Colorado Parks and Wildlife goes international to get more wolves
Sep 13, 2024
from The Gazette
Photo from Colorado Parks & Wildlife
With no state in the West willing to allow Colorado access to wolves, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has now gone international.
CPW announced Friday the next set of wolves to be brought to the state will come from British Columbia. At the same time, Middle Park Stockgrowers are asking that CPW be more cautious in where it releases the next pack of wolves.
The agreement is with the British Columbia Ministry of Water, Lands and Resource Stewardship.
According to the announcement from CPW, the Canadian province will be a source for up to 15 wolves for the Colorado gray wolf reintroduction effort for this upcoming winter. These wolves will be captured and translocated between December and March.
“We are grateful to the B.C. Ministry of Water, Lands and Resource Stewardship for working with our agency on this critical next step in reintroducing gray wolves in the state,” said CPW Director Jeff Davis.
“Their willingness and ability to work with another jurisdiction to support our conservation priorities, as they have in past translocation efforts, demonstrates their long-shared commitment to seeing this species succeed.”
Just as last year in Oregon, CPW will be responsible for costs associated with capturing and transporting wolves, although CPW did not reveal in its recent first report how much it spent to transport the wolves from Oregon to Colorado.
“We learned a great deal from last year’s successful capture and transport efforts and will apply those lessons this year as we work to establish a self-sustaining wolf population in Colorado,” said CPW Wolf Conservation Program Manager Eric Odell.
The statement did not include lessons learned from the communication failures that occurred during the wolf release.
British Columbia has been “culling” its wolf population since 2015, due to “damage and disruption to caribou habitat [that has] resulted in population declines, most notably in woodland caribou,” according to the B.C. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. That has included lethal management. Several sources said more than 2,200 wolves have been killed by the B.C. government since 2015; as many as 8,000 have been killed by the government and hunters.
Wolves in British Columbia are also a risk to moose, according to the B.C. government.
CPW said it would not translocate wolves that are from packs that are involved in situations of repeated livestock depredations. The agency made that same promise last year, but many of the Oregon wolves brought to Colorado had come from packs with chronic depredation histories. Those relocated wolves were responsible for the killings of dozens of sheep, cattle and working dogs, primarily in Grand County.
“We are looking forward to working with B.C. and bringing together our combined experience and expertise in an effort that’s a win for both agencies,” Odell said.
“Gray wolves from the Canadian Rockies were used for reintroduction in Idaho and Yellowstone. There are no biological differences between wolves in British Columbia and the wolves released in Colorado last year, and the new source population will provide additional genetic diversity to our state’s small but growing wolf population.”
Defenders of Wildlife cheered the news. “Today’s announcement is a timely reaffirmation of CPW’s commitment to wolf recovery,” said Michael Saul, the organization’s Rockies and Plains program director.
“To help ensure these wolves have the best chance at successful reintroduction, CPW must act on lessons learned from this year, specifically, prioritizing rules requiring all agency-recommended nonlethal conflict measures be exhausted before considering any lethal removal or relocation of wolves.”
CPW has struggled to find states that would allow their wolves to come to Colorado. Last year, the agency was turned down by Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. The Colville Tribes of Washington state had agreed to allow wolves on their lands to come to Colorado at the end of this year, but that agreement was rescinded because of poor communication between CPW and the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes, who do not want gray wolves on their lands.
Also Friday, Middle Park Stockgrowers thanked CPW for removing six wolves believed to be responsible for killing livestock in Grand County. The six, a mating pair and four pups, were captured in late August and early September. The male of the pair died several days later from injuries unrelated to the capture.
CPW has stated it intends to release the next group of wolves in Colorado’s Northern Zone, the same location it released wolves last December.
“We have learned from experienced professionals familiar with wolf behavior and movement that wolves follow the same trails for extended periods of time,” the letter stated.
“We have been advised that it is likely — if not certain — that future wolves will follow the trails of the Copper Creek pack and reestablish themselves in the Williams Fork Valley in a matter of two to three years.”
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