European Bison versus Wolves

It's a long way from the Southern Rockies, but this video fits the June 20 theme of "predators and fawns/calves." 

A friend in Poland sent the video's link to the news site Notes from Poland. The European bison, sometimes called "wisent" (similar to ours but taller and slimmer) was extirpated by over-hunting. Its population has recovered in a few places due to re-introduction from captive herds. 

The largest population is in Poland's Białowieża Forest, one of the last examples of Eastern European old-growth forest. It was saved over the centuries mainly by being a royal hunting preserve. It is known for wildlife but is also the site of disputes over logging vs. preservation.

You can see wolves harassing the bison — they mainly are interested in the two calves, which they keep trying to cut off from the adults. As wolves do.

Wolfage: New Maps of Wolf Travels, Sort of

 Previous: CPW Tries Again with British Columbian Wolves.

Watersheds visited by wolves from late December 2024–late January 2025.
Click to enlarge.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife has released new maps of transplanted-wolf activity, BUT you have to be careful how you read them.The maps show the watersheds where wolves have been tracked, They do not show where wolves have been recently — that is kept secret, sort of. To quote a CPW news release from March 2024,

This map depicts watersheds where collared wolves in Colorado have been for the last 30 days. A watershed is a geographic unit that drains water into a specific water body. These are also known as Hydrologic Unit Codes (HUC). Information is shared at the HUC 10 level. Watersheds are the appropriate mapping unit to display wolf activity information because wolves are far more likely to use geographic features to affect their distribution than they are political boundaries. The HUC 10 scale provides detailed information that can help agricultural producers be informed of the general areas where wolf activity is known to exist without being too general (i.e., as a county-level map would be) and also is not so specific to risk the protection of individual wolves (as a finer scale HUC12 map would be). Learn more about HUCs at https://water.usgs.gov/GIS/huc.html.

For a watershed to indicate wolf activity, at least one GPS point from the wolf collars was recorded within the watershed's boundaries. Because a watershed indicates wolf activity, it does not mean that a wolf or wolves are present throughout the entire watershed or that they are currently in it.  

But I have already seen at least one journalist treat the map as showing where a certain lone wolf was traveling, which it does not do. The most recent CPW release says, "The watersheds in the southeast region that are lit up in this map represent the movement of one animal."

There was a credible recent account of wolf tracks found near Guffey in southeastern Park County, roughly north of Cañon City, which fits with the map. It was posted on Colorado Wolf Tracker, a private Facebook group.

Wolfage: CPW Tries Again with British Columbian Wolves

"Fladry" deters wolves, they say. (USA Today).

Previous wolfage: "Ute Tribe Faces Down Colorado over Wolves"

With the bad wolves, the re-captured "Copper Creek Pack," now detained in an undisclosed location, Colorado Parks and Wildlife is releasing good wolves on the Western Slope.  (See UPDATE below, however.)

Captured somewhere in British Columbia somewhere, they never eat beef or mutton and reliably vote for the Liberals. 

On dit.*

According to CPW's  Instagram feed,

"The wolves will be captured and transported in crates to Colorado, collared, and released as soon as possible once they arrive at select sites in Garfield, Eagle and/or Pitkin counties. We plan to release 10-15 wolves on the Western Slope per year, for 3-5 years, as outlined in our Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan."https://www.instagram.com/coparkswildlife/

An apparently erroneous report on the Colorado Politics website led to one Pitkin County landowner being visited by camo'd up armed "sightseeers," reports the Aspen Times.   

When asked to leave, they parked on a county road behind a bush just off the property, where they remained for part of the afternoon, according to the owner. 

“This is putting the safety of my family, the livestock, the wolves, all in jeopardy, and all of the allegations were false,” the owner said of the Colorado Politics article published on Tuesday. Two of the ranch owners asked the publication to redact the article when they read it on Thursday morning, which the publication did.

Social media played its part, the article said.

But rumors continued after the new year. Apart from [Facebook group] Colorado Wolf Tracker, the Roaring Fork Swap Facebook page circulated information about the ranch family members, putting their names to the public, “adding fuel to the fire,” the owner said.

And an anonymous source claimed they witnessed Colorado Parks and Wildlife trucks and trailers driving toward the ranch, further strengthening the rumors.

 Colorado Public News rounded up the political side on Jan. 14:

Political tensions have started to boil over amid the lack of official details. The state wildlife commission denied a petition from agriculture organizations last week seeking to pause the reintroduction program. Meanwhile, another livestock group submitted a draft ballot measure to repeal the program, and state and federal elected officials have flexed their political muscles and threatened to take action to protect rural communities.

Colorado Politics did publish another piece on wolf reintroduction on January 8, written by members of the "wolf-livestock coexistence working group," which stated,

Important signs of progress in achieving coexistence are emerging. To date, 50 ranch vulnerability assessments have been completed or are in the process of being completed. Sixty-eight people have expressed interest in becoming range riders. Dozens of guard dogs have been placed on ranches. Turbo fladry and electric fencing have been deployed successfully on numerous ranches. CDA is providing grants for range riding and carcass management. And CPW and CDA are holding coexistence and stockmanship workshops in potentially affected counties. The ad hoc group is still divided as to whether the landscape will have enough coverage with site assessments before the release of wolves from British Columbia.

 "Fladry" are flapping plastic ribbons placed along pasture boundaries. How they deter long-legged hard-running carnivores, I do not yet understand.

UPDATE: On Jan 19, CPW said the 2025 wolf release was completed. Fifteen wolves from BC plus the five survivors of the Copper Creek Pack were released in Eagle and Pitkin counties. They think the Copper Creek wolves can somehow stop "depredating" livestock:

This agency decision to re-release the Copper Creek animals considered multiple factors, including the health of the animals, the timing of the B.C. releases this year and the potential proximity to new wolves on the landscape. This strategy gives the animals the best chance for survival, advancing Colorado’s gray wolf restoration efforts. 

"As I said at the time, options in the case of the Copper Creek Pack were very limited, and this action is by no means a precedent for how CPW will resolve wolf-livestock conflict moving forward. The male adult wolf was involved in multiple depredations. Removing the male at that time, while he was the sole source of food and the female was denning, would likely have been fatal to the pups and counter to the restoration mandate,” said [CPW director Jeff] Davis.

The capture of the pack was a management action that was taken to change the behavior of the animals to reduce depredations and could further impact the adult female's behavior moving forward.

* Since the wolves are Canadian, I am required to sprinkle in some French. Translation: "They say."

Ute Tribe Faces Down Colorado over Wolves

A suitably logo'd Governor Polis releases a wolf in December 2023.

An odd news release from Colorado Parks and Wildlife popped up in my inbox last week. Having worked as a newspaper reporter, I am pretty good at translating Bureaucratese into English, so I will give this one a try. It involves a "memorandum of understanding" between CPW and the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, which is headquartered in Ignacio, La Plata County.

Headline: Colorado Parks and Wildlife and Southern Ute Indian Tribe Announce MOU on Gray Wolf Restoration

Original: CPW and the Tribe are committed to operating on a basis of a government-to-government relationship that simultaneously recognizes and respects Tribal sovereignty. The MOU also states that CPW and the Tribe will work together to provide a process to minimize conflicts, memorialize a process for information sharing on gray wolf reintroductions throughout the State and confirm the Tribe’s intent to participate in the State’s program to provide fair and timely compensation to the Tribe or Tribal Members for any losses of livestock proven to be caused by gray wolves.

Translation: We, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, do not want any wolves near our livestock operations, and if you release them here, we will pull out the  "sovereignty card" and see you in court.

Wasn't that easy?

They cannot play the sovereignty card, but two Western Slope counties, Rio Blanco (2021) and Montrose (2021), had previously passed "no wolf reintroduction" resolutions. In November 2024, CPW said that Rio Blanco Co. had been removed from the list "due to the limited number of state-owned sites that adhered to the criteria in the plan and their proximity to livestock, elevating the risk of conflict, as well as the potential impact to elk and deer herds recovering from the severe winter of 2022-23."

In the memorandum, CPW agreed not to release wolves within 60 miles of tribal land boundaries nor within the "Brunot area," 3.7 million acres of the San Juan Mountains of SW Colorado where the Utes retain hunting rights. So they probably won't be trotting through downtown Ignacio.

In other news, someone had shot and wounded one of the original ten wolves released in Grand County.  This was one of the "bad wolves" that were released and then re-captured in August 2024

At the time, Colorado Parks and Wildlife said the wolf died four days after its capture and had “deep puncture wounds” on its hind leg that were unrelated to the capture.  The wolf’s body weight was almost 30% lower than it was when it was released in December 2023, when it weighed 104 pounds, CPW said, and it died despite receiving antibiotics for an infection. 

Now, a necropsy has determined the wolf died as a result of a gunshot wound, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday [Dec. 26, 2024]. The federal agency said it was seeking information “regarding the illegal killing of a gray wolf in Grand County” and offering a reward. . . .

The Copper Creek wolf was one of three of the 10 reintroduced wolves that have died. Another died in Grand County in September [2024] and was discovered by wildlife officials after its collar sent a “mortality signal.” A necropsy later determined that the wolf likely died from a fight with another wolf, and that it had a healed gunshot wound on its leg, according to federal officials. 

The first of the reintroduced wolves to die, also a male, was likely killed by a mountain lion, CPW said. It was found dead in Larimer County in April [2024] and had puncture wounds to its skull.

And to end the year, Governor Polis said that the whole wolf-reintroduction program would have been a lot cheaper if it had not been for those damn ranchers. Misinformation!

What Polis said at a political meeting on Dec. 3, 2024, "was Colorado will continue gray wolf restoration because it is the will of the voters, and that CPW wouldn’t have had to to go Canada for the next round of wolves 'if ranchers wouldn’t have said, ‘Oh, don’t get them from Wyoming, don’t get them from Idaho.’"

Actually, as the Colorado Sun there reported, it was the state agencies in Wyoming and Idaho that refused to supply Colorado with wolves. Sadly, "Polis hates rural Colorado" has become a journalistic trope in the past couple of years.

Did Wolf Reintroduction Doom Colorado's Big Cat-Hunting Ban?

Someone in my area left their anti-Prop. 127 sign up well past Election Day.

First, let me say that I am still in the blogging game. There were deadlines, then there was business travel, not to mention travel to aid a sick friend, and then the business travel gave me some kind of case of the nasties that I am still sleeping off now. 

November was sort of a total loss, but on the electoral side there was one stunning surprise. Not Donald Trump — I mean the defeat of Colorado Proposition 127, which set out to ban the hunting of bobcats and mountain lions — and lynx, but there is no season on them anyway.

The proposition's text began, "The voters of Colorado find and declare that any trophy hunting of mountain lions, bobcats, or lynx is inhumane, serves no socially acceptable or ecologically beneficial purpose, and fails to further public safety." (Cats Aren't Trophies website.)

Of course, it was written so that "trophy hunting" meant "any hunting," just in case anyone claimed to be a subsistence mountain-lion hunter. Some people do eat them and find the meat tasty, but I have no personal experience there. One neighbor is a houndsman, and I have been outdoors working to be suddenly swarmed by four or five dogs with GPS collars, who give a quick hello and then tear off into the forest. (They don't know where the public land boundary is, being dogs.) I know that group has occasional success, but they've never offered me any lion chops.

Anti-127 signs were all over my county and the next one, but I figured it was a lost cause. The big urban counties would go "Aw, kitties!" and vote Yes. 

The momentum was there. Several ballot measures restricting types of hunting have passed in the last thirty years:

• 1992: A 70–30 percent vote ended the spring bear season, which usually meant hunting over bait. (I had worked briefly for an outfitter in the 1980s, making me the guy pouring Karo syrup over a pile of day-old doughnuts in front of a tree stand). Some hunters supported that one. It also outlawed hunting bears with dogs at any time, although that was never a big thing.
• 1996 A state constitutional amendment, not merely a regulatory change, prohibited "the use of leghold traps, instant-kill body-gripping design traps, poisons, or snares; providing an exception for the use of such methods by certain governmental entities for the purpose of protecting human health or safety or managing fish or other nonmammalian wildlife; providing an exception for the use of such methods to control birds or to control rodents other than beaver and muskrat, as otherwise authorized by law." It passed 52–47 percent.
  
• 2020 While not directly about hunting, Prop. 114, demanding reintroduction of gray wolves, squeaked through 51–49 percent, with urban counties leading the charge.  

So when Prop. 127 went down with 56 percent "no" votes, I was astonished. Colorado Public Radio offered an answer: Blame the wolves. 

Dan Gates, who led the opposition campaign against Proposition 127, had predicted in the run-up to the vote that the controversial wolf reintroduction effort would convince voters to reject the hunting measure — and said the results bear that out. 

He thinks watching Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists struggle with livestock attacks from wolves soured voters on removing their full control of other predators.

After all the "wolves won't attack cattle" — wolves attack cattle — "Those are BAD wolves; we will re-trap them and replace them with GOOD wolves," who wouldn't be a little cynical. Even Cats Aren't Trophies is negative:

The team behind Proposition 127 agrees that wolf reintroduction worked against the proposed ban on big cat hunting. Samantha Miller, campaign manager for Cats Aren’t Trophies, said the management of wolf reintroduction has been a “tragedy,” and said she would have voted against that measure if she had been a Colorado resident at the time. 

Miller, who now lives in Grand County, said wolf reintroduction and the resulting backlash “has really caused a lot of distrust and a lot of really negative stories around carnivores that has bled out into this campaign.”

Surely it's no coincidence that two weeks after the election, CPW released a report on Western Slope mountain lion density.   Biologists used GPS tracking and scout cameras in several areas:

Results of the camera-based mark-resight estimates in Middle Park averaged 2.5 independent lions per 39 square miles during the winters of 2021-22 and 2022-23.

In the Gunnison Basin, CPW observed an average density of 4.2 independent lions per 39 square miles in the winters of 2022-23 and 2023-24.

[Mark Vieira, CPW’s Carnivore and Furbearer Program Manager] said, "This combination of GPS collars and ear tags on lions paired with trail cameras across large representative study areas is showing us that parts of Colorado appear to have high lion numbers compared to studies of lions in other states.”

Every time that I think I should do a big round-up post on the wolves, some new development pops up, and I don't get it done. One of these days! But meanwhile, this wolf-mountain lion interaction was a surprise at the ballot box.

So Who Will Hack the Wolf GPS Data?

Colorado Parks and Wildlife has now published a GPS map for Colorado wolves.

Understand that while every wolf wears a GPS collar, including the ones that wandered in to North Park and were darted, collared, and released -- and including the 15 new ones coming in -- the magic map does now show where they are right now.

It shows what drainage they have been in lately. The website says,

• Currently, the collars are programmed to record a position every four hours. 

• Once four locations have been recorded, the packet of four locations is then transmitted via satellite to CPW biologists. 

• The frequency of both position recording and transmission of the data can be delayed by a number of factors such as dense cloud cover, closed terrain, etc. 

• By looking at the data, CPW staff can learn where wolves have been, but they cannot tell where wolves are at a current point in time, nor can they predict where the wolves will go. 

• To protect the wolves, specific GPS data will not be shared.

"Specific GPS data will not be shared. "

Um, yeah.  Governments are so good at keeping data secure. Now who would want up-to-the-minute data? 

Most people's thoughts will probably go straight to some clandestine wolf-killer, some figure straight out of a Charlie Box wilderness-thriller novel.  

But follow the money. I remember how in the 1980s, as commercial rafting developed on the Arkansas River and the state took over recreational management, there were all these contentious meetings over regulation, which boiled down to

    a) Early arrivals in commercial rafting wanted to keep out the competition.

    b) Private rafters and kayakers did not want to be forced into the eddies by the commercial outfits.

    c) Anglers wanted to be left alone at dawn and dusk, at the very least.

You will make money if you
know where I am (CPW photo).

In 1989, the year after the big fires, M. and I passed through Yellowstone NP. We casually parked our van at the Slough Creek Campground. I fished a bit in Slough Creek (saw an otter!) and the Lamar River, where I could step from elk skeleton to elk skelton, after the big die-off in the 1988–89 winter.

We came back in the 2000s after wolf reintroduction. Slough Creek campsites had to be reserved months in advance. Every highway pull-out in the Lamar Valley was full of surly shoulder-to-shoulder observers with expensive optics: spotting scopes and telephone lenses. Tour busses with wolves painted on them lumbered up and down the road — like this one.

If the wolves reproduce — and if they move east into Rocky Mountain National Park — that will be Colorado's future too. Wolves as spectacle. 

As with rafting on the Arkansas, there will be a struggle for regulations that give some operators an advantage over their competitors.

And speaking of "advantage," if you were a "wolf-tour guide," what could you do with GPS coordinates as to just where the wolves were that day?

Colorado Wolves: Faux "Paws" on the Ground

Gov. Jared Polis was on hand Dec, 18, 20203 to release Oregon wolves in Colorado,
but some Coloradans deeply involved with the project never were invited.

Some officials and Western Slope residents are annoyed that Colorado Parks and Wildlife seemed eager to please Governor Polis (if not Marlon Reis, his animal-rightist husband) while forgetting promises to them. They were never on the guest list or even informed about last month's wolf release.

According to the Sky-Hi News in Grand County,

Two [CPW] commissioners in particular, Marie Haskett from Meeker, who represents sportspersons and outfitters, and Duke Phillip IV, who represents agriculture and is from Colorado Springs, both believe a lack of communication and transparency has led to distrust of the agency in rural communities. And they both think the wolf reintroduction created animosity between rural and urban areas. While dismayed at the way the wolf releases were rolled out, the commissioners both expressed gratitude for the hard work CPW staff put into making the historic, voter-mandated reintroduction possible.

Haskett was the first to speak about wolves at the Jan. 10 meeting. She called Dec. 18 – the day the first five wolves were released – a “sad day” because comissioners were not notified. She claims that many of the CPW staff who worked tirelessly on the reintroduction were also not made aware. To her knowledge other members of the legislature and local counties were not alerted about the releases either.

“Even the Grand County commissioner (Merrit Linke) who was on the TWG (Technical Working Group) was not invited to the release, and yet other specific members of the working group were,” Haskett said. “The people who politically drove this issue were present. The divide between rural and urban populations was blown up with this ballot initiative. Now CPW has taken a huge political hit with the public because of these political actions.”

Philip in particular was angry because he had worked on the reintroduction but found that it had occured a day afterwards — by watching TV news.

Haskett said that poor communications with local people puts CPW's work at risk, since it must manage wildlife on both public and private land. I would add that it also feeds the conspiratorial narrative that the wolf introduction was "punishment" to an area that did not vote for Gov. Polis and other Democrats.

For official wolf news, check CPW's "Wolf Management" page.

Wolves Now Add to the 'Colorado Experience'

A wolf who walked in from Wyoming caught on a scout camera
in North Park in March 2023 (Don Gittleson via AP).

Dad was still alive when the debate on reintroducing wolves to Colorado began, soon after the 1995 reintroduction in Yellowstone National Park. His US Forest Service career began and then ended in Colorado, and he had thoughts. 

His days of being a horseback district ranger in the Eastern San Juans were long gone. "Now," he said. "this state is just a big park. There's no place for wolves."

That's setting aside the livestock issues. When Dad was asking herders, "¿Cuántas borregas tiene?" there were no wolves to think about. Those sheep outfits are much diminished, for other economic reasons, but some remain, as do cattle, horses, llamas, alpacas, and other speciality livestock.

The late Ed Quillen, mountain-county newsman and publisher, prided himself on being the only Denver Post editorial columnist who lived outside the Denverplex. He liked to say that Colorado used to be a "colony of Chicago," providing minerals and agricultural products to industrial America. 

But then, he said, we became part of the "Los Angeles economy" — a colony of the entertainment industry. Now Colorado's best-known export is experience. 

If that is so, then think of wolves as just another tourism experience, like ziplines over canyons. 

So maybe Dad had it backwards? Colorado is a "park," so it should have wolves? Wolves that will add spiritual value to the Colorado experience without hurting anyone. 

With some wolves already filtering from Wyoming on their own (and killing livestock and dogs) was it necessary to bring in more? The voters in their wisdom thought so in 2020. Now 30–50 wolves are planned to be released in Colorado over the next three to five years.

Wolf 2302-OR, a 68-lb. female yearling, is released somewhere in Grand County on Dec. 18, 2023.

 

Some  headlines and squabbles:.

• Maybe colorful flagging will keep wolves away from livestock. So says Adam Baca,  Colorado's first "wolf conflict coordinator."

• Some Oregon ranches think flagging ("fladry") and other counter-measures are not enough.

[Tom[ Birkmaier, an Oregon rancher, expressed his concerns about the relocation, telling Oregon Public Broadcasting, "It's just going to bring the problem over to a lot of ranchers and end up killing a lot of livestock in Colorado."

This sentiment is not limited to Oregon ranchers alone. Lawmakers in other wolf states, including Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, have also declined Colorado's request for wolves, despite their own sizable wolf populations.

• Cat Urbigkit, Wyoming sheep rancher, writer, and livestock guardian dog expert, points out misinformation in the Colorado Parks and Wildlife press kit and says some of the released wolves came from livestock-killing packs.

CPW wasn’t up front in telling the public about the depredation history of the packs the newly released wolves originated. It was Rachel Gabel who dug into the details and told the public what she’d found.

Gabel is a rancher and ag-journalist from Wiggins, Colo., who has covered the wolf reintroduction extensively.

She was promptly attacked by the governor's husband, Marlon Reis.

Reis doesn’t just differ with Gabel in a lengthy thread of Facebook comments he posted over Christmas weekend. He repeatedly, personally attacks her abilities and standing as a journalist and urges the public to “never trust anything Rachel Gabel writes." . . .

It also makes us wonder whether our politically astute governor winced while reading Reis peevishly accuse Gabel of seeking, “not to report the truth, but to inspire fear.” Or, where Reis pettily huffed in the same post, “I'll never understand how she got hired as a journalist.”

• Wolves did not just wander into Colorado their own. The first pups were spotted in spring 2021. But that did not count as a "self-sustaining population," Colorado Parks and Wildlife said. It was interesting to the wildlife biologists though.

Stay tuned, there is more to come, for sure.

Pouring Bureaucratic Syrup on the Wolves

Gray wolf (Colorado Parks & Wildlife)

The people have spoken: Coloradans voted by a roughly 1% margin to order Colorado Parks & Wildlife to re-introduce gray wolves.   Or as one site put it: "Urban vote decides for rural Colorado."

As the Grand Junction ABC affiliate reports, roughly 62% of Western Slope voters said no to the measure, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the Front Range voter advantage.

Which is usually the way it goes on statewide votes. 

The pro-wolf faction adopted the language of nature:

The Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund, a backer of the proposition, said this is the first time citizens have voted to initiate the restoration of a native species.

“Voters throughout Colorado took politicians out of the picture, choosing to restore natural balance by returning wolves to their rightful place in Colorado,” said Rob Edward, fund president.

 CPW director Dan Prenzlow bowed to the inevitable:

“Our agency consists of some of the best and brightest in the field of wildlife management and conservation. I know our wildlife experts encompass the professionalism, expertise, and scientific focus that is essential in developing a strategic species management plan. CPW is committed to developing a comprehensive plan and in order to do that, we will need input from Coloradans across our state. We are evaluating the best path forward to ensure that all statewide interests are well represented."

So where does the money come from?
(Graphic: University of Maine)

When agency heads start talking about "leadership" and "plans" and "stakeholders" and "statewider interests," and other vague terms, I call it "pouring bureaucratic syrup over a problem." Lots of soothing talk, sort of telling a child who awoke from a bad dream to just go back to sleep, Mommy is here.  Glug-glug-glug.

(I knew one US Forest Service district ranger who absolutely mastered it; I don't know if she accepted Smokey Bear as her personal savior, but she sure could drop twenty buzzwords in one sentence.)

Colorado now has a Wolf Management Website where you can track the process of trying to do what the voters requested while trying to find the money to pay for it. There is good information there on the legalities of "introduced" wolves versus those who wander in on their own, which agency (federal or stte) manages which wolves, and so on.

UPDATE: Newly elected State Senator Bob Rankin, who represents the area that included both self-transplanted wolves and the proposed wolf release, plants to introduce a bill to re-locate an equivalent number of wolves to Boulder and Jefferson counties. (Jefferson includes most of Denver's western suburbs.) 

“I do intend to do that,” Rankin — who won formal election to the state Senate last week — said following his victory. “I’m going to have to admit: it’s more just a protest, more than anything else, to call attention to the fact that the people most affected voted against [Proposition 114].”

 The bill stands no chance, and he knows it. There was a "credible" sighting on the Eastern Slope earlier this year though.

 

 

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?

New Front Range Colorado Wolf Report

The Grand County wolf-like animal. Photo: Janice Freeman via Colorado Parks and Wildife.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife field officers are trying to confirm a wolf sighting in western Larimer County, just south of the Wyoming border in the headwaters of the Laramie River. According to CPW's "Colorado Wolf Update" for June 2020,

Wildlife managers are attempting to confirm a credible wolf sighting in the Laramie River Valley in Larimer County. An animal sighted in the area was wearing a wildlife tracking collar, which indicates it is likely a dispersal wolf from monitored packs in Montana or Wyoming, however flights and ground crews have been unable to detect a signal or visually confirm the wolf. It has been determined that the animal in Larimer County is not wolf 1084-M from neighboring Jackson County. If a wolf or wolves are confirmed in Larimer County, they would be the furthest east in Colorado in nearly a century.

Further west, in Grand County, campers reported being approached by a large wolf-like animal. Reading between the lines of the news release, it sounds as though wildlife officials suspect this could be wolf-hybrid, perhaps one that was dumped "in the wild" but is used to being fed by humans.

Biologists responded to the area to gather biological evidence that could be used to confirm the presence of a wolf versus a coyote, lost or escaped domestic dog or domestic wolf-hybrid.

"Biological evidence" . . . . that sounds like they need a very specialized tracking dog.

Wolf Reintroduction Makes Colorado Ballot — Who Will Pay?

 

In the video, wolf teachers encourage a grizzly sow to reduce her carbon footprint by not having too many cubs.

Last month, supporters of wolf reintroduction on Colorado's Western Slope said they had the necessary 200,000-plus signatures to put a measure on the ballot, and Colorado voters will make their choice on "Initiative 107" in November 2020. The initiative begins,

(a) Historically, wolves were an essential part of the wild habitat of Colorado but were exterminated and have been functionally extinct for seventy-five years in the state;

(b) The gray wolf is listed as an endangered species on the commission’s list of endangered or threatened species;

(c) Once restored to Colorado, gray wolves will help restore a critical balance in nature; and

(d) Restoration of the gray wolf to the state must be designed to resolve conflicts with persons engaged in ranching and farming in this state.

Item (c) is essentially a nature-religion theological statement. Scientific ecology has moved beyond the "balance of nature" thinking to more dynamic and complex ideas of constant change. Even the "trophic cascade" model, as applied to predator/prey relationships by Aldo Leopold in the early 1900s,  is now questioned by some researchers.

"It's a really romantic story," Utah State University ecologist Dan McNulty said. "It's a story about a world that doesn't really exist."

A year ago, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission voted 7-4 against wolf reintroduction. This month, former CPW commissioner Rick Enstrom, who served on and earlier "wolf working group," offered a negative opinion.

Predation [of elk herds] is hardly the only problem with wolves in Colorado, says Enstrom. The biggest issue is money. The proposed initiative calls for wolf management and predation compensation to be paid out of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) wildlife cash fund “to the extent that they are available.”

The wildlife cash fund pays for all wildlife operations of CPW. It’s replenished primarily by hunting and fishing licenses, and it’s always over-budgeted says Enstrom.

Where compensation for livestock losses will come from when there is no money available in the wildlife cash fund is left unstated.

The initiative states that the General Assembly "shall make such appropriations as are necessary to fund the programs authorized and obligations, including fair compensation for livestock losses that are authorized by this section but cannot be paid from moneys in the wildlife cash fund, imposed by this section."

In other words, costs created by the wolf-reintroduction would have to compete for funding with highways, social programs, universities, prisons, and everything else that the state has to pay for.
 
And the perpetually stretched-thin district wildlife managers (wardens), techs, and biologists will not have another huge responsibility dumped on their plates.

I hate to bang on about money, but 90 percent of the voters probably do not realize that Colorado Parks and Wildlife is not funded by the taxpayers — like the Dept. of Corrections, for example. CPWis funded mainly by license sales, user fees, some federal excise-tax money, and donations (the state income tax-refund donation).

And what license fee brings in the most money? Out-of-state elk licenses. So not surprisingly, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is against re-introduction.

“To be clear, RMEF strongly opposes the forced introduction of gray wolves to Colorado,” said Kyle Weaver, RMEF president and CEO. “We have witnessed 20 plus years of lies and litigation in the Northern Rockies concerning wolves. This Colorado effort is driven by the same groups using the same tactics to accomplish their agenda.”

Cat Urbigkit is a writer and an internationally known authority on livestock guardian dogs, which she and her husband (and others) use to keep wolves and coyotes away from the sheep on their western Wyoming ranch. She bluntly accuses the pro-wolf group of wanting to create a wildlife Disneyland, and she notes that the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project is funded mainly by the Tides foundation, rather than grassroots donors.

If one were to believe the spiel, wolf advocates are benevolent custodians of the public interest, and ranchers suffer from “the myth of the wolf” and “a fear deeply ingrained” that can be cured with education. A few recent examples of this custodial role show that the advocates propose “a wolves for thee, not for me” landscape – one in which decisions are made by unaffected residents of population centers on behalf of uneducated rural serfs (serfs whose work feeds the nation and are most impacted by ever-expanding wolf populations).

Anti-reintroduction groups, such as the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, are organized at Stop the Wolf, where they have plenty of photos of what wolf attacks look like as well as information on political opposition.

For a longer take on the pros and cons of wolf re-introduction, you should read this Colorado Politics piece from September 2019, "Is It Time to Bring Gray Wolves Back to Colorado?

Actually, if the billionaire-funded Tides foundation wanted to do it right, they would offer to pay for the reintroduction, instead of sticking an always-underfunded state agency with the job.

CPW: New Wolf Pack Appears in Colorado

Wolves -- our spiritual teachers (stock photo).

I have a longer blog post in the works about the upcoming Colorado ballot measure on the reintroduction of wolves. Meanwhile, they are again reintroducing themselves, says this Colorado Parks and Wildlife news release.

MOFFAT COUNTY, Colo. - Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials say an eyewitness report of six large canids traveling together in the far northwest corner of the state last October, in conjunction with last week's discovery of a thoroughly scavenged elk carcass near Irish Canyon - a few miles from the location of the sighting - strongly suggests a pack of gray wolves may now be residing in Colorado.



According to the eyewitness, he and his hunting party observed the wolves near the Wyoming and Utah borders. One of the party caught two of the six animals on video.



"The sighting marks the first time in recent history CPW has received a report of multiple wolves traveling together," said CPW Northwest Regional Manager JT Romatzke. "In addition, in the days prior, the eyewitness says he heard distinct howls coming from different animals. In my opinion, this is a very credible report."



After learning about the scavenged elk carcass, CPW initiated an investigation which is still ongoing. At the site, the officers observed several large canid tracks from multiple animals surrounding the carcass.

According to CPW wildlife managers, the tracks are consistent with those made by wolves. In addition, the condition of the carcass is consistent with known wolf predation.

"The latest sightings add to other credible reports of wolf activity in Colorado over the past several years," said Romatzke. "

In addition to tracks, howls, photos and videos, the presence of one wolf was confirmed by DNA testing a few years ago, and in a recent case, we have photos and continue to track a wolf with a collar from Wyoming’s Snake River pack.



Romatzke says from the evidence, there is only one logical conclusion CPW officials can make.

"It is inevitable, based on known wolf behavior, that they would travel here from states where their populations are well-established," he said. "We have no doubt that they are here, and the most recent sighting of what appears to be wolves traveling together in what can be best described as a pack is further evidence of the presence of wolves in Colorado." 


Romatzke adds CPW will continue to operate under the agency's current management direction.

"We will not take direct action and we want to remind the public that wolves are federally endangered species and fall under the jurisdiction of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. As wolves move into the state on their own, we will work with our federal partners to manage the species," he said.



The public is urged to contact CPW immediately if they see or hear wolves or find evidence of any wolf activity.  The Wolf Sighting Form can be found on the CPW website.

Seen a Wolf? There (Isn't Yet) an App for That, But You Can Report It

I received a news release a few days ago about a wolf that had escaped from a "sanctuary" near Divide, Colorado, in the mountains west of Colorado Springs.

The missing Mexican wolf.

On Sunday, November 11, 2018, a yearling Mexican wolf escaped an enclosure at the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center (CWWC). The CWWC is a member in good standing of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and became a member of the AZA’s Mexican wolf captive breeding program in 2008. In response, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued the following statement . . .

This young wolf was born in a facility in 2017, and is not considered a threat to human health or public safety. Subsequent to the reintroduction of Mexican wolves to the wild, wolf-human interactions have occurred but there have been no wolf attacks on humans.  However, like all wildlife, the animal may become defensive if cornered or threatened. Members of the public are encouraged to scare the animal if the wolf is seen at close proximity. The wolf is not externally marked (no radio collar, ear tag, etc.), but is distinguishable due to blindness in one eye (one eye almost completely black.

I have not heard if it was located or not—I have been away for six days and pretty much ignoring news and social media during that time.

But what I did learn tangentially is that you think you have seen any wolf anywhere in Colorado, you can report it to Colorado Parks and Wildlife on this website.

Unless, of course, you think that such things should go unreported.

Quick Review: "Alpha," Where Boy Meets Wolf (Dog).

Kodi Smit-McPhee as Keda with a Czechoslovakian wolfdog that plays Alpha
(who has a surprise for the humans)

Just to save you the trouble, I will list some things that anyone familiar with hunting large animals will object to in the movie Alpha.

And then I will tell you that this story of a boy and his wolf is worthwhile anyway.

First of all, if the village hunters were going after Pleistocene bison, they would not walk miles and miles, leaving their families behind. Everyone would go. Non-hunters could still help drive the buffalo over the cliff by flapping skins and making a commotion. Throwing spears to create a "fence" is not going to stop charging bison.

When it is time to process the meat, you need everyone. And a lot will still be wasted, as archaeologists can tell you. Or visit the most famous and weirdly named such site in North America! (The movie too was filmed in Alberta, except for the CGI parts.)

Second, according to my archaeologist friend, 20,000 years BP is too early for bows and arrows, according to current information. I would give the movie-makers a pass on that one.

Third, when winter comes, why do people keep living in a windswept snowfield in what looks like northern Labrador instead of moving to a more sheltered place that might offer some fuel?

Fourth — and this is more of a continuity lapse — during his time along, Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee) starts to grow some teenage whiskers, yet in the final scene, they are gone. But going by his father's beard,  this is not a culture where men shave.

And a goof, which someone at Internet Movie Database also noted, "In the first cave scene, Kedi [sic] is kneeling to approach the wolf, and the bottom of his boot clearly shows a rubber lugged sole." Yeah, it did.


Now for the positives

First,  Alpha is a beautiful movie to watch. Some of that is Alberta and a lot of it is CGI, I will grant. But wow, Shining Times. If you were an old man by forty, you still would have lived a life filled with wonder.

Second, it's a "dog story" with a happy ending, a bit like the lines from Kipling's Jungle Book:

When the Man waked up he said,
'What is Wild Dog doing here?'
And the Woman said,
'His name is not Wild Dog any more,
but the First Friend,
because he will be our friend
for always and always and always.'

Its images and story will stay with you.

A Venue of Vultures & Other Links

Crappy phone photo from across a pasture.

It has been raining, and when it's not raining, drizzling. Matt Sellers, Beulah's own weatherman, called in "Seattle Week" on his "Wet Mountain Weather" Facebook page.

Driving through eastern Custer County yesterday, I saw big dark birds in a tree holding their wings spread like capes. Through the binocular, they were turkey vultures exhibiting (I just learnt this word) the "horaltic pose." Drying their wings? But it was drizzling. Thermo-regulating? With the temperature about 48° F., there was no need to cool down. Maybe they just do it to look menacing.

What surprised me, though, was that I saw vultures at all. I thought they all had migrated south by now. Time to talk to the raptor experts.

Yes, according to that supposed lingo of animal gatherings, e.g. "parliament of owls," vultures form "venues." I suspect that the whole business was made up by some 19th-century English sporting vicar sitting in his study.

And there is more . . . 

• Five weeks missing!  All of Alma, Colo., celebrated after this lost dog was found on Mount Bross. 

• How to tell a bird's age by its molt pattern 

• Another lucky dog! A Minnesota wire-haired pointer dodges wolves. "' The dog jumped in the window of the truck, and the wolf did a quick lap around the truck,' Bailey said." I bet his owner will start carrying something on his hip for when a 20-gauge and #6 shot are not enough.

Lost Dog Survives Wolves & Winter — And She's a Chessie

So out of loyalty to this fine breed, I give you this story of a long-lost elderly dog who survived:

"The last [the dog's owners" had heard, a hunter in Jerusalem Valley had seen a brown dog in the forest, running from wolves.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/article160290474.html#storylink=cpy"

"The past year’s hard winter would’ve been tough to survive in the wild, even for an animal in its prime, Glankler said. The dog she had rescued, though a hardy Chessie (a dog known for its wooly, oily coat that was bred for the extreme cold of retrieving in the Atlantic), was completely deaf and clearly pretty old. Glankler couldn’t be completely sure this dog was Mo."

Read the whole thing.

This post approved by Fisher,
who is not lost.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/article160290474.html#storylink=cpy"

A Kid, a Dog (?), and the World's Greatest Cave Art

What he or she saw: lions and prey at Chauvet

Sometime, say 26,000 years ago or more, a kid and a canid (wolf? dog? wolf-dog?) went exploring  underground.

The human prints are of a barefooted child aged eight to ten years old and standing about 4.5 feet (1.4 meters) tall. The child was walking, not running, although at one point it appears that he or she slipped a little in the soft clay. Researchers know that the child carried a torch because there is evidence of him/her stopping at one point to clean the torch, leaving behind a stain of charcoal.

It is amazing to think of a Paleolithic kid exploring this ancient cave, examining the paintings and bear skulls that were placed reverently at the back of the cave. Even more amazing is that accompanying (not stalking) the child’s footprints are the paw prints of a wolf (or possibly a large dog). This timeless image of a child and dog shatters the notion that dogs were only domesticated 15,000 years ago. More importantly, the new time period radically alters the answer to how dogs became man’s best friend.

OTHER NEWS: 

• There are more prairie dog towns in Colorado than we thought. But I am still sorry that my sister did not ever follow up on her plan to clandestinely reintroduce them in South Park, from where, she said, they had all been poisoned in the mid-20th century.

• Hunting writer Dave Petersen of Durango interviewed in High Country News.

When I interviewed Western writer David Petersen for a magazine article several years ago, I really only had one question to ask him: Could hunting be morally defended in the 21st century?

At a time when few people seem concerned about that question — either they’re already convinced that hunting is barbaric, or just the opposite, that it’s a right that ought to be exercised with as few restrictions and as easily as possible — Petersen has spent much of his life examining what it means to kill in order to eat.

More about his hunting-ethics documentary here.

• New study revises tree-ring dating of archaeological sites.

Currently, archaeologists have to rely on relatively sparse evidence for dating the history of Western civilisation before 763 BCE, with Chinese history also only widely agreed from 841 BCE. For example, they depend on ancient records of rare astronomical phenomena, such as the solar eclipse during the ninth year of Ashur Dan III of Assyria, to determine the age of historical events. In the absence of such records, standard radiocarbon measurements provide the best estimates, but these are still often only accurate to within 200 to 300 calendar years. If the radiocarbon spikes in the tree-ring data were also found in archaeological items attributable to specific historical periods, the information could be used to anchor exactly when events occurred, says the paper.

The Mushroom Hunter, Her Dog, the Wolf, and the Bears

This is a "lost mushroom hunter" story with a twist. Joanne Barnaby, a resident of Canada's Northwest Territories tells the Washington Post how she and her dog were stalked by a wolf who tried for hours to separate them.

[She[ had been picking mushrooms in the remote Canadian wilderness [on June 10th ] when she had heard a growl behind her. She turned around and saw Joey, her faithful mutt, locked in a snarling standoff with a skinny black wolf.

Then a chance encounter with another top predator led a plan to extricate herself and Joey from what felt like a losing game.

Some people accuse her of being a nature-faker, claiming "wolves don't do that." (They're just furry angels who want bring us spiritual blessings.) She says otherwise, vehemently.

Is This How the Whole Dog Thing Started?

Ethiopian wolves hunt better with monkeys nearby — and then it is only an evolutionary eye-blink to women carrying Yorkshire terriers in their purses.