Colorado wildlife officials capture wolf pack suspected of livestock depredation

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Colorado wildlife officials have captured the state's first pack produced by released wolves after multiple depredations occurred earlier this year, sparking mixed reactions among advocacy groups and ranchers.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife announced Monday that it trapped two adult wolves and four pups that make up the Copper Creek pack. After the capture, the adult male died from injuries unrelated to the trapping, according to the state wildlife agency.

The agency, which in late August announced plans to remove the pack, said in a news release that the breeding female of the pack and four pups were all captured without injury or incident using foothold traps. No other pups were found.

All six animals from the pack were transported to a secure location for evaluation and monitoring, the news release said.

State wildlife officials decided to remove the pack from Grand County — just west of Denver — after the parents of the pack were reported to have largely been responsible for 16 confirmed wolf depredations of cattle and sheep in the county between April 2 and July 28.

Colorado captured 10 wolves in Oregon and released them in Grand and Summit counties in December 2023.

What's next for the Copper Creek pack's mother and pups?

Colorado regulations prohibit wildlife to be taken from the wild and possessed by any commercial wildlife park, noncommercial wildlife park or wildlife sanctuary. Reid DeWalt, Colorado Parks and Wildlife deputy director, said the wolves are allowed to be temporarily housed at the facility while under state authority because they are not being held there permanently.

Agency Director Jeff Davis told reporters that the four pups will be held at an undisclosed facility and released together when they get closer to adult size. He said that gives the siblings, which were born in April, a better chance of survival.

It is not known if the agency plans to release the wolf pups with the next batch of released wolves expected late winter of this year and early winter of 2025, as some have speculated the agency might do.

Davis said there is "no evidence" of the four pups being involved in any livestock depredations in Grand County, saying the wolves are too young to have taken part in the incidents. He said they will be returned to the wild to contribute to the state's wolf restoration plan.

Davis added that the agency is unsure if the mother of the pack will be released again in Colorado or held in permanent captivity. If she is released, he said she would be "closely monitored."

Davis said had the father of the pack not died, the plan was for him to be placed in permanent captivity.

The news release acknowledged the state's wolf recovery plan states that the agency will not relocate wolves with depredation histories into the wild within Colorado. "The plan also calls for flexibility," Davis said in the release. "And it may not at times account for every unique situation the agency and our experts encounter."

The agency will have conversations with local elected officials and landowners in possible release areas before a release occurs, according to Davis.

What's so controversial about wolves?Colorado's gray wolf reintroduction plan.

Wolf pack 'deserved more willing engagement of non-lethal conflict reduction measures'

Rob Edward, president and co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, said the group was sad to learn of the alpha male's death but applauded Colorado Parks and Wildlife's handling of this "extraordinary action." The Rocky Mountain Wolf Project had spearheaded Colorado's wolf reintroduction.

"The agency needs to take this opportunity to digest the lessons learned, but they conducted a very difficult operation with consummate professionalism," Edward told the Coloradoan. "The Copper Creek pack deserved more willing engagement of non-lethal conflict reduction measures than they got, as evidenced by CPW’s denial letter for a lethal take permit."

Other wolf advocacy groups called for wolves to be rereleased and for more coexistence to prevent another pack removal.

"For Colorado’s first re-introduced wolf pack to be taken off the landscape is a real setback for the restoration effort that Colorado voters chose,” Chris Smith, wildlife program director at WildEarth Guardians, stated in a news release. "CPW staff appear to have done what they could to mitigate this situation, but it seems that not everyone was invested in coexistence. The death of a wolf is a terrible tragedy."

Delaney Rudy, Colorado director of Western Watersheds Project, blamed ranchers for the pack's removal.

"The remainder of the Copper Creek family should be translocated back to the wild as soon as possible into deep country where livestock coexistence is prioritized from the get-go, and range riders are on the ground,” Rudy said in a news release. "It isn’t fair that these highly-social animals have had their family disrupted by ineffective coexistence practices."

Ranchers against rerelease of any pack members, say removal was necessary despite nonlethal means used

Tim Ritschard, Grand County rancher and president of the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association, said area ranchers agree removing the pack was the right call. He said depredations continued despite ranchers using various nonlethal means to deter the wolves.

But Ritschard noted that ranchers are against the female or pups being rereleased due to their association with livestock depredation. He said the ranchers have evidence of all members of the Copper Creek pack being involved in livestock losses despite the state wildlife agency claiming the pups were too young to be involved.

"We have evidence from a local veterinarian who helped Colorado Parks and Wildlife with the necropsies of sheep killed in Grand County that pups were involved," he told the Coloradoan, part of the USA TODAY Network. "She found bite marks on some sheep that were too big for a coyote and too small for an adult wolf."

Jackson County rancher Don Gittleson said removal of the entire pack could have possibly been alleviated had wildlife officials removed the adult male earlier. The male was implicated as the main killer of livestock.

Gittleson said placing the pups and female into a captive facility where they will be fed wild game meat by people, which was confirmed by the state wildlife agency, only makes a bad situation worse.

"This pack was already way too habituated to humans and now they are going to be fed by people?" he told the Coloradoan. "And now you want to release them back and those pups haven't learned how to hunt yet? Rereleasing them would be an even bigger mistake than not killing the male wolf from the beginning."