GRAND COUNTY, Colo. — The accomplishments, turmoil and novelty of Colorado's first gray wolf reintroduction exactly one year ago have captured the attention of the state and beyond, but controversy continues to follow the historic program as it heads into 2025.
In generalized terms, the past year looked a bit like this: Five wild wolves released. Another five released. The first calf killed. Outcry from ranchers. Adjustments. A string of more depredations. Wolf pups spotted. Outcry from ranchers. Adjustments. Outcry from ranchers. Adjustments. Another string of depredations. A wolf pack captured. Three dead wolves. Preparation for a second release. A petition to stop it.
Anguish. Hope. And lots and lots of questions.
2024 is closing with a lengthy timeline of milestones, but whether they are success stories or failures depends on who you ask.
Wolf pups? Encouraging news for supporters, who have hoped to see the population grow. But opponents saw more hungry mouths to threaten their livelihood.
Wolf deaths? Fewer of those hungry mouths and a springboard to call the program a failure. But wildlife officials stressed the mortality rate was typical, and those animals died around the end of their lifespan.
Depredations? Officials expected depredations this year, and with the latest confirmed wolf kill in September, it appears the yearly total will stand at 26. Ranchers, particularly those who have seen multiple losses, protest this number is much higher, but unacceptable nonetheless.
Today, Colorado is home to 14 known wolves: six reintroduced wolves in the wild, two that moved in from Wyoming, one reintroduced female and her four pups who were captured in September after multiple depredations (and will likely be released this winter), and a fifth pup that could not be captured but appears to be healthy in the wild, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW).
Denver7 has covered this reintroduction program extensively over the past year and beyond, sharing stories from Coloradans with a myriad of backgrounds and opinions.
As the next round of reintroductions looms ahead, we're looking back on the wolves of 2024, and how the tough lessons learned across the board are now molding the way for 2025.
A brief recap: How did we get wolves in Colorado?
All of this movement around wolves in Colorado is the result of the state's voter-mandated reintroduction effort.
Gray wolves are currently classified as an endangered species by the State of Colorado. The animals are native to the state, but were exterminated by shooters and trappers, and became functionally extinct by the 1940s.
In the 2020 election, Proposition 114 landed on the Colorado ballot. It proposed mandating that CPW develop a plan to start reintroducing and managing gray wolves in western Colorado and to take steps to begin those reintroductions by Dec. 31, 2023. The proposition passed with 50.91% of the vote. Most of the "Yes" votes were along the Front Range and most of the "No" votes were outside of that area, with a few exceptions.
After two and a half years of Technical Working Group and a Stakeholder Advisory Group discussions, CPW published the finalized Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan in May 2023, clearing the way for wolf reintroductions to start at the end of the year.
Per that plan, CPW released its first five gray wolves on Dec. 18, 2023 at an undisclosed place in Grand County. Five more were released a few days later in Grand and Summit counties.
Denver7 360 | In-Depth News
Grand County residents brace as gray wolf reintroduction process begins
The second cycle of reintroductions will happen in the next few months. CPW said it plans to capture up to 15 wolves from British Columbia and release them in Colorado sometime between January and March 2025.
The 261-page management plan lists the goal of translocating 10 to 15 wolves per year for a total of 30 to 50 wolves over three to five years. After that point, the active reintroduction efforts will stop and CPW will focus solely on monitoring to see if the population is self-sustaining.
The reintroduction will be considered successful if the survival rate is high, the wolves stay in Colorado, packs are formed and breed, and if wolves born in Colorado survive and go on to reproduce, according to the plan.
Read the full wolf restoration and management plan below or here.
The lives, deaths and births of Colorado's wolves in 2024
The video has been played far and wide. Five gray wolves with neon GPS collars spring out of gray crates in a Grand County field, with CPW staff carefully watching from behind.
It was Dec. 18, 2023.
“This is a historic day for Colorado,” CPW Director Jeff Davis said in a press release.
A few days afterward, five more were released.
Over the next year, they meandered in every direction, briefly entering Rocky Mountain National Park this summer and moving south of Interstate 70 for the first time in early November.
Brenna Cassidy, wolf monitoring and data coordinator with CPW, analyzed data from their GPS collars.
"They did kind of what we predicted," she said. "The only surprise I would say that we had: I kind of thought they would move more. I thought... a wolf would go much, much farther. And what that really signals to me is that they were released in... areas that they had all of their needs met. So, you know, space from most humans, a lot of prey animals like deer and elk."
Regarding elk, which are the preferred prey for wolves, CPW reported post-hunt 2023 that 43% of their populations were above their herd management plan population objective ranges, 40% were within the range, and 17% were below it. It will take some time before adequate data can show any impacts made by wolves, CPW said.
Wolves travel long distances, sometimes up to 500 miles, as part of their "exploratory movements" to see if a habitat suits them, Cassidy continued. This is why some parts of the wolf activity maps were highlighted in purple for one month, but not the next. CPW releases maps once a month showing the watersheds the wolves had explored.
Hear Cassidy explain more about the wolves' movements in their first year in the video below.
At least some of the reintroduced wolves interacted with the two wolves that naturally came into Colorado from Wyoming, Cassidy said. In March, a couple of the GPS collars began to fail.
Amid these travels, three of the reintroduced wolves died. In April, a wolf was found deceased after a likely mountain lion attack. In early September, an injured adult male that was captured as part of the Copper Creek Pack relocation effort died. A couple weeks later, a third one was found deceased with wounds that appeared to be from another wolf or canid.
Cassidy, whose PhD is centered on wolf mortality, said these three wolves were all between 3 and 4 years old. She said most people are shocked to learn a wild wolf's average lifespan is so short.
"It doesn't seem like very long, especially when you consider having dogs in our homes that live to be, you know, 12, 14, 16 years old," she said. "It's surprising that they only live to be 3 to 4. So, what that means for the three wolves that have died in Colorado is that that's very unsurprising to us. That is pretty average mortality for wolves."
The Copper Creek Pack was officially named in June, and consisted of one breeding pair and five pups, according to CPW. On June 18, CPW biologists spotted a single wolf pup at the den site in Grand County. Despite pleas from ranchers, CPW said it would not remove an adult male in the pack that was linked to multiple depredations — meaning a wolf attack that either seriously injures or kills livestock —because he was part of the breeding pair.
In August, Mike Usalavage, a Colorado hunter and avid outdoor enthusiast, shared a video — the first to be published publicly — of multiple wolf pups playing along a dirt road that he had traveled on several times before.
"It was so special. And I wish all my kids would have been there just to see that. I wish my mom could have seen it, everybody I care about," he said. "It was fantastic just to witness that."
"We came over this little rise, and right there they were, the three pups playing amongst themselves," he told Denver7 on Tuesday. "We got to see them splashing in a puddle and chasing each other. Fun to watch. I think we ended up watching them for almost 10 minutes before they got spooked about something."
As he had planned, he spent the night in the woods and mulled over what to do with the video.
"I did not vote for this wolf reintroduction. I voted against it," Usalavage said. "But after seeing the wolves, you know, by the hour, I was becoming more attached to them. I felt like I needed to take some ownership in the video and all of a sudden, I felt like I needed to start protecting them."
He shared it with CPW and gave the agency permission to put it on their social media, where it promptly gathered hundreds of thousands of views and countless comments. Nowadays, Usalavage keeps up with wolf updates around the state, though he still feels torn about how aspects of the reintroduction were handled and what the next year will hold.
Usalavage explains how he still feels "torn" about the reintroduction in the video below.
"I'm a sportsman. I'm outside," he said. "How's it going to affect the deer population and the elk population? The other side of it is I really like cheeseburgers," he said. "So I understand the perspective from the ranchers. I guess the wolves like cheeseburgers too. And maybe that's the whole problem. ... It is exciting, though, to see wolf pups playing out in the middle of the road like that. That was fun to see. It kind of changed my perspective."
By the end of August, CPW announced that it had started an operation to capture and relocate the wolves — and those pups — from the Copper Creek Pack due to the multiple depredations. Ranchers applauded the decision while wildlife advocates questioned what they called a "risky operation." All but one wolf pup were captured by Sept. 9 and brought to a large, secure enclosure with extremely limited human presence. Those wolves are set to be released this winter.
The second set of reintroductions is set to happen between January and March 2025, when CPW staff plans to capture up to 15 wolves from British Columbia and release them in Colorado.
Looking back on the year, Cassidy said there were many moments outside of these major milestones that she considers special.
"They're occurring within conversations with people that I've met in various communities, where it's often someone who had just seen a wolf, or experienced hearing a howl out in the wild or something," she explained. "And I've had a number of people who are definitely not fans of wolves classically and have informed me of such, that kind of come back around in this conversation and say, 'These are pretty incredible animals, and I can see why people connect with them so much.'"
The first confirmed depredation: 'Total panic. Heartbreak.'
About 100 days after the first five wolves were released, Doug Bruchez, owner and manager of Reeder Creek Ranch in Grand County, walked around his property. He is a fifth-generation rancher — his family has been there since 1999 — and has laid eyes on some tough scenes. But he wasn't expecting what he saw on April 2, 2024.
A dead bull calf in the snow. Its mother nearby. A clear sign of struggle in the spring snow. She had fought to save the life of her calf, but the wolves had had a successful hunt. Dozens of other cows looked on. In a brief video Bruchez recorded, the herd looked bewildered.
“Total panic. Heartbreak," Bruchez said. "And if you saw the reaction of the cows, even more heartbreak. They’re out there and they didn’t know what to think either."
It was the first confirmed wolf depredation on livestock in Colorado since the 2023 reintroduction. For weeks on end, Bruchez spent cold nights out with his cattle, where he recalled seeing the wolves "a lot."
"I was very mad," he remembered. "I was very upset, and needed to come up with ways to try and make sure that didn't happen again... You put your heart and soul into an animal. I don’t see how you don’t have feelings for them. I wouldn’t exactly call them pets, but I care deeply about them."
But for Bruchez and his neighbors, the dead calf was far from the first sign that wolves were nearby.
Toward the end of December and through January, February and March, he started seeing wolf tracks close to his home. A few cattle died for reasons he could not explain. He suspects the wolves killed four of them, in addition to the calf in early April, but the others were not confirmed.
Spring is already a vulnerable time for cows, as they birth calves that cannot fend off predators and leave the smell of placenta hanging in the air.
"And then you add this on top," Bruchez said. "... These cows are not only my livelihood. I spent a lot of time with them."
Bruchez's cows, now well-aware of the predators around them, became stressed and no longer responded well to his dogs tasked with moving them, he said. On the few nights in April that Bruchez wasn't out with the cattle, his worries wandered back to the herd. The stress drove him to seek blood pressure medicine from his doctor.
In the video below, hear directly from Bruchez about the pressure of keeping his cattle away from the nearby wolves that were reintroduced last winter.
On the morning of Dec. 12, as he looked across a grazing pasture and the 300 cows munching on hay, he told Denver7 that he sees the landscape a little differently now.
“It’s weird. It’s definitely weird," he said, and then raised a hand to point in several directions. "It’s beautiful, but when you can say a cow got killed there, wolf den site, wolf rendezvous site, cattle got killed there. It was not an easy summer.”
About a week after the calf kill, CPW confirmed another wolf kill in Jackson County, then four yearling cattle deaths at one property on April 18.
As of this article's publishing time, ranchers in Grand County, Routt County and Jackson County have reported wolf attacks on livestock and CPW has confirmed 26 of those deaths across 16 incidents west of the Continental Divide were indeed the result of wolves.
CPW on lessons learned after the 2023 wolf release
In short statements over the span of several months, Denver7 has heard CPW staff and its director repeat that many lessons were learned after the first 10 wolves were released in December 2023.
"A big lesson learned is spending more time with county electeds and the livestock producers in the areas that we anticipate those releases," CPW Director Jeff Davis told Denver7 in an exclusive interview in September.
In November, CPW Deputy Director of Policy Reid DeWalt reiterated that one of the main focuses this year — aside from the complicated logistics of trapping, transferring and releasing new wolves — is significantly increasing communication with the counties where the releases will happen in the future. After meeting with county commissioners of four counties where wolves may be released this winter, CPW decided to remove one county from its list, though no official release location has been publicized. DeWalt said that he hopes this shows that CPW is "agile enough" to make changes when warranted.
“We have learned a lot and we’re doing things differently already," Davis added.
Within the past week, Davis said in a press release that CPW is "in a position to offer Colorado livestock producers an even more robust program that includes the tools, support and resources needed to minimize wolf-livestock conflict" going into 2025.
"CPW staff and our partners have been working hard, learning and adapting throughout this first year of wolf restoration in Colorado," Davis continued. "The deployment of this stronger conflict minimization program is critical as we prepare to release wolves this upcoming season."
Throughout this year, CPW brought on five conflict reduction specialists, with five more coming this month. They work closely with Adam Baca, CPW's wolf conflict program coordinator, who is based out of Jackson County but works statewide.
"It is one of the most challenging wildlife management issues out there, but I will say, working with the five damage specialists we've onboarded, I'm pretty darn excited," he said. "They've shown just an incredible set of skills and technical expertise, and they've provided a lot of support on a number of fronts — to the agency, to producers — and I'm really excited to continue working with them."
Baca stepped into the role in June 2022 and has met with livestock producers across Colorado.
"This is kind of a new realm for them, and we're learning what it's going to look like on the landscape," he said. "... Getting people with the technical expertise to communicate and the social skills to be able to navigate some of those challenging conversations, as far as acknowledging some of those difficulties and being understanding, even when people are just venting — that's been something that we've worked on, and have aggressively improved a lot on."
This fall, CPW, Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA), U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services, and CSU Extension held several workshops focused on non-lethal predator conflict mitigation across eight counties. More than 200 people have attended and learned about a multitude of different non-lethal tactics to keep wolves away from livestock.
"Any one of these topics could take a full day to get completely up to speed, and so that's a jumping off point for producers to follow up with their local damage specialists or district wildlife managers," Baca said. "And then our staff are communicating that at some of the more local events, local stock or board meetings, conservation district meetings, and so forth."
At these training sessions, staff explained the importance of site assessments, which is when staff from CPW, CDA or the USDA identifies the best coexistence techniques for a specific rancher's property. While these free and voluntary assessments have been available since May 2023, CPW recently cleared up the process and updated related paperwork. Baca said 50 of these site assessments — which includes resource deployment — have either been completed or are in the process of wrapping up as of Wednesday.
Baca also stressed the importance of the NRCS Regional Conservation Partnership Program, which will award $2.5 million over five years to fund range riding, fencing, fladry, livestock carcass removal and other resources. The applications for this open on Jan. 10.
"I do want to emphasize that NRCS funding is huge. This is part of a larger effort across the West," he said. "This has been in the works for a long time, and it's a huge deal that we can provide these resources to our producing constituency."
On a smaller scale, grants up to $20,000 for training, education and preventative support, such as range riding or carcass management, are also available through the CDA for groups that represent multiple producers.
Before the end of the year, CPW will publish a highly requested public document — called the Wolf-Livestock Conflict Minimization Program Guide — for producers. CPW said it outlines "all conflict minimization tools, methods, state staff support available including contact information, and funding sources," and will lay out how CPW investigates depredations, how the compensation program works and criteria needed to obtain a permit to kill a problem wolf.
While some of these resources were available since the very start in 2023, others were not.
And for some ranchers, it's just too little too late.
How has Colorado addressed depredations this year?
Depredations on livestock were expected with this wolf reintroduction program, but in the eyes of the ranchers forced to reckon with the impact of each loss, it went too far.
On Dec. 12, as we spoke with rancher Bruchez outside his Grand County home, he said his cows' pregnancy rates, as well as the weight of their calves, are "way down."
"That puts me out of business," Bruchez said simply. "My weaning weights were down almost 30 pounds — 29.29 pounds. And my pregnancy rate was down from 95% to 90.5%, so that 4% in a business like mine is tens of thousands of dollars, and this is a small-margin business to be in. Where the wolves were concentrated this year, we're seeing pregnancy rates down 17%, so this could be devastating for people."
"Stressful. Anger. And frustration," he continued. "It's been a rough year."
The state is legally required to provide fair compensation to livestock owners for any economic losses if their animals are injured or killed by wolves, as outlined in the Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan. If CPW biologists confirm a wolf depredation, the compensation program will pay for 100% of fair market value compensation, up to $15,000 per animal, the plan reads.
Total statewide depredation claims of $25,000 are expected in fiscal year 2023-2024, increasing by about $5,000 in subsequent years as wolf numbers rise. This compensation program does not apply for stress on livestock caused by wolves, according to the plan.
However, Colorado State University's Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence reported that livestock producers often underuse compensation programs like this one, mainly due to "high costs and burden of proof to verify kills." Of the 16 total incidents of wolf depredations in Colorado in 2024, claims were submitted for just three of them so far, though some ranchers may file the paperwork at the end of the year.
Bruchez submitted a claim for his calf that was killed on April 2. As of now, that claim is listed as "pending," according to the CPW document tracking wolf depredations. He said he fears that payment may never come.
"As we are going through our compensation records right now, we are finding there's flaws in the writing of how this is supposed to work," he said. "It’s the first time anybody's ever done this. And... with some of the numbers that people are going to be submitting — I don't think they're going to pay us."
When we brought this question to CPW, Baca told us that the timing for the payment is "going to depend on the complexity of the claim, the review process and the claim amount."
In September, feeling like there was no solution in sight, 26 Colorado ranching groups filed a petition addressed to CPW to delay future gray wolf reintroductions until depredations are addressed and mitigation tactics are fully implemented.
The petition asks the CPW Commission to adopt a rule that would "pause further wolf introductions until specific wolf-livestock conflict mitigation strategies are fully funded, developed, and implemented." The Colorado Cattlemen's Association, one of the petitioners, said this will "ensure that CPW is equipped to manage wolf depredation and provide livestock producers with the necessary tools and resources before any wolves are put on the ground."
Tim Ritschard with the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association presented the petition at a CPW Commission meeting in November. A Colorado Attorney General's Office representative explained that the office will review the petition and develop its own recommendation to the CPW Commission. It's not clear how long that will take to complete.
Range riders and more: Advancing non-lethal solutions from 2024
Range riding has become one of the most effective tools for ranchers experiencing wolf depredations, though questions and skepticism still bounce around ranching communities.
In 2024, the state supported four of these riders, who assist ranchers by protecting herds from wolves, whether on horseback, foot or ATV. They not only keep an eye out for wolves, but can deploy non-lethal deterrents to haze the wolves when they get too close.
In two of those four instances, the ranches saw zero depredations after they came on board, and in a third, the ranch saw reduced depredations, Baca with CPW said.
While few range riders were brought in this year, the state is putting quite a bit of weight behind this tool moving forward.
Early 2025 will mark the launch of the Colorado Range Rider program, which will use funding from sales of Colorado's wolf license plates to hire contractors to work roughly five months, starting in mid-April, on the open range. The license plate sales have totaled $544,000 as of Nov. 1. A range rider interest form is now available online.
So far, about 70 people have thrown their name in the ring for this program, Baca said. CPW will onboard 10 to 12 range riders in 2025.
CPW began standing up this program after hearing suggestions from communities impacted by the wolves.
State
Colorado Range Rider program seeks applicants to help keep wolves from livestock
Range riding is, however, considered a "high-effort tool," meaning it comes with significant cost and labor, Baca said.
"And so range riding is more of a targeted approach for really, really high-conflict scenarios," he explained. "It's not the Band-Aid. It's not going to work everywhere. But it is an option to help reduce that risk and provide a little bit more security or opportunities for hazing wolves so we can kind of teach them that livestock are not a good place to be around."
Baca further describes how range riders are used — and will be used — in Colorado in the video below.
The past and future of range riding in Colorado was a popular topic at a well-attended non-lethal wolf conflict training session at the Gypsum Recreation Center on Thursday.
That afternoon, Dustin Shiflett, the CDA's first hire for the new non-lethal conflict reduction program manager position, explained that qualified applicants will go through trainings to learn techniques, effectiveness of range riding, animal husbandry and stockmanship, tracking and the environment they would work in. The CDA has two non-lethal mitigation specialists who can also work as range riders.
"We want to target local communities so they have buy-in with trusted individuals to ride around their livestock," he said.
The CDA, he explained, had funded range riders for the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association twice earlier this year.
The current rate for state range riders is $30 an hour for 10-hour shifts during the season, or roughly $40,000, a CPW employee explained to a resident at the Gypsum meeting. He answered another person's question about if range riders will be responsible for buying their own horse or having their own equipment, which was later clarified and confirmed by CDA: Range riders will be responsible for providing their own horses and equipment.
Baca added that "the ability to do their job would hinge on the equipment that they were providing."
At the end of April, Bruchez welcomed a local and trusted range rider onto his property, and said the rider, who brought all of the gear necessary, "was very effective." The rider hazed wolves about 40 times, he said.
"It was kind of a one-in-a-million thing that we had that person at the right time," he said. "But that process was not streamlined or easy... It's also a really dangerous job because you're working with horses, you're working with firearms, you're working with four-wheelers, and most of the time you're doing it at night. And so that was a big concern that we had, when we became the fiscal agent on the first range rider, was the liability — if they got hurt and we were the fiscal agent. They had to get insurance, we had to get insurance. This is not an easy process."
Nonetheless, the ranger rider came at a time when he needed it desperately. He had spent many long, cold nights out with his cattle after a calf was killed in early April. Having a range rider patrolling the property let him sleep, knowing somebody else was out there keeping an eye on the animals. Because they are often moving, they can also find any deceased animals across the large landscape and alert the property owner.
Bruchez stressed the importance of making range riders available to livestock producers as the second reintroduction nears.
"(The state is) hiring these people. They are diligently working on it," he acknowledged. "But we are going to dump more wolves off, and we are in the exact same place that we were in April of last year... I see them working and having meetings. But as far as solutions? No."
Bruchez added that carcass management — common practices for handling and disposing of deceased ranch animals — is another major aspect of ranching that is undergoing changes with the addition of wolves.
Colorado officials chatted with their counterparts in neighboring states to see what best practices they have settled on, and published a one-page summary of their findings, which you can find below or here.
"There are best management practices for carcass management," explained Shiflett, who used to own cattle and goats. "The best practice is removal, and we at the Colorado Department of Agriculture understand that that's not feasible nearly enough. So, the better practice is burial of that carcass. And then the good practice would be to either remove your livestock away from that carcass, or move the carcass away from that livestock."
It is considered one of many non-lethal tools a rancher can use, alongside fladry, fox lights and guard dogs, to name a few others that have been available in 2024. This "suite of tools" is best suited to come into play after a site assessment, Shiflett said.
"The base is the site assessment, and that is to get an agency out to see what's going to work on the producers' properties and help them decide what was going to work best for the producer in their operations, as there is some seasonality to it as well with these tools — what tools are going to be best on their landscape, and then what the producer agrees to and what they don't agree to," he explained.
In the past, ranchers have requested these assessments sometimes as a proactive measure and other times after a depredation. Either way, it aids CPW in understanding where concerns arise and how to allocate resources and staff. To apply for an assessment, contact your Area CPW Office.
CPW's Wolf Monitoring and Data Coordinator Cassidy said that wolves are typically spooked by anything new, which is the purpose of hazing tactics.
"They're trying to tap into that innate fear of something new," she explained. "So, when you think about the fox light, a flashing light, or fladry — these very odd little flags waving in the wind — a lot of those hazing methods are trying to use something that is new and that looks pretty scary from a wolf's perspective out there."
Late this spring, Denver7 shared the frustrations and solutions that a northern Colorado rancher has waded through. At the time, he was one of just four ranchers who welcomed CPW's free assistance installing fladry — a line of bright, rectangular, heavy-duty flags hung on a wire surrounding a pasture perimeter — to spook predators during the calving period. Baca, CPW's wolf conflict program coordinator, and the rancher agreed to install about a mile and half of fladry in March 2024, a few months after he had found three dead ewe lambs on his property.
At first, the rancher said he felt skeptical, but after seeing how a wolf reacted to the flags, he realized it was working. As of when we talked with him, he had not had any depredations on the property.
He said ranchers are free to do what they would like on their own land, but the free resources are available. And for him, it made all the difference.
Baca said that rancher was one of the people who requested a site assessment this year, which led to the successful fladry installation.
"We've had some really great producer partners through organizations and just producers on their own, advocate on behalf of the site assessment to their neighbors, which has been really cool to watch," Baca said. "... There's a lot of difficulty out there, there's a lot of frustration, there's a lot of challenges. But there's a lot of really forward-thinking people who are willing to work with us and willing to be vocal, and a lot of this stuff is just going to take time, consistency and relationships."
Diving into year 2 of wolf reintroductions
"The return of wolves to Colorado has basically occupied my entire mind space for the last four years," Matt Barnes, of Dolores, said with a small smile.
It's a sentiment shared by many.
Barnes, who talked with us outside Gypsum's non-lethal wolf conflict training session on Dec. 12, managed a ranch for a few years in western Colorado, which he called "one of the highlights of my life," and is now a research associate with the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative, where his work mostly centers around human-wildlife conflict reduction.
"I feel very strongly about ranching. I want to see ranching thrive, and I also want to see wildlife thrive," he said. "We are going to have wolves, we are going to have ranching, we are going to have elk hunting. We don't have to choose between those things. Most people in Colorado want all of them."
Barnes said conversations like the one held in Gypsum that day have encouraged him. As more time goes by, more people want to engage in the process and dig deep for a solution, he said.
He called the range riding program the biggest win going into the second round of wolf reintroductions, adding that Colorado will become one of the few states with a centrally coordinated program once it gets off the ground. The biggest failure on the other hand, he said, was the Copper Creek Pack's depredations in Grand County, which ultimately led to their capture.
"Unfortunately, the response was not quick enough, in retrospect, I think," he said, adding that he did believe the CDA and CPW worked quickly to get a range rider on the impacted property. "But you know what? It's not any one person's fault. It's a new thing that people are facing," he said. "I think we've all known all along that there would be growing pains. Conflict is inevitable... So, I think the agencies have a learning curve, the ranchers certainly have a learning curve, and in another sense, I think the people of Colorado have a learning curve."
Hear from Barnes in the video below, where he speaks about living in the rural west and how voters statewide impact decisions about public land in his backyard.
With both a wildlife conservation and ranching background, he believes "it's completely fair" for somebody to not desire an apex predator in their backyard.
"There are ranchers out there who are worried. There are others who are not that worried," he said. "So, I certainly know people who can see it both ways, you know? And to me, that's the big secret of this whole thing, is to try to see it from multiple perspectives at the same time and integrate those and come up with something that makes sense."
That sounds like something that could develop into an idyllic option for all parties, but for exasperated ranchers like Bruchez who have felt the erosion of trust for a year, the idea of a positive road ahead is almost impossible to picture.
"Unfortunately, I don't see a good pathway forward right now," Bruchez said. "Nobody has come up with a good solution."
"I mean, nothing, nothing about reintroducing wolves comes easy for the people on the ground experiencing it in the past year," he added.
It's fair that people don't want wolves, Barnes said.
"But the more we can try to understand why people do and don't want them, and what the underlying world views are that are informing those opinions, I think the more likely we'll get to better solutions in the end," he said.
What's next will entail "figuring out how to live with it on the ground," he said, like the Gypsum ranching community was doing at the local rec center on the afternoon of Dec. 12.
For Cassidy's wolf monitoring and data work at CPW, she jokingly wished for more hours in the day moving into 2025.
"I want to be in the field helping people learn about wolves if they haven't worked with them before," she said. "I want to be in the office designing these monitoring protocols. I want to be out in communities, being available to people to have conversations about what are wolves doing here, what's happening out there."
After a year of becoming ingrained in this reintroduction program and the people it has affected, she continues to find herself face to face with one way forward — something that is equally simple as it is complex.
"The thing that I keep coming back to is that patience is key. You know, we're a year into this restoration program, and everybody in the state is learning together, and we're trying to communicate those lessons that we've learned," she explained. "And a year, in the grand scheme of things when we're thinking about ecology, is not very long. So, I just keep coming back to patience. Being patient is key."
Want to learn more about Colorado's wolf reintroduction? You can explore the below timeline, which outlines all of Denver7's coverage since the very beginning. The timeline starts with our most recent story.
