Feds to Polis administration: Stop importing wolves from Canada

By Marianne Goodland | The Denver Gazette

Efforts by Colorado Parks and Wildlife to bring in more wolves from Canada later this year may have hit a snag after the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service told the state it may not do so.

In an Oct. 10 letter, Brian Nesvik, director of USFWS, told Gov. Jared Polis and Jeff Davis, director of Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), that Colorado is not allowed to bring in gray wolves from Canada or Alaska. Any wolves brought to Colorado as part of the wolf reintroduction program must come from one of the lower 48 states, the agency said.

Nesvik cited what’s called 10(j) rule, noting USFWS authorized the state to release and establish gray wolves in Colorado as an experimental population “subject to Service oversight.”

However, the 10(j) rule only allowed Colorado to obtain wolves from the delisted northern Rocky Mountains (NRM) population area. That’s limited to Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, the eastern third of Oregon, the eastern third of Washington and north-central Utah.

“We have reason to believe that CPW may be seeking to capture, transport and/or release one or more wolves” from outside the NRM outlined in the 10(j) rule, Nesvik wrote. “To the extent that these reports are true, such actions are violative of the 10(j) rule.”

Nesvik wrote that Colorado Parks and Wildlife must “immediately cease and desist any and all efforts related to the capture, transport and/or release of gray wolves” not obtained from the NRM region.

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