By Lindy Browning | Contributing Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
It’s been just more than a year since Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) began implementing the 2020 narrowly-approved Proposition 114 to reintroduce the gray wolf.
So far, there doesn’t seem to be anyone who is calling the effort a success.
CPW employees are being ostracized in their communities, ranchers and livestock growers are taking significant losses, people on the Western Slope feel stomped on by Front Range voters and state government officials’ progressive agendas.
Even the wolves themselves are suffering, all over a decision made by emotional voters who have no expertise in either wildlife management or predator/prey relationships, and who were not given all the information that they needed to make a good decision for their neighbors to the west and in the best interest of all the 903 species of wildlife in Colorado.
If voters were to be given a do-over, knowing now what they didn’t know then, Prop. 114 would likely not have passed. The circumstantial evidence that informs my opinion is based on the most recent outcome of the 2024 vote against Prop. 127, the ban on hunting “big cats”.
People across the state recognized that ballot-box biology concerning wolves was a disaster and they were not going to exacerbate the problem with Prop. 127.
Voters seemed to realize in Prop 127, that ballot-box biology creates more conflict and loss to livestock growers who feed their neighbors, puts more pressure on CPW employees, and costs the voters millions of dollars for new programs, state employees and funds to compensate livestock growers for loss.
They also see that of the 10 wolves that were transplanted, three wolves have met their demise and four have been captured and detained for killing more than 20 cattle and sheep and four dogs. One of the pups from that pack was not captured and left to fend for itself.
According to CPW statements at the time, they told the public that the pup was old enough to fend for itself, while at the same time putting out a statement that its four other siblings were too young to fend for themselves; hence they were captured along with their livestock-killing mother and father.
The father died just days after his capture from injuries that occurred prior to his capture. The pup that was left in the wild has not been seen since.
People saw that allowing two apex predators to populate without management controls would decimate the numbers of deer, elk and other ungulate populations. Only a year into reintroducing wolves, CPW is currently conducting field counts to determine the population of elk and deer.
It stands to reason that as the number of wolves increase, the number of ungulates will decrease. The next logical step is to reduce hunting licenses in order to preserve the ungulate species.
It may sound a bit conspiratorial, but some of us wonder if that may have been one of the objectives in the first place given our governor and his unelected spouse, the first gentleman’s, penchant for environmental justice and animal rights activism.
We have seen what has happened in Montana, Wyoming, Oregon and in British Columbia where the next batch of wolves will be captured.
According to information from state wildlife management agencies in states that have reintroduced wolves in small numbers, the population of wolves have exploded and are killing off their deer, elk and, in the case of British Columbia, their caribou to the point that British Columbia has set a goal to reduce the wolf population by approximately 250 wolves per year.
Wyoming has a hunting season for wolves in certain parts of the state, while in other parts of the state there are no restrictions on the taking of wolves. In 2023, 118 wolves were killed in Wyoming.
In Montana, wolves are also managed through hunting as the population far exceeds management goals. In the Montana wolf season, 286 wolves were harvested. Oregon issues a permit to eliminate any wolf that has at least two livestock predations in the same area over a nine-month period.
How it started
When Mike Phillips and Rob Edward, his friend and co- worker, at the Turner Endangered Species Fund, and others heard that once again, CPW officials rejected reintroduction of wolves in 2016, they and others began planning a way to take the issue to the voters.
CPW rejected the possibility in 1982 and in 1989, citing the same criteria that they used in rejecting the 2016 notion.
In 2016, CPW noted concerns for elk and deer herds in the state, risks to livestock conflict and because national grey wolf population numbers already exceeded national goals. They knew how the elk herds and other prey ungulate herds had been severely impacted and how much predation occurred with livestock in other states.
Phillips and Edward knew that it was going to take a lot of money and the help of powerful friends that they both knew through their work together at the Turner Endangered Species Fund.
These connections and funding through wealthy environmental groups was critical to accomplishing what they had been dreaming about and trying to find a way to implement since Phillips’ first efforts to bring wolves to Colorado in 1997. With such powerful and well-funded friends, they and others created the Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund and raised over $2.4 million dollars.
They are credited with leading the successful citizen initiative campaign in Prop. 114. With help from out-of-state funding from people and organizations that are tied to progressive social and environmental justice platforms, the plan began taking shape.
Starting the Rocky Mountain Wolf Action fund with the help of Richard Pritzlaff Founder of Biofilia Foundation, Phillips and Edward were quickly infused with some substantial seed money to create and disperse a specific narrative which was light on facts, nor did that narrative include all the information voters would need to come to a fully-informed vote on the ballot initiative.
Biofilia is a foundation committed to implementing biodiversity on private land, and contributed nearly $600,000.
They also obtained nearly a half million dollars from the Tides Foundation. The Tides Foundation is an organization that focuses funding on social and environmental justice, and distributes money from anonymous donors to exclusively progressive activist political campaigns.
The Tides Foundation has received more than $3.5 million dollars from George Soros, who subscribes to the same interests globally.
Defenders of Wildlife, also an environmental group out of Washington, D.C., gave $350,000. Timothy Ferriss, an environmentalist and author out of New York, gave $125,000. Organizations who gave less than $100,000, but more than $50,000, include Center for Biodiversity, Colorado Sierra Club, an organization that lobbies for social and environmental justice, and the Natural Resource Council.
All together, Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund raised more than $2.4 million dollars for the Prop. 114 campaign. Its sister organization, Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, continues to fund and lobby for the implementation of the 2020 wolf initiative. In fact, they and others that funded and launched the 2020 bill were involved in CPW developing the policy and implementation of the wolf reintroduction prior to the 2023 first release; and they are still involved in making policy recommendations.
In addition to their role in advising the making and implementation of policy, they have put up a $50,000 reward for leads that result in charges against anyone who poaches a wolf in Colorado. The Center of Biodiversity who also funded and campaigned for Prop 114 also has put up another $15,000 reward.
Maybe it’s just me, but it feels more than a little incestuous that the same people that brought and funded the campaign for Prop. 114 are also the same people that are at the table assisting the state to make policy and funding rewards. It seems ironic that the people who created the problem are managing the problem, funding the problem and introducing policy to perpetuate the problem.
Lindy Browning is a contributing writer for Rocky Mountain Voice and a Front Range resident.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.