
“Colorado Parks and Wildlife is committed to fulfilling the will of Colorado voters to successfully restore the gray wolf population while meeting the needs of Colorado communities,” CPW’s news release said.
Staff writer Jason Blevins contributed to this report.