DENVER (KDVR) — Colorado Parks and Wildlife plans to relocate 15 wolves from Canada next month, and people on both sides of the controversy are trying to intervene with Canadian officials.
On Tuesday, several pro-wolf reintroduction groups sent a joint letter to the ministers overseeing the decision to translocate wolves from British Columbia to Colorado asking them to send more. It comes almost a week after 26 anti-wolf reintroduction groups told them not to get involved and to delay putting more wolves on the ground.
“It represents the hopes and dreams of so many people who want to see wolves restored here in Colorado,” said Rob Edward, president of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project. “A couple have died and some have been pulled back into captivity for the time being. So we need to have more wolves out on the ground out in Western Colorado.”
Tim Ritschard is the president of the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association, which was among the groups that petitioned the state last year to lethally remove wolves killing livestock in the mountains.
“I know, obviously, they want to move forward with it. We want to pause right now,” he said.
Ritschard wants to see a number of things before Canada sends more wolves
“Probably one of the big ones is transparency and communication,” said Ritschard. “I think we’ve seen what happened with the release of Dec. 18, 2023, and how nobody knew anything about it and then all of sudden here we were.”
FOX31 learned from CPW last month that the counties currently being considered for release locations are Garfield, Eagle and Pitkin counties.
“I really think that that should have been communicated in October or even earlier. To where people in those areas can hire those range riders and get stuff in place before we have wolves on the ground,” said Ritschard. “So, that’s our big push.”
He said the impact of producers having confirmed kills and missing animals is still unknown.
“I mean, we haven’t even seen the reimbursement yet,” said Ritschard. “This is our livelihood, this is our way of life. It’s different when you’re the one being impacted rather than sitting somewhere that you are not being impacted.”
“This isn’t just some sort of strange liberal dream. It’s actually an important ecological project that has implications of the future of the American West,” Edward said. “The places that we believe are wild in the West aren’t wild if they don’t have wolves. More importantly, they aren’t healthy if they don’t have wolves.”
Pro-wolf groups say they want to coexist with livestock producers. One of the ways they are doing that is to help build support for the “Born to Be Wild” license plates.
Since they came out at the beginning of the year, they have raised $600,000 to go to ranchers affected, FOX31 learned. Meanwhile, anti-wolf groups say they are not sure there’s enough money out there to help make producers whole.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
