Two collared grey wolves have died in Colorado since Memorial Day weekend, including one in the Roaring Fork Valley. The male yearling, identified as #2405, was part of the Copper Creek pack. Another wolf, #2407, died on May 31 in the northwest corner of the state. No necropsy has been released.
Wolf #2405 had four siblings who were captured last summer in Grand County along with the adults. One pup was missed during capture so does not have a collar and may still be alive. The sire died from injuries unrelated to capture, said Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW). A necropsy showed a gunshot wound to his right hind leg. The mother and four pups were kept in captivity until January when they were released into Pitkin County.
CPW “lethally removed” wolf #2405 on May 29 due to suspected cattle predation. According to a CPW press release, one calf was injured on May 17, one died on May 23, another died and one was injured on May 24, and a cow and calf were injured on May 25. Wolf collar data indicated a wolf from the Copper Creek Pack was in the area during all events.
The Colorado Cattlemen’s Association (CCA) said the animals were attacked at the Crystal River Ranch south of Carbondale and the Lost Marbles Ranch and McCabe Ranch in Old Snowmass. Tom Harrington, CCA president, manages the Crystal River Ranch. He told The Sopris Sun that he was alerted on Thursday, May 22, that a range rider was dispatched to the ranch’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) allotment. This usually means a wolf is in the area, but Harrington had received no wolf alerts from CPW. “I didn’t know anything was in the area,” he said. Harrington said the wolf had come over the Crown from Capitol Creek where the pack was released last winter.
But, due to the way CPW collects data from wolf collars, Harrington got the news too late to save a calf. Collars record a wolf’s position every four hours. Once four locations are recorded, data is transmitted to CPW. “So, at best, it’s four hours old and some of it is 16 hours old,” explained Harrington, who said the local wildlife manager did not get anything until Friday morning.
“He had no way of knowing because he couldn’t access the data. It didn’t download to him,” explained Harrington. He added that it’s a weak point in CPW’s system. “We have the luxury of these collars and the ability to at least have some information but it’s not working for everybody. Even when it does, depending on the area, they don’t share it well,” he said. He added that the range rider did not have the correct location or contact information.
So, Harrington gets the data Friday morning and sends the ranch foreman to check the herd on the south side of the ranch next to the BLM allotment. “I had 200 cows over there with the babies. We check it every day because it’s a water system that we have to monitor daily,” he explained. “I said, ‘Get over there now and just see if there’s anything unusual.’ And sure enough, he called me back in 10 minutes and said, ‘I found a dead calf right next to a water tank.’”
Harrington said he doesn’t applaud the death of #2405 but he said it’s appropriate based on chronic depredation, which CPW defines as three events caused by the same wolf or wolves within 30 days. He added that things could be better. “I believe that if we had taken a pause last year to be better prepared, have the non-lethal [co-existence methods] in place, better communication from the very top of the administration all the way down, that perhaps we wouldn’t have had dead livestock and now a dead wolf,” he said.
Delia Malone, local ecologist and board president of conservation nonprofit Colorado Wild, agrees. “It was a needless combination of mistakes primarily due to the lack of CPW communicating with the ranching community,” she said. “This was not the wolf’s fault. This wolf pack was set up for failure and this was a needless loss of livestock.”
Malone added that her goal is to improve communication between wolf advocates and livestock producers. “CPW has communicated with ranchers. CPW has communicated with advocates. There’s like these two separate groups and it’s not working,” she said. “We need to come up with a strategy that works for everybody and that’s what I hope will come out of this.”