Colorado voters order wolf reintroduction

Canis lupus – image courtesy Wikimedia

Voters in Colorado have enacted by initiative a statute that requires gray wolves to be re-introduced to the state by 2023. According to results available at the website of secretary of state Jena Griswold, Proposition 114 passed with 50.64% of the vote.

Wolves will be reintroduced only to the Western Slope. The initiative includes a mandate to compensate ranchers who lose livestock to Canis lupus predation. In addition, the voter-enacted law requires the state parks and wildlife commission to use “the best scientific data available” to develop the reintroduction plan, hold hearings around the state to gather information to be considered in making the plan, and help ranchers to prevent wolf-livestock interactions.

The particular areas on the Western Slope that will again be populated by Canis lupus is left to the commission to determine. Prior to 1940 the animal ranged not only west of the Rockies, but across the state. In more recent years there have been wolf sightings in western Colorado, including a wolf pack.

Despite being added to the U.S. list of endangered and threatened species in 1974, and although gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in January 1995, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service never moved to return the species to Colorado.

The Trump regime eliminated Endangered Species Act protections for the gray wolf on Oct. 29, 2020.

The state parks and wildlife commission rejected a 2016 proposal to reintroduce wolves. Colorado has, however, re-introduced several other species: turkeys during the 1980s, lynx in 1999, and bison in 2015, for example.

Colorado predator control decision sparks controversy

This undated photo shows a mountain lion resting in a tree somewhere in Colorado. Image courtesy Colorado Parks & Wildlife.

The  Colorado commission responsible for management of wildlife decided Dec. 14 to approve a program demanding that up to 15 more mountain lions and 25 more black bears be killed every year.

Individual animals will first be captured by U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services employees with cage traps, culvert traps, foot snares, and hunting dogs. They will then be shot.

Killings will largely occur in the Arkansas River and Piceance basins.

The predator control plan is intended to prop up the number of mule deer available for hunters to target. At present the population of mule deer is at about 80 percent of that considered desirable by Colorado wildlife officials.

Mule deer have been declining throughout the west since the 1980s.

Loss of habitat to livestock grazing, expansion of human development in rural areas, and the impacts of oil and gas exploration are considered to have a greater impact on the number of mule deer in the state than does the population of mountain lions and black bears.

CPW has not denied that these factors may have far more to do with mule deer declines than predator populations.

“We acknowledge that any and all those things can have an effect on mule deer,” Jeff Ver Steeg, the agency’s assistant director for research, policy, and planning, told commissioners at the Dec. 14 meeting.

Conservationists and scientists have sharply criticized the decision by the Colorado Parks & Wildlife Commission.

Aubyn Royball, Colorado state director for the Humane Society of the United States, told commissioners that their decision would cause the inevitable death of numerous cubs and kittens.

In a letter dated Nov. 30, 21 biologists accused the commission of considering a program that lacks validity as an effort to understand the relationship between predators and prey species and that violates the state’s legal requirement to manage wildlife as a public trust.

Colorado Parks & Wildlife, the agency under the commission’s oversight, relies heavily on the sale of hunting and fishing licenses for revenue. The agency relies on that source of funds for about 90 percent of its revenue.

CPW’s total budget in fiscal year 2015 was about $213 million. The agency has experienced a cut of about $50 million since 2009.

The experimental predator control program approved Dec. 14 would cost taxpayers about $4.5 million over nine years.

CPW said in October that it expects a budget shortfall of between $15-23 million by 2023. It has proposed increasing hunting license fees.

Hunters kill more than 450 mountain lions and more than 1,350 black bears every year in Colorado.

CPW estimates that there are about 17,000 black bears and about 4,500 mountain lions in the state.