Rocky Mountain News

Wolves set to huff, puff, blow into state

And any objections may go tumbling like a house of straw

By Gary Gerhardt, Rocky Mountain News January 2, 2004

To the north, to the west and to the south, wolves are at Colorado's door.

No one knows exactly when they'll return to the state, but most experts expect they will be back within the next five to 10 years.

Wolves could return to Colorado from any of three sources:

* Wyoming: State Game and Fish Department officials received a report last year of a wolf sighting near Baggs, Wyo., just across the state line, 40 miles north of Craig.

It was either a wolf-dog crossbred pet dumped in the area, officials believe, or a lone wolf coming south from one of the packs established in Yellowstone National Park.

In November 2002, a wolf wearing a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service collar was captured in a coyote trap near Ogden, Utah. It was returned to Wyoming.

* New Mexico: The Mexican wolf project in Arizona and New Mexico may be expanded and wolves placed on media mogul Ted Turner's Vermejo Ranch on the Colorado border. Wolves from there could easily move into southern Colorado. Last year, state Wildlife Commissioner Ken Torres saw an animal he believes was a Mexican wolf near his ranch west of Trinidad.

* The federal government: The recovery plan for Mexican wolves could deem it necessary to reintroduce wolves directly into Colorado, probably in the Weminuche Wilderness Area in southwestern Colorado.

If federal wildlife authorities decide Colorado should be included in an expanded effort to bring back Mexican wolves, it could happen over objections from the state because the Endangered Species Act takes precedence over state law.

When wolves were reintroduced in Idaho and Yellowstone, it was done over the states' objections.

Breeding lobo

The highly endangered Mexican wolf, known in Spanish as lobo, is a subspecies of the northern gray wolf and has been released since 1998 in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in eastern Arizona.

The wolves are crossing into the Gila National Forest of New Mexico, which is considered part of the recovery area.

Since the Mexican wolf-breeding program started, 74 zoo- and privately reared Mexican wolves, including some from the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, have been released in the wild.

Of them, 16 were shot to death, one was run over by a vehicle and some that were too close to cattle were recaptured. Today, there are 34 wolves known to be left in the wild, along with up to 40 pups that were born in the wild, although not all have survived.

Historically, there were wolves in every county in Colorado.

But as livestock moved into the area, conflicts arose immediately and, in 1876, the Colorado territorial government passed the first bounty on wolves. Scalp and ears brought 50 cents. In 1881, the bounty was raised to $1.50.

By the mid-1930s, ranchers, hunters and government trappers had killed all of them.

Whether the Mexican wolf made it into Colorado is open to speculation because a "wolf was a wolf" to those who shot and trapped them, and they never differentiated between species.

While the state is on record as opposing any wolf reintroduction, the Colorado Division of Wildlife is forming a team to draw up plans on how it would react to a reintroduction of the animals.

"The question of when wolves are going to get here is just speculation on everyone's part," said Gary Skieba, endangered-species coordinator for the Colorado Division of Wildlife. "Some believe it will be within five years, others 10. Who knows if they ever will come?"

'Maintain a population'

Right now, if a wolf or two wandered in from established packs to the north or south, they would be little more than a curiosity, Skieba said.

"Right now, it still would be under the control of the Fish and Wildlife Service, and we aren't going to assign a person to keeping track of their wolf," he said.

"We'd leave it alone, as long as it didn't get into trouble, and if it did, we'd ask the feds to remove it.

"If it turned out that the plan called for wolves in Colorado, that would be interesting. As far as I know, there never were Mexican wolves in Colorado."

Whether it does or not, the state Division of Wildlife is planning to have a working group to develop a draft plan.

"The working group will be appointed in March and start meeting in April," Skieba said.

"The heart of the plan will allow wolves to be in Colorado at a level so we can maintain a population," he said.

Another reason for the management plan is that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is in the process of delisting wolves north of Interstate 70 (called the Western Distinct Population Segment). They are currently a threatened species there.

Wolves south of I-70 in the Southwestern Distinct Population Segment are fully endangered and must be treated as such.

Once delisting in the western segment is completed, each state where wolves appear must have a management plan in place because the wolves will be the responsibility of individual state wildlife agencies.

Once delisted, if a wolf is found in Colorado north of I-70, the state would have the right to shoot it on sight, simply keep tabs on it and allow it to stay, or even place more wolves in the area where it is found.

Skieba said the state hopes to have the draft management plan finished by August and an actual plan in place by the end of the year.

State reintroduction "It is within the realm of possibility that the state may do a reintroduction of wolves the same as with lynx," said Rob Edward, director of carnivore restoration for Sinapu, a Boulder-based conservation group that favors the return of the wolf to Colorado.

"They could decide to go ahead with their own reintroduction program because there is a big opportunity to bring back wolves on the part of the feds and the state," he said.

"At the federal level, the work that is under way to develop a recovery plan for the Southwestern Distinct Population Segment presents a significant possibility because so much of the southern Rockies fall within that segment, including southern Utah, southern Colorado, parts of Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona."

He sees a problem, however, in the Mexican wolf stakeholder committee that he says is weighted in favor of the livestock industry. There are three conservation groups out of 24 members, and most of the rest are from agricultural concerns.

That doesn't bother another committee member, Tom Compton, former president of the Colorado Cattlemen's Association and a rancher near Durango.

"It's an ongoing process that will take in the neighborhood of a year, and if you're asking will they introduce more Mexican wolves in the area, then the answer is probably definitely."

He said the Cattlemen's Association remains opposed, but members see the handwriting on the wall and are anxious to try to get a few concessions for livestock interests.

"I'm interested in two things, mainly. One is to get them to designate the Mexican wolf population as an experimental, nonessential population to make it easier for ranchers to manage them," Compton said.

Under such a designation, ranchers could shoot wolves in certain circumstances if they were preying on livestock.

"Secondly, I'd like a better compensation program," he said.

Currently, the Defenders of Wildlife pay ranchers fair market value for any animal killed by wolves.

A poll conducted for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2001 indicated 66 percent of Coloradans, Arizonans and New Mexicans favor the return of wolves to the wild.

Compton believes if two-thirds of the states' residents want wolves, then the same number should be willing to pay for compensation for livestock that is killed by them.

But Edward feels the Defenders of Wildlife compensation plan to pay ranchers for livestock losses to wolves is adequate.

"Also, the state already compensates for elk, bears and lions, so they could add wolves," he said.

Edward said that the complaints by ranchers about wolf depredation is more of a cultural battle and no compensation program would be enough to get some members of the livestock industry to accept wolves in their midst.

gerhardtg@RockyMountainNews.com  or 303-892-5202

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