Garfield County Residents Resist Wolf Reintroduction Plans

“Gov. (Jared) Polis, voters from the Eastern Slope, urban voters, even Pitkin County, we don’t want your stinking wolves in Garfield County,” Garfield County Commissioner Tom Jankovsky said at a heavily attended meeting hosted in New Castle on Tuesday night by the county and Parks and Wildlife.

One year ago this week, Parks and Wildlife began the release of what ended up being 10 wolves from Oregon at sites in Summit and Grand counties, as the agency began a wolf restoration project required by a 2020 ballot measure narrowly approved by state voters.

The measure was approved mostly in Front Range counties, and in only a small number of Western Slope counties, including Pitkin County. This year, Parks and Wildlife dealt with issues of wolf attacks on livestock in Grand County that ended up causing it to remove a male and female wolf and four pups they had produced. The male died after capture of pre-existing injuries.

Parks and Wildlife has been holding the mother and pups and plans to release them this winter, after the pups have grown more. It also plans to obtain up to 15 wolves from British Columbia and release them this winter.

It is currently considering Eagle, Pitkin and eastern Garfield counties as possible release locations.

“There’s a lot of people in this room whose livelihood could be affected by these animals,” Adam Wells, who works for a ranch north of Rifle, told Parks and Wildlife officials at this week’s meeting.

He noted that voters in Garfield and Eagle counties voted against the 2020 wolf measure, and Pitkin County voted in favor of it.

“So as you’re looking at potential release sites, how much of this is being looked at so we put these wolves where there’s more of a higher social acceptance, where the economy isn’t being as adversely affected?” he asked.

LIMITED RELEASE AREAS

Travis Black, Parks and Wildlife’s northwest regional manager, noted that Pitkin County has little in the way of state lands where a release can occur. Parks and Wildlife can’t release wolves on federal land because that would require going through a costly and time-consuming National Environmental Policy Act process. The agency wanted to avoid that to meet the 2020 measure’s deadline of the end of last year for beginning reintroduction. So the state’s options for releases are state lands, or private lands with property owner permission, which can be hard to get.

The limited state land in Pitkin County “wouldn’t be an issue if the state wouldn’t have flouted the NEPA process,” Chance Jenkins, president of the Holy Cross Cattlemen’s Association, told Parks and Wildlife officials.

He noted that Pitkin County has a lot of national forest land where wolves could be released if Parks and Wildlife went through that process.

State lawmakers last year passed a bill that would have required Parks and Wildlife to go through the NEPA process, but Polis vetoed it, noted state Sen. Perry Will, R-New Castle, who sponsored that bill.

“As far as I’m concerned the governor gave the middle finger to the Western Slope of Colorado by doing that,” he said.

Will, a former state game officer who was elected in November to serve as a Garfield County commissioner, said that if wolves are released in the county, “In my opinion the train wreck that happened in Grand County, it will be worse in Garfield County.”

WOLVES WILL ROAM

Matt Yamashita, Parks and Wildlife manager for Area 8, which includes the Roaring Fork Valley, suggested that people in Garfield County need to prepare for the arrival of wolves even if wolves aren’t released in the county.

“You can kick them free in Pitkin County. It doesn’t mean they’re going to stay in Pitkin County. … They’re going to go where they go,” he said.

Wolves released last year already have occasionally visited Garfield County.

Black said Parks and Wildlife hasn’t made final determinations regarding where wolves will be released next. He said the options are “few and far between,” and the final decision could come as late as the night before release thanks to factors such as whether snowfall prevents access to an intended release site.

“We’re trying to identify all the possibilities up front and then play the hand we’re dealt on that particular day to determine where we’re going to put wolves,” he said.

Elected officials including Garfield commissioners; Will; state Rep. Marc Catlin, a Montrose Republican and a state senator-elect; and U.S. Rep.-elect Jeff Hurd, R-Grand Junction, all spoke Tuesday in support of the idea of pausing further wolf reintroduction. Some livestock associations have petitioned the Parks and Wildlife Commission to do that while more measures are taken to better address the issue of wolf attacks on livestock.

“I will tell you that it’s not only appropriate in my view to pause this continued reintroduction of wolves but it’s necessary,” Hurd said to applause from the audience.

Parks and Wildlife hopes to release 30 to 50 wolves into the state over several years. Besides the father wolf that died, another of the 10 released Oregon wolves died of a mountain lion attack and a third died of apparent injuries from a fight with another wolf.

Parks and Wildlife says bringing more wolves into the state increases the likelihood of wolves pairing, breeding and forming packs. This will result in more consistent wolf territories that the agency says will improve its ability to monitor wolf patterns and collaborate with ranchers on measures to best protect livestock.

This week, several conservation groups wrote to the Parks and Wildlife Commission asking that the petition to delay reintroduction be rejected. They noted that the agency already is taking steps requested by livestock groups, such as incorporating the use of range riders to protect herds and doing site assessments at ranches to help in determining appropriate wolf-deterrence measures. The conservation groups also argue that a delay would violate the state wolf-reintroduction law approved by voters and the state’s reintroduction plan.

“Industry bullies are trying to undermine the will of voters who want a thriving wolf population in Colorado’s wild areas,” Alli Henderson with the Center for Biological Diversity said in a news release. “The historic work of last year’s reintroduction will be wasted unless the state proceeds with the next wolf releases as planned. We’ll do everything possible to support Colorado’s plans to return wolves to their rightful home range.”