The losses hold including up for Colorado’s controversial wolf reintroduction program. Greater than half of the 25 grey wolves which have been translocated into the state since 2023 have now died, and the discharge that was deliberate for this winter was canceled amid pushback from the federal government. Two high-ranking officers on the state company overseeing the wolf program have additionally left or announced plans to leave in latest months. In the meantime, the price of reintroduction has surged far past expectations, including much more stress to a statewide budget crisis.
As the trouble to revive wolves enters its third 12 months — throughout an election 12 months, no much less — and as Colorado wildlife managers confront a forced pause in placing paws on the bottom, it appears the voter-mandated reintroduction program is susceptible to unraveling.
“I believe our elected officers at the moment are in tune to the truth that it is a damaged program,” says Patrick Davis, a political guide and the director of Colorado Advocates for Smart Wolf Policy. “And that if we’re going to go ahead with this — whether or not it’s reintroducing new wolves or simply placing extra money into managing the wolves we now have — Colorado Parks and Wildlife must be extra clear about their administration techniques. As a result of what they’ve been doing has not been working.”
Davis says he and 1000’s of different Coloradans are staying engaged and pushing for an finish to the controversial program. (Perviously his group tried to end Colorado’s wolf reintroduction program the same way it began, with a poll initiative.) However with latest polls exhibiting that a majority of Colorado voters still support wolf reintroduction, it’s nonetheless a politically fraught challenge within the state legislature. In mild of all this, Davis believes that an prolonged (or indefinite) pause in this system may very well be one of the simplest ways for state wildlife managers to discover a manner ahead.
Meaning “not bringing any extra wolves in,” Davis says, “so we are able to higher handle the wolves we now have on the bottom, with fewer sources coming from our taxpayers.”
Colorado Parks and Wildlife continues to assist the voter-mandated wolf reintroduction plan. A CPW spokesperson tells Outside Life in an emailed assertion that whereas grey wolf survival charges are an vital indicator of this system’s success, the present mortality ranges we’re seeing are “not stunning.” They are saying that due to the targets specified by the state’s wolf plan — which requires 30 to 50 translocated wolves within the first three to 5 years — CPW “continues to discover choices for translocations” for subsequent winter.
Bleeding Employees, Ballooning Budgets
The most recent blow to Colorado’s wolf program got here in late March when Eric Odell, CPW’s wolf conservation program supervisor, introduced his retirement. Odell’s announcement got here simply 4 months after the forced resignation of CPW Director Jeff Davis, whose rocky tenure as chief of the company was roughly outlined by wolf reintroduction. (As Davis identified throughout a recent interview with Denver7, his second day on the job was the identical day the state’s wolf reintroduction plan was adopted.)
CPW confirmed Odell’s retirement plans in an emailed assertion and stated {that a} nationwide seek for his alternative is underway. Odell, who has been with the company for 26 years, will retire in June.
“Eric Odell has been a invaluable member of Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s group for greater than two-and-a-half many years and his retirement leaves massive sneakers to fill,” CPW director Laura Clellan, who changed Davis in December and was formally appointed in February, instructed Outside Life within the emailed assertion. “We’re grateful for the dedication, experience, and fervour that Eric has dropped at the various tasks and efforts he has been concerned with in his time at CPW and stay up for honoring his illustrious profession and celebrating this subsequent chapter of his life.”
The company notes that Odell was one of many company’s foremost carnivore consultants. And earlier than he acquired concerned with grey wolf reintroduction, his work was instrumental in conserving different native species, together with black-footed ferrets and lesser prairie chickens.
Like Davis, nevertheless, Odell has usually been criticized through the reintroduction course of by rural residents, and particularly livestock producers, who didn’t vote for wolves in 2020 however have principally borne the brunt of wolf reintroduction. Many ranchers blamed the 2 high-ranking officers for the company’s choice to relocate (and not kill) members of the depredating Copper Creek pack. That pack has been accountable for effectively over a dozen livestock deaths and accidents since they have been captured in Oregon and launched in Grand County in 2023. (The truth that these wolves have been identified to have killed cattle in Oregon earlier than they have been translocated into Colorado solely fueled this criticism.)
Together with these depredations, no less than 65 home animals have been killed by wolves in Colorado as of August 2025, in response to a research by the Common Sense Institute. This growing list contains principally cows and sheep, but in addition a number of working canine. And it’s the primary cause why Colorado’s wolf reintroduction has value thousands and thousands greater than what voters have been instructed to anticipate once they accepted reintroduction on the poll field in 2020.
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“The introduction program was initially projected to value about $800,000 per 12 months,” CSI factors out within the research. “As an alternative, it has consumed roughly $8 million in taxpayer funds [or an average of $2 million per year] since operations started in 2021 as bills for ‘battle administration’ and depredation reimbursements have surged.”
This included a staggering $3.5 million in authorities spending for fiscal 12 months 2024-2025. And CSI expects that if wolf reintroduction strikes ahead as deliberate, that quantity may develop tenfold by 2030.
The bloodshed from the state’s ongoing wolf reintroduction program cuts each methods, nevertheless. And contemplating the present survival charges of Colorado’s translocated wolves, it’s clear the predators are having a tricky time as effectively.
13 of the 25 Reintroduced Wolves Are Now Useless
CPW confirmed in its emailed assertion to OL that of the 25 grey wolves introduced in from exterior the state, solely 12 are nonetheless alive.
Seven of the 15 wolves that have been captured in British Columbia and launched in Pitkin and Eagle counties in January 2025 have died. And 6 of the ten wolves that have been introduced in from Oregon and launched in Grand County in December 2023 have died. Three of these deaths are nonetheless beneath investigation, whereas the causes of loss of life for the opposite 10 wolves have been decided by CPW and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as follows:
- 1 died because of battle with one other wolf (2307)
- 2 died because of battle with mountain lions (2303 and 2514)
- 3 died in Wyoming (2505, 2513, and 2304)
- 1 died whereas in captivity because of an unlawful gunshot (2309)
- 1 died as a result of secondary trauma from entrapment by a lawfully set foothold lure (2512)
- 1 died from blunt power trauma from being hit by a car (2507)
- 1 died from capture-related issues (2305)
CPW officers additionally shot two yearling wolves that have been killing livestock, however solely a type of wolves was discovered useless after it was shot. The company now believes that the other depredating wolf could still be alive.
The 15 wolves introduced in from B.C. had a 67 % survival charge through the first six months after their translocation. This fell beneath the 70 % threshold established within the state’s wolf reintroduction plan, which triggered an company assessment of its translocation processes.
“CPW did conduct this assessment,” an company spokesperson tells OL, however “since not one of the wolf mortalities have been a results of any a part of the translocation course of (seize, transport and launch) there was no want to regulate them.”
The company additionally factors out that given the typical life expectancy of wolves within the Rocky Mountains, this quantity of mortality is to be anticipated.
“When wolves don’t dwell in a pack (i.e. whereas dispersing), some analysis reveals that they’re at even increased danger of loss of life,” CPW says. “Since lots of the mortalities in Colorado have been amongst translocated wolves who have been basically ‘dispersers,’ we are able to see that the quantity of mortality we noticed in Colorado in 2024 and 2025 isn’t a surprise. Because the wolf inhabitants shifts from major dispersers to territorial wolves in packs, we might even see a shift in patterns of mortality.”
Replica among the many wolves additionally performs an vital function of their survival, and CPW says it has confirmed no less than 4 breeding packs throughout the state. Company employees will full an estimate of what number of pups are born this spring, which can give wolf managers a greater thought of the statewide inhabitants.
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Nonetheless, the comparatively low survival charges amongst translocated wolves is no less than a part of the explanation why Colorado is now struggling to search out extra animals for its reintroduction program. Each different Western state with a viable inhabitants of grey wolves, together with Oregon, has turned down Colorado’s requests for extra wolves.
At the least one Indian tribe has also refused to provide the state wolves. And now that the USFWS has blocked CPW’s plans to supply extra wolves from Canada, throwing a wrench into this previous winter’s deliberate launch, the way forward for Colorado’s wolf program appears extra unsure than ever.
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