Messing around with the natural order of things rarely ends well. You would think humans would have learned from mistakes like the introduction of starlings and English sparrows into the United States or rabbits and cane toads in Australia; examples abound. But the state of Colorado, thanks to a ballot initiative largely supported by people who live in the Denver-Boulder Axis, in 2023 began the reintroduction of wolves into the Centennial State, and now that state’s ranchers are paying for it.
Farrell and other ranchers on Colorado’s Western Slope feel their way of life has been threatened after wildlife officials began a voter-mandated reintroduction of gray wolves in late 2023. Now, they’re hoping the Trump administration will intervene on their behalf.
It’s unclear what Washington can do about this; even if the Trump administration delisted the gray wolf as an endangered species in the lower 48, the state manages wildlife, not Washington, and it’s unlikely the current state of Colorado will implement any open season on wolves – which might have the effect of making wolves shy away from humans.
Here’s the onion:
The state is legally required to pay livestock owners for losses if their animals are injured or killed by wolves, up to $15,000 per animal.
But ranchers say it’s not that straightforward. Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) biologists must first confirm that a wolf was responsible for an animal’s death, called a “depredation.” To do that, they need a body. One that’s still in good shape.
“It’s going to be really difficult, especially in the summer, to find a carcass in time,” rancher Caitlyn Taussig said. “If you are not finding it within the first few hours, it’s being scavenged or eaten by other animals to the point that it’s impossible to know what happened.”
That’s a more complicated problem than it might seem. It’s amazing how fast a carcass can be reduced to scattered bones and hair. When I still lived in the state, one year I had drawn a September black bear tag, and so the weekend before the season opened I was out scouting around and was excited to find a dead cow. Why? Because a bear will come to any kind of carcass like Yogi on a pick a-nick basket, and so on opening morning, four days later, I slipped into the valley where the carcass was a couple of hours before sunrise, took a stand a hundred yards or so away – and when the sun came up, there was no carcass. Only scattered bones and hair.
Expecting ranchers to produce a carcass with clearly defined markings of a wolf kill isn’t as easy as it sounds. Maybe one in five such calves can be found in good enough shape to warrant compensation.
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We live around wolves here in the Great Land. There is a local pack of about seven that we hear howling from time to time, and last fall there were several sightings of a lone young male hanging around the area; we saw him once while driving on the Parks Highway south of the Talkeetna turnoff. But there’s a huge difference; Alaska has more than enough vast wild places to support wolves, and few if any people have free-range livestock where wolves would be tempted to take a calf or a lamb. We know the wolves are around but they tend to stay away from human habitations and we don’t interact with them much – and I love to hear them sing. But that’s Alaska.
Colorado is very different. Not only is it more densely settled, but the Centennial State is still home to many families who depend on the land to feed and support their cattle, which are valuable assets. Wolves were reintroduced into Colorado at the whims of urban environmentalists who care little about the ranchers and who rarely go out in the actual environment to see what their whims have wrought. Now the ranchers are, in a reversal of the usual form, having to turn to Washington for help. And, no matter what the Trump administration does, it’s very likely that the cattlemen will resort to the classic old rule: “Shoot, shovel, and shut up.”
