COLORADO — Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) announced on Sunday, January 19, that the second year of gray wolf captures and releases is complete.
They say 15 wolves from British Columbia (B.C.), Canada, and five wolves from the Copper Creek Pack were relocated to Eagle and Pitkin Counties.
This is the last wolf release of the 2024-2025 season, but only the second of 3-5 total wolf releases for the Colorado Gray Wold Restoration and Management Plan.
During the six-day trip to B.C., the CPW caught seven male and eight female wolves. The wolves were taken from an area that is reducing predators for caribou recovery.
From Copper Creek, the CPW relocated one female and four pups.
"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."
The CPW says it is dedicated to restoring the gray wolf population in Colorado, while also mitigating the wolf-livestock conflict.
For more information on the CPW's Conflict Minimization Program, you can visit their website.
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