Federal Decision Complicates Proposed Colorado Wolf Reintroduction

Gray Wolf (Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Coloradans are voting right now through Tuesday on a ballot measure to reintroduce gray wolves in the state. According to Ballotpedia,

The measure would require the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission to create and carry out a plan to reintroduce and manage gray wolves (Canis lupus) by the end of 2023. Wolves would be reintroduced on Colorado lands west of the Continental Divide. The exact location of wolf reintroductions would be determined by the commission. The commission would also manage any distribution of state funds that are made available to "pay fair compensation to owners of livestock for any losses of livestock caused by gray wolves." The measure would direct the state legislature to make appropriations to fund the reintroduction program. 

Colorado Parks & Widlife has not budgeted for this. Therefore the costs of the program and the "fair compensation" would have to come from shaking the Magic Money Tree (a clone of the one that grows in Bernie Sanders' backyard) or else be taken away from other programs. (Remember, Parks and Wildlife receives no funding from the state legislature, in other words, no tax revenues.) The Wildlife Commision has consistently opposed the idea of wolf reintroduction.

According to the state’s fiscal impact statement on the initiative, just setting up the program will cost nearly $800,000. There is no estimated budget for the actual ongoing management of wolves, but Prop 114 mandates that the General Assembly find the money somewhere, which experts say means taking the funds from other programs.

“There’s no extra money in the budget for it to come from,” former CPWC Commissioner Rick Enstrom told Complete Colorado. “It’s going to have to come from additional fees, or something else is going to have to go away. Is that funding for other endangered and threatened species? Is it from children’s education in public schools? Is it from any of the myriad issues Colorado Parks and Wildlife has to deal with every day with limited staff?”

Meanwhile, wolves have arrived on their own.  A wolf on its own is federally regulated wolf, or has been, but now it won't be. If there is to be a state program, a wolf walking from Wyoming would not be part of it. It will be fun telling them apart.

Wolves were declared an endangered species (there is a legal definition for that) back in 1974. Now the Dept. of the Interior says that they have recovered enough to be removed from that list. 

The removal plan, which would turn wolf management over the state wildlife departments in the states where they live, has to go through several months of legal process. It has also upset the people I call "wolf cultists."

The long-anticipated move is drawing praise from those who want to see the iconic species managed by state and tribal governments, and harsh criticism from those who believe federal protections should remain in place until wolves inhabit more of their historical range. Gray wolves used to exist across most of North America.

It also complicates the ballot issue — which I strongly suspect will pass. Wolves, as mentioned are "iconic." 

A CWP spokeswoman, speaking in soothing bureaucratic tones (I call this "pouring bureaucratic syrup over a problem"), says that everything will be all right:

“The rule will be published in the Federal Register at an unspecified future date, and will not be finalized until the 60-day window post-publication has expired,” Rebecca Ferrell, a public information officer for Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), said in an email. After those 60 days, the management of gray wolves will be in the states’ hands.

Ferrell says that CPW will continue to monitor wolf activity and dispersal in Colorado. And if Coloradans vote to reintroduce wolves on November 3, CPW will “work with federal partners, neighboring states, all of our partners and stakeholders across Colorado to create a plan to implement the outcome of the ballot vote.”

Wolf-cultists don't trust the state agency because it gets money from hunters and works with ranchers. They want to swing the big federal hammer. But the federal hammer is being put back in the toolbox. So what now?