By Lindy Browning | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice
On Saturday, Jan. 11, Colorado Parks and Wildlife put out a press release that they were going to begin trapping and transporting operations to bring up to 15 Canadian Grey Wolves from British Columbia, Canada, to Western Colorado.
One day later, wolves were on the ground in Garfield County. A plane, operated by Lighthawk Conservation Flying, is the same plane that CPW leased in December 2023 to bring wolves from Oregon to the state.
The aircraft left Prince St. George, British Columbia, early in the morning of Jan. 12, and landed at Eagle County Airport at about 4 p.m., where witnesses on the ground saw CPW vehicles equipped with a trailer and animal crates leave the airport and head west on Interstate 70.
Eagle Airport is staffed with a U.S. Customs and Border Protection staff, which allows for the requirements under the law to import from Canada.
At 5:45 p.m., a witness, who spotted the CPW caravan, took live video confirming that the CPW vehicles were headed west on I-70 south of Glenwood Canyon.
On Monday, Jan. 13, Garfield County officials confirmed that the wolves were not released in Garfield County, fueling public speculation concerning the release site.
Given that CPW officials said during public meetings in December that there were very limited locations where the wolves could be released in Eagle, Pitkin and Garfield Counties, it is safe to assume they are either in Eagle or Pitkin County.
During those December public meetings, Travis Black told members of the community that the state-owned property in Eagle County was limited, Pitkin County state property even more limited, although Prop. 144 allows for private land to be used as a release site with owners’ permission.
At the meeting in New Castle, where Black talked about the limited property in Pitkin County, he also said, “We haven’t had any private landowners come forward and offer up their land at this time.”
Since the CPW caravan was headed south from the Eagle County airport, it may have left the public speculating on a location in Pitkin County.
Former senator and newly-elected Garfield County Commissioner Perry Will said, “CPW has got to do a much, much, much better job at transparency. I am afraid that the public trust has been seriously damaged.”
Will, prior to being an elected official, is a wildlife biologist who gave 24 years of his career to CPW, and said he is concerned about the damage to the agency that has occurred in the last few years.
“We worked hard to build that agency up and build public trust, and I see it being damaged now,” he said.
Also on Jan. 13, the same plane that traveled from Prince St. George, British Columbia, and landed at the Eagle County Airport late yesterday afternoon, was seen back in the air on a flight tracker app, headed back to British Columbia at about noon.
CPW has said all along the goal was to have the 2025 wolves in Western Colorado by the end of January, allowing the wolves to settle in and begin their breeding season in February.
On Jan. 8, CPW Commissioners held a hearing to determine if they were going to approve a petition filed by groups in 63 of the 64 Colorado counties and included organizations such as the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association, Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, Colorado Farm Bureau, Club 20 and Colorado Wool Growers Association, as well as several local livestock and stockgrowers’ associations.
The petition asked for a pause because several of the livestock mitigation programs that CPW has worked on are still not fully functional, and because some of the definitions pertaining to what CPW was defining as chronic depredation are still vague and not clearly defined in the language.
The range rider program is in its infancy, and the first training for applicants to the program is not scheduled until after the target date for all the 2025 wolf arrivals.
Another range rider training is scheduled for April 2025, long after the calving and lambing season is over. CPW plans to hire 12 range riders, which is not sufficient for the vast areas of the western slope, although they have said they will prioritize the locations of the riders according to their internal data that shows where the need is the greatest depending on current levels of depredation or imminent risk of depredation.
The carcass management program is not fully funded and operational; there is still a large number of livestock producers waiting for a risk assessment to identify the things on their property along with CPW employees that can be mitigated in a way that is specific to their operation.
That risk assessment is critical to have because it, in part, determines the extent of management tools that can be implemented in the event of chronic depredation. With or without the assessment, all depredation losses will still be compensated.
There are a lot of questions from the Western Slope community concerning how the wolves could so quickly have been trapped, checked over thoroughly by a qualified veterinarian, fitted for collars and transported into Colorado if the trapping didn’t begin until after the hearing with CPW Commissioners on Jan. 8.
Even more, the public is noticing that the press release, dated Jan. 11, announcing the beginning of the 2025 wolf trapping isn’t making sense when they saw a plane arrive the next day with confirmation from local officials that wolves did in fact arrive in western Colorado less than 24 hours from the press release from CPW.
Wolf operations will continue until CPW has achieved their stated goal of 10 to 15 wolves being released in 2025.