Ranchers from Colorado’s Middle Park have submitted claims totaling around $582,000 in livestock losses related to wolves, hoping that the damages will help sway Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s Commission to pause further releases. 

“We feel that the commissioners need to have as much information as possible to make this decision,” stated Tim Ritschard, a Grand County rancher and president of the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association, in an email to the commission on Tuesday. 

Ritschard’s email contained three claims submitted to the agency in December totaling around $582,000. 

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The number includes $18,411.71 in claims relating to the confirmed loss or injury of sheep and cattle as well as $515 in veterinarian costs for a calf necropsy. It also includes claims for indirect losses: $173,526.63 for missing livestock, $218,220.98 for reduced weight of livestock, and $172,754.64 for reductions in births at ranches with confirmed wolf attacks or kills. 

Two of the claims are directly related to the Copper Creek pack, Ritschard told the Post Independent. One of these claims totals over $400,000 for a single operation in Grand County. The Copper Creek pack was captured and removed from the Middle Park area in late August and early September after being connected to multiple livestock deaths in the region. 

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“The financial damages associated with these three claims could have been much less had the agency taken lethal action on some of the wolves,” Ritschard stated in his email to the commission, referring to the situation with the Copper Creek pack.

The three claims alone exceed the $475,000 allocated to the state’s Wolf Depredation Compensation Fund — which received a $175,000 transfer from the state general fund in the 2023-24 fiscal year and $350,000 for 2024-25. The legislature created the fund in 2023, providing a dedicated source to pay producers for the loss of livestock or working animals by wolves. The fund can also be used for conflict minimization and program management. 

Parks and Wildlife has other programs to compensate producers for losses caused by other big game wildlife including bears and mountain lions.  

Should Parks and Wildlife exceed the amount allocated to the wolf fund, it will pay out the claims from the “most appropriate source available,” according to Travis Duncan, the agency’s public information officer. This could include the state general fund, the species conservation trust, the Colorado nongame conservation and wildlife cash fund, or the wildlife cash fund (fed by hunting and fishing licenses), he added. 

“We are sending this information in advance of the January (Parks and Wildlife Commission) meeting to make sure you are aware of the magnitude of the claims pending before the division,” Ritschard stated, adding that there are likely more claims in waiting that the association is unaware of. 

Since reintroducing wolves, the state has paid claims totaling $3,855 for three depredation incidents in 2024, according to Parks and Wildlife’s document tracking confirmed events. 

As of Jan. 2, the agency has confirmed 17 total wolf depredation incidents involving livestock in 2024. Aside from the three paid claims, only one incident in Grand County in April is listed as having a claim pending, with all others reporting that no claim has been submitted. 

Per state statute, Parks and Wildlife has 30 days after a claim is submitted to meet with the producer and attempt to reach a settlement. Duncan said on Thursday, Jan. 2, that the depredation document will be “updated in the coming days as recent submissions are processed.”

The agency expected to see additional claims come in at year-end as producers had until Dec. 31 to submit claims for 2024, Duncan added. 

Ritschard told the Vail Daily there were several reasons that the claims weren’t submitted until December. For most ranching operations, it takes a while to collect the data necessary to understand the impacts including the sale of calves (including weighing the animals) and checking pregnant cattle — both of which occur in the later months of the year. 

“Like most business operations, (ranching operations) start closing their books out at the end of the calendar year, and between shipping and pregnant checking, we can put numbers together on what is missing from the calving season,” Ritschard said. “Operations don’t know what cattle are missing until we can get a really good count on them and usually that comes during shipping and pregnant checking.”

Ranchers say it’s another reason to pause 

The Middle Park organization is one of 26 groups that have petitioned the commission to pause reintroduction efforts until more measures can be fully implemented to minimize conflict between livestock and wolves. Parks and Wildlife staff recommended that the commission deny the request at its Jan. 8 meeting, claiming that it has already addressed the seven requests outlined in the petition. 

Ritschard wrote in his email this week that Middle Park producers “do not feel that these deficiencies to the program have been cured.”

He added that while programs addressing the seven requests are in process, “they are not in place and cannot be in place before calving season.”

“We feel the process within the agency continues to not recognize what is happening on the ground,” stated Ritschard. “Not having all of the program’s elements in place before wolves are introduced is not only unfair to the wolves and livestock producers, but has significant state budgetary consequences.”

Ritschard told the Post Independent that he expects the claims to continue stacking up until all programs are in place.

“This is a whole new world for us here in Colorado,” he said. “Other states have been dealing with wolves for far longer than us and they have costs and expenses that still stack up to producers so this will never go away.”

Could Colorado cut funds for wolves? 

In the past four years since voters passed the ballot measure to bring wolves back to Colorado, the state has spent around $5 million enacting the initiative. However, as Colorado looks for ways to cut around $1 billion from its budget, the Joint Budget Committee has questioned whether the wolf program is one place it could save money.

A Nov. 21 analysis from the Joint Budget Committee staff suggested that reducing the general fund allocation for wolf reintroduction — currently set at $2.1 million annually — as well as making cuts to the Wolf Depredation Compensation Fund could be appropriate.  

The analysis suggests reducing the allocation from $350,000 to $175,000 for the upcoming year since the fund has not been fully utilized. In 2023-24, Parks and Wildlife received three claims for a total of $3,203 out of 12 total incidents reported. If costs are similar in the upcoming year, the analysis claims that the “fund is unlikely to utilize the full appropriation.” 

On the flip side, it noted that if claims were spent to the maximum compensation — $15,000 per animal — the fund would be unlikely to cover these costs. 

At a hearing with the committee on Dec. 11, Parks and Wildlife Director Jeff Davis told the commission that the agency would have a better sense “in the next month as those claims come in what those costs are looking like” including indirect losses due to the presence of wolves on the landscape.

Compensation options for producers in Colorado

Once Parks and Wildlife confirms a wolf depredation on a ranch, state statute holds that the producer can be reimbursed for the fair market value — based on animal age, weight and type — up to $15,000 per animal. Additional reimbursements up to $15,000 per animal may be paid for veterinarian costs. 

At ranches where cattle or sheep graze in large, open-range settings and locating carcasses is difficult due to the geography, the statute offers ratios to compensate producers for missing livestock as well as indirect losses such as decreasing weaning weights, decreased conception rates and more. There still must be a confirmed depredation for producers to be eligible for this compensation. 

Producers can be eligible for higher compensation ratios based on whether conflict minimization techniques were deployed. For itemized losses — which includes the indirect losses — producers are required to provide Parks and Wildlife with three years of records proving the losses increased with the added pressure of having wolves on the range. 

Claims under $5,000 can be approved by Parks and Wildlife area wildlife managers. Anything between $5,000 and $20,000 can be approved by a regional manager. However, any claims exceeding $20,000, that the agency recommends for payment, must be approved by the commission.