Colorado Ranchers Say Wolf Plan Built on Lies and Broken Promises

By Miles Blumhardt | The Coloradoan

PITKIN COUNTY — Distrust of Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s implementation of the wolf recovery plan runs as deep as the Capital and Sopris creek drainages where longtime ranching neighbors Mike Cerveny and Brad Day run around 700 cattle combined.

The two buddies from Wisconsin moved to the stunning Roaring Fork Valley about 30 years ago and have been steadily building their herds on leased ranches, unable to buy their own property due to the high cost of land 20 miles from ritzy Aspen.

They admit there are plenty of challenges ranching among multimillion dollar homes steadily squeezing the ranches they lease.

But the latest challenge is a gut punch that staggered the steady ranchers because it happened so quickly, secretly in conjunction with a nearby private landowner and without communication from the agency that rereleased wolves at their backdoor.

“They never told us what pack we got, just that initially we will have conflicts,” Mike Cerveny, a Pitkin County rancher who suffered the first of the eight Copper Creek pack’s depredations in Pitkin County this year March 3, told the Coloradoan. “Well, we found out later they dropped off the Copper Creek pack and these wolves have been chewing on, chasing, injuring and killing our calves since the first week of March.

“CPW tries to put a nice little bow on the wolf program, but it’s just a bunch of lies and half-truths is all it is.”

Copper Creek pack writing another chapter of livestock killing in Pitkin County

Colorado Parks and Wildlife removed the Copper Creek pack’s breeding adults and four pups last fall after confirmed repeated depredations, mainly on the Farrell Ranch in Grand County. The agency placed the wolves in a temporary holding facility, at which the adult male died from a gunshot wound it sustained in the wild. Trappers failed to capture a fifth pack pup.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Jeff Davis said previously that rereleasing the remaining five pack members on private land is a decision he made alone and that he “question(s) that decision every day.” He added the landowner knew they were getting the Copper Creek pack in Pitkin County.

The rerelease of the pack went against the state’s wolf recovery plan inferred that known depredating wolves should not be translocated to others areas of the state.

The depredating resulted in the state wildlife agency lethally removing a yearling male from the pack May 29 under its definition of chronic depredation, defined by three confirmed depredations in a 30-day period, to see if it would alter the pack’s propensity to kill cattle.

Cerveny and Day said it hasn’t.

“The wolves’ behavior, like CPW’s, hasn’t changed,” said Cerveny, who has had two direct conversations with Davis.

Cerveny, who leases the Lost Marbles ranch, and Day, who leases the neighboring McCabe Ranch, have suffered seven of the eight confirmed Copper Creek pack wolf depredations in Pitkin County this year, the latest being one of Day’s calves found on a public grazing allotment July 18. It was the first wolf kill on public land.

Cerveny and Day said there also have been several unconfirmed wolf kills and that the pack continues to attack their cattle despite the presence of range riders, which is another beef they have with Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

The Copper Creek pack alone has already likely accounted for more than $400,000 in compensation awards to ranchers, with potential for compensation to match that total after the pack’s depredations this year.

“If they have a problem pack, why should they allow one pack to define the whole program,” Cerveny said. “Like everything else, wolves are wonderful creatures in their own environment. I just don’t want them eating my cattle.”

Eric Odell, Colorado Parks and Wildlife wolf conservation program manager, told the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission at its July 17 meeting in Grand Junction there have been challenges but no surprises in how the wolf reintroduction has gone, including wolf-livestock conflicts.

“It is a success,” Odell said about the program. “We are working toward success in many different ways, not just from a wolf population side of things but from a producer perspective as well; we hope to…”

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