‘I’m concerned about the secrecy:’ As more wolves come to Colorado, Western Slope lawmakers react with trepidation
Legislators say they still have questions for Colorado Parks and Wildlife around transparency and preparedness with second wolf drop underway
As Colorado Parks and Wildlife carries out its second gray wolf release in just over a year, Western Slope lawmakers continue to raise concerns with the agency around transparency and preparedness.
The episode is the latest in the state’s contentious wolf reintroduction saga as Parks and Wildlife implements a voter-approved mandate that was widely opposed by the Western Slope communities where wolves are now being dropped.
Last weekend, Parks and Wildlife announced that an operation to capture and bring up to 15 wolves from Canada had begun on Friday, Jan. 10, and could last up to two weeks. The agency hasn’t disclosed the timing or locations of the wolf releases but officials had been eyeing drops in Eagle, Pitkin and Garfield counties where unverified claims of wolf sightings are now spreading.
Sen. Dylan Roberts (D-Frisco) said it remains to be seen how much Parks and Wildlife has prepared communities for the second round. Roberts represents broad swaths of the central and northern mountain region where much of the wolf activity has been concentrated since the first wolf release in December 2023.
“Did enough site assessments get done in the areas where wolves are being dropped? Are the nearby ranchers in this new part of the state prepared with conflict minimization resources, and tools and training?” Roberts said.
Ranchers in Grand County have filed for more than half a million dollars in damages from the state for reported incidents of wolf attacks on livestock over the last year, exceeding the $475,000 allocated to the state’s Wolf Depredation Compensation Fund.
“My constituents in Grand County and Jackson County have seen what happens when there are not enough resources on the ground and you have wolves that are depredating livestock,” Roberts continued. “Now that a new round of wolves are going to a different part of the Western Slope, have they done the things to make sure that what happened in Grand County doesn’t happen again?”
During a joint hearing with the House and Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources committees at the Capitol on Wednesday, Colorado Parks and Wildlife Deputy Director Reid DeWalt said local landowners have been notified about the wolves but did not comment on whether specific site assessments with ranchers had been done ahead of the release.
“That’s all relative to what ‘local’ is,” DeWalt said. “We heard last year that landowners as far as 60, 80 miles away wanted to be notified. We’re not doing that level of notification, we’re doing it on a broader scale.”
DeWalt also pledged to implement a list of action items demanded by ranchers to protect against future wolf attacks. The Parks and Wildlife Commission recently rejected a petition from ranchers that sought to halt the future release of wolves until their requests were met.
That includes having range riders fully deployed to patrol livestock areas, standardizing and growing the agency’s site assessment program and releasing best practices for carcass management. The agency claims to have addressed or be in the process of addressing all the action items including releasing its definition of chronic depredation and lethal wolf management rules in December.
Lawmakers, following Wednesday’s committee hearing, acknowledged work has been done by the agency to reach those goals but said they feel those provisions should have already been in place before the second drop.
“Many of us on the committee feel that there are still unanswered questions,” said Rep. Meghan Lukens (D-Steamboat Springs), whose district also includes parts of Eagle County.
“The programs are still in the works and while (Parks and Wildlife) has made great efforts to improve upon some of the missteps and mishaps from the first introduction, we on the Western Slope still feel unprepared for more wolves,” Lukens said.
Sen. Marc Catlin (R-Montrose) called for more transparency from the agency on exactly where wolves have been released and where they are going.
He and other Western Slope lawmakers received a call from Parks and Wildlife on Saturday in which they learned the operation was already underway. The call came roughly an hour before the agency said so in a public news release.
“I’m concerned about the secrecy — people need to know where they’re going to go,” Catlin said. “… we’re getting to the point where it’s hard for people who are my constituents to trust (Parks and Wildlife). And we need to be able to trust the state.”
Rep. Elizabeth Velasco (D-Glenwood Springs) echoed those concerns.
“Right now, I feel like I’m in the dark,” said Velasco, who represents parts of Pitkin and Garfield counties. “I don’t know how to support my community, I don’t know where to go for answers.”
Velasco said she was not invited to public meetings Parks and Wildlife had in her counties in the lead-up to the second wolf release and has asked for more communication going forward. Velasco said she’s hoping for a comprehensive debrief with officials once the current release operation concludes.
DeWalt stressed to lawmakers on the committee that the current wolf release has been difficult for the agency.
“The fact is we have been pretty heavily threatened during this operation, which is sad to say,” DeWalt said. “We’ve been followed during the operation, we have people staking out of offices, there’s been threats of violence on social media.”
Roberts said there is a need to balance transparency and safety.
“These (Parks and Wildlife) employees, the on-the-ground men and women, are just doing their job right now,” Roberts said. “So there is a logic in making sure that those sites are safe and secure so that people can execute their job without any sort of incident or confrontation.”
But the public has a right to know “as much as is reasonably possible because this is all being funded with taxpayer dollars and it’s being put in parts of the state where most people don’t want this to happen,” Roberts said.
Under the initiative approved by voters, Parks and Wildlife must continue to release wolves until the population is deemed self-sustaining. DeWalt said that could last up to five years, with around 10-15 wolves released each year.
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