State Leaders Should Pause Colorado Wolf Effort After Series of Blunders

By The Gazette Editorial Board | Commentary, The Gazette

Five years after Coloradans voted by a razor-thin margin to reintroduce wolves to Colorado, they are right to look at the job state officials and agencies have done and ponder whether this a dog that just doesn’t hunt. Amid criticism from pro-wolf advocates and anti-reintroduction ranchers alike, is it past time for a moratorium?

The latest bungled bit in the state’s fumbling reintroduction saga is the “stepping down” — demotion, reassignment, whatever public-relations-friendly term you prefer — of former Colorado Parks & Wildlife Director Jeff Davis. Before the end of last month, and amid the holiday news haze preceding Thanksgiving, the Colorado Department of Natural Resources announced Davis “stepped down” and was moving to a new role in the executive director’s office as “senior policy advisor for strategic priorities.” The move came days after Davis, in charge of the state’s beleaguered wolf-reintroduction effort, was turned down eight votes to one by the board of his former employer of 23 years, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, on Colorado’s request for 15 wolves. 

Up in what you’d expect to be the friendly confines of progressive Washington, it was pro-wolf activists who didn’t mince words. They said Colorado’s “ill-conceived” reintroduction effort was “ballot-box biology.” Citing the issues Colorado had with wolves brought in earlier from Oregon, they said “translocated wolves fare worse.” And they even said Davis, Gov. Jared Polis and CPW had “the audacity to ask for more” and “passed the burden onto another state’s endangered wolves” after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in October said Colorado broke federal law in obtaining wolves from Canada.

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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.