On Monday, Dec. 18, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) released five gray wolves from Oregon onto public land in Grand County.
It was a historic moment, putting into motion a ballot measure that voters in the Centennial State decided on back in 2020, with a narrow margin. Much support came from voters on the Front Range, but the wolves were reintroduced here on the Western Slope. Colorado now joins the ranks of several other states inhabited by wild wolves, including Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, California, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
“Although Colorado has a larger population than most states where gray wolves are already established, the population density on our Western Slope is quite comparable to the population densities of those states,” said Tom Delehanty, senior associate attorney at EarthJustice. “There’s a vast amount of space for wolves to be able to occupy and use.”
Governor Jared Polis joined roughly 45 other onlookers escorted by CPW officers at the release. “There is great respect for these animals,” stated Polis. “They have larger-than-life places in human imagination, in the stories we all grew up with and tell each other. Wolves are an iconic and legendary animal, and to know they are part of the Colorado landscape that has been an important part of their history and our history, it’s truly an important first.”
Of the five wolves released, there were two pairs of year-old, opposite-sex siblings, and a 2-year-old male. The wolves are the size of very large dogs, the largest male weighing 93 pounds.
Joanna Lambert, a professor of wildlife ecology and conservation biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, said that seeing the wolves gallop into the woods took her breath away. For years, Lambert and other wolf reintroduction advocates have been fighting to get “wolf paws on the ground,” and she felt herself gasp when “all the sudden, it happened.”
“This is a moment of rewilding,” she said, “of doing something to stave off the biodiversity extinction crisis we are living in … to make a difference in this era of extinction. And moreover, this is a source of hope not only for all of us standing here but for our younger generations as well.”
Colorado’s wolf reintroduction program will be carried out in phases, with a handful of wolves being released in different regions throughout the Western Slope. Because CPW could potentially use the same location in Grand County for another release, it is to remain undisclosed to the public at this time. And, not without reason. Although gray wolf reintroduction was largely popular among voters in urban parts of the state, many Coloradans fought to prevent it from happening.
On Dec. 15, only three days before the release, U.S. District Court Judge Regina Rodriguez rejected a recent attempt by ranchers to block wolf reintroduction in Colorado. Attorneys for the Gunnison County Stockgrowers’ Association and Colorado Cattlemen’s Association argued that the reintroduction of wolves would significantly disrupt the livestock communities and those that depend on them. They also claimed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to adequately review Colorado’s plan to release up to 50 wolves onto public and private land over the next several years.
“The ruling on Friday was a huge win for Coloradans, for the democratic will of our voters, and for the wolves,” responded Delaney Rudy, Colorado director of the Western Watersheds Project. “A big part of the reason the court was able to strike down the lawsuit so unilaterally is the livestock industry, and the interests of ranchers, have been taken into consideration and represented throughout the course of developing the reintroduction plan for Colorado. Everyone who has a vested interest in this issue has had a seat at the table, including hunters.”
Gray wolves are listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act, a large reason proponents advocated for reintroduction in 2020. The correlation may not have been planned, but Dec. 28, 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act.