Rancher gets additional $100K for livestock wolf kills in 6-5 CPW commission vote after heated debate

By Tracy Ross | Colorado Sun

The Colorado Parks and Wildlife commission voted 6-5 to compensate rancher Conway Farrell after a heated debate that revealed division on the commission.

A rancher who received $287,408 in compensation for livestock killed by wolves in 2024 was granted an additional $100,046 on Thursday, after the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission narrowly approved his latest claim. 

The vote on the table was for the commission to adopt CPW staff’s recommendation to deny rancher Conway Farrell’s claim for direct losses of 89 calves during the time wolves were known to be attacking his sheep and cattle in 2024.

The commission voted 6-5 to reject the guidance, effectively granting Farrell’s request. 

Commissioners Gabriel Otero, Eden Vardy, Frances Silva Blaney, Tai Jacober, Murphy Robinson, and former commission chair Dallas May voted “no,” while commissioners Jay Tuchton, Jessica Beaulieu and Jack Murphy, as well as newly appointed commissioner John Emerick and new commission chair Rich Reading voted “yes.”  

A second producer requesting $38,060 in compensation for direct losses was granted the money by a similar vote, with the commission rejecting CPW’s recommendation they deny the claim by the same 6-5 split.

The vote followed a heated debate in which lawyers for Farrell and CPW labored over wording in state statute that says a rancher can only be paid for certain direct losses above their “baseline losses” and that those direct losses can only include a certain number of missing calves. 

Farrell had multiple confirmed cattle losses on his Grand County ranch last year. Wolves who killed them bred, and after the female had puppies, they were named the Copper Creek Pack. CPW in April trapped the adults and four of five puppies and moved them to an animal sanctuary in an undisclosed location. The male died after arrival, from complications related to a gunshot wound. The death is still being investigated. 

Farrell’s lawyer argued that current regulations provide for compensation when the number of a producer’s missing calves exceeds their baseline death loss, and that the regulation defines baseline death loss to include missing and dead calves. So, because the regulation does not define “missing,” when read in context, it means “missing and dead,” she said, and therefore the regulation requires the state to compensate ranchers for missing calves. 

But CPW’s lawyer argued that the livestock interpretation Farrell’s side presented asked the commission “to add words to the regulation … and the law says you cannot do that. It’s crystal clear.” 

The commissioners’ debate that followed centered not only on wording or technicality, however, but also on what several commissioners along with rancher Lenny Klinglesmith, who helped write the wolf plan on the Stakeholder Advisory Group, and Jeff Davis, CPW director, all indicated was a divide that could put the entire wolf reintroduction program in danger. 

“The bottom line” in the situation at hand was “a producer suffered loss, substantial loss, and that loss should be compensated,” Klinglesmith said. “And to try to deny that claim based on legal interpretation of language that goes against the intent is a bad idea.” 

But Tuchton, Beaulieu and, initially, Robinson, argued that what was important was to follow the law. 

May pushed back, saying the will of the Colorado voters was that the state “enact a successful wolf reintroduction plan and make that for the best of the wolves, and also not drive producers out of business.” 

To do so “we compensate them fairly for losses, and I thought the wording of Prop. 114 did all that,” he said, referring to the ballot measure voters passed in 2020 instructing the Colorado Division of Wildlife to restore gray wolves west of the Continental Divide. “I just don’t understand the conflict we continue to have.” 

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