A gray wolf pack has settled in Eagle County, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), but five wolf deaths have also occurred since January.
CPW announced on July 22 that pups born this spring in Eagle County are part of the Piney Ridge Pack — the fifth pack to form since wolf reintroduction began in December 2023. Two days later, the agency announced the death of an uncollared grey wolf in the northwest part of the state, which is still under investigation.
CPW’s third annual report published in May shows an estimated 32 wolves in the state. CPW Statewide Public Information Officer Luke Perkins said in an email this total does not include the Piney Ridge pups or two recent deaths, including the yearling male from the Copper Creek Pack, killed in June in Routt County by wildlife officials and another lethal removal of a yearling from the One Ear Pack in Grand County on Aug. 4. Both were killed under CPW’s definition of chronic depredation.
The 2026 deaths began with the January death of female wolf 2504 in northwest Colorado. She was one of 15 wolves imported from British Columbia in 2025. In a recent statement, CPW said that the collared wolf was accidentally shot by a “licensed hunter who mistook it for a coyote.” The Sopris Sun filed a formal records request on Aug. 11 through the Colorado Open Records Act for the completed report, which CPW has not yet provided.
Perkins said that the unidentified hunter responsible for 2504’s death was cited for violation of state regulation 2 CCR 406-0-#002-A, which prevents the take of an animal without the corresponding license. This hunter did not have the authority to kill a state and federally endangered grey wolf.
His penalty includes a citation and surcharge fee of $139.50 and five points against his hunting license. Twenty points accumulated within five years can lead to a license suspension hearing.
But, the $139.50 penalty has further divided an already polarized field of stakeholders. The Colorado Sun reports that killing an endangered species carries a fine of up to $100,000, up to a year in jail and a potential loss of hunting and fishing privileges.
Wildlife advocate Darlene Kobobel, founder of the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center and former Strategic Advisory Group member who helped shape CPW’s Wolf Restoration and Management Plan, is concerned that such a light penalty for killing an endangered species could set a bad precedent. “The penalty for what happened was so minor, it’s actually embarrassing,” she said. “People should be outraged about that because all that is doing is giving others out there a green light to say, ‘Officer, I thought it was a coyote’.”
Posts on the Colorado Wolf Tracker Facebook page on Aug. 17 reflected Kobobel’s concern. “Take notes, folks. Remember ‘I thought it was a coyote, officer.’ Bank that one,” wrote group member Rob Smith. “The info I looked up says the man won’t be charged criminally because it was an accident.” William Crutchley commented, “[J]ust a $150 tag. lol.” Shane Long posted, “I bet we could get $1960 pretty easily to take care of the other 14!” The posts were no longer visible on Aug. 18.
Kobobel mentioned the McKittrick Rule, a loophole in prosecuting criminals, so-called mistaken identity cases, which requires federal agencies to show proof of a hunter’s intention to kill an endangered species. It was overturned in 2017 but reinstated the following year. “It started by someone saying exactly that, ‘Oh, I thought it was a coyote’ and getting off by that in the courts,” Kobobel explained. She said three wolves have been illegally killed in Colorado so far. “My fear is it’s already a pattern that’s happening,” she said. “If we keep going the way that we are, and now that this has happened, it’s Pandora’s box that’s just opened.”
In the case of wolf 2504, CPW Chief of Law Enforcement and Assistant Director of Field Services Ty Petersburg said, “Through CPW’s thorough investigative process we recognized that the hunter made the ethical choice to immediately report the incident and take responsibility for the accident.”
Western Watersheds Project (WWP), a public lands watchdog group, is concerned that coyote hunting in Colorado is dangerous for wolves. “This may be just a tragic case of misidentification, but it shows how the huge regulatory gap around coyote killing results in the death of endangered wolves,” Delaney Rudy, WWP Colorado director, said in a statement. “The permissive rules for killing coyotes are a serious threat to Colorado’s wolf program and to the recovery of the endangered gray wolf nationwide.”
Perkins told The Sopris Sun in an email that 2504 “died of an accidental gunshot wound. There were no leg-hold or foot-hold traps nor [sic] other snares involved in this incident.” But at least two wolves in Colorado — one collared in 2025 and a naturally dispersed wolf in 2024 — have been caught in leghold traps since reintroduction began.
Samantha Miller, senior carnivore campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), said,“In the wake of this tragic shooting it’s clear that Colorado’s wolves need stronger safeguards, especially from coyote hunting and trapping.“
Miller has submitted a rulemaking petition to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission that would put backstops on chronic wolf depredation removals and make the issue consistent and transparent. “Right now, [CPW] manages wolves by region, and each regional director is able to define whether or not they want to investigate things or define how those investigations occur,” she said. “There really is a better way to do that where we’re more transparent with the public, where we’re documenting those kinds of wolf deaths.”
More information about wolves in Colorado is available at cpw.state.co.us