There are at least 10 hunters in Colorado this year that will not need tags to legally kill elk, deer or other ungulates.
Those hunters are not human. They are the gray wolves.
These predators are once again in Colorado after state voters approved a 2022 ballot measure to reintroduce the species to the Western Slope.
The approval of the ballot question, Proposition 114, prompted Colorado Parks and Wildlife to enter an agreement with the state of Oregon that saw wildlife agents there use a helicopter to dart and capture 10 wolves that were subsequently released in Summit County in December.
Largely supported by voters on the Front Range and championed by Gov. Jared Polis, the reintroduction effort gained momentum fueled by the perceived need to restore a natural balance to the ecosystem.
For the last million years, gray wolves have been on the North American continent, but only recently — over the last 80 to 100 years depending on where you are in the American West — those wolves have no longer been involved in food webs.
“The really important first place to begin when thinking about what happens when you put a species back into a system is to think about that system in deeper evolutionary time in the first place,” explained Joanna Lambert, a professor of animal ecology and conservation biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Despite the ecosystem argument, the reintroduction effort has never been popular with the ranching community in Routt County and has raised concerns for hunters on the Western Slope.
The ranchers’ concern was made abundantly clear when Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials held a February meeting in Steamboat with area livestock producers to listen to concerns and promote conflict-mitigation strategies recommended by the agency.
At the time, CPW had not received any livestock depredation reports involving livestock kills by the wolves transported from Oregon two months prior and CPW Wolf Conservation Program Manager Eric Odell said that was a good thing.
“We have not had any depredations on livestock in the last two-and-a-half months, since we did the reintroductions, and that is a bit of a surprise, and it is something we are pleased about. We are prepared for when that conflict happens, but not to have any in the first few months is great,” he said.
Odell’s “surprise” did not last long after the Steamboat meeting with CPW confirming the first livestock depredation April 2 by one or more gray wolves that killed a calf on a ranch in Grand County.
As of mid-July, there have been 10 confirmed incidents involving wolves attacking livestock in Colorado, resulting in the loss of 12 animals, according to CPW. The wildlife agency confirmed the first depredation in Routt County on June 19.
Odell said in February that CPW hoped elk, deer and moose would be the primary prey for wolves, but any impact on the local ungulate herds would likely need to be considered more closely should the state’s wolf population expand successfully.
The CPW official noted the agency’s set goals for a successful wolf reintroduction: If their number reaches 50, the state would down-list the endangered species to a “threatened” status. Should the numbers reach 200, the wolves would be downlisted to a “non-game status.”
Aside from the reported conflict with livestock depredations, Odell said the agency is “presuming they are preying on ungulates, which is great—that is what we want them to be doing.”
The ungulate statement has some hunters concerned over what the presence of wolves might mean for the future of their sport and local tourism in Northwest Colorado.
The current wolf population in Colorado represents a fraction of the continent’s entire population — there are an estimated 4,500 wolves in areas of the upper Midwest, along with roughly 2,500 in the northern Rockies.
The wolves released in December have tracking collars that record their position once every four hours. Two of those collars are no longer functioning, but those wolves are traveling with other collared wolves, according to CPW.
Using the collared data, CPW releases a map each month to chart the movement of the collared reintroduced predators.
The map, posted on the agency’s website, uses Colorado watershed boundaries to indicate where wolves have been detected. It is updated on the fourth Wednesday of every month.
In June, the tracked movement showed the wolves entering watersheds in northwestern Eagle County and southern Summit County near Copper Mountain. While the map from June showed wolves in central and western Routt County and central Grand County near Granby, the latest update doesn’t show them in those areas anymore.
Of the 10 that were reintroduced to the Western Slope in December, CPW has reported the death of a lone wolf in what the agency said was the result of a mountain lion attack that occurred in Larimer County in April.
But after the loss of the animal, the population quickly rebounded when the state wildlife agency confirmed the birth of a wolf pup in June.
When the impact of the wolf reintroduction on the hunting community might take shape remains unclear and is largely contingent on how the size of the wolf population in Colorado grows in the coming months and years.
“If it gets to the point where there are major impacts (on the elk), we will look at that through our license-setting process throughout the game seasons — whether it comes to that remains to be seen,” Odell said. “It is something we are aware of, but it will be a while before we see any impact.”