Colorado’s efforts to reintroduce gray wolves face a significant challenge after the Trump administration instructed the state to cease importing them from Canada, potentially hindering further releases this winter.
The state began releasing wolves west of the Continental Divide in 2023, after Colorado voters narrowly approved wolf reintroduction in 2020.
About 30 wolves now roam the mountainous regions of the state, with a long-term management plan aiming for 200 or more.
However, the programme has proven unpopular in rural areas, where some wolves have attacked livestock. Now, following two winters of releases during President Joe Biden's administration, wolf opponents appear to have found support from federal officials under President Donald Trump.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesvik told Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Jeff Davis that Colorado wolves must come from Northern Rockies states, according to a recent letter posted by the Fence Post agricultural news publication.
Most of those states — including the Yellowstone region states of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, where wolves from Canada were reintroduced in the 1990s — have said they don’t want to be part of Colorado’s reintroduction.
That could leave Colorado in a bind this winter. The state plans to relocate 10 to 15 wolves under an agreement with the British Columbia Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesperson Luke Perkins said in a statement Friday.
The agreement was signed before the state got the October 10 letter from Nesvik, according to Perkins. He said the state "continues to evaluate all options to support this year’s gray wolf releases" after getting “recent guidance” from the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Though some of Colorado's reintroduced wolves have come from Oregon, wolves released most recently have come from British Columbia.
The issue now is whether the federal agency required that wolves must only come from northern U.S. Rocky Mountain states when it designated Colorado's “experimental” population of reintroduced wolves.
A federal notice announcing the designation in 2023 referred to the northern Rockies region as merely the “preferred” and not the required source of wolves.
Defenders of Wildlife attorney Lisa Saltzburg said in a statement that the Fish and Wildlife Service was “twisting language” by saying wolves can't come from Canada or Alaska.
People in Colorado “should be proud of their state’s leadership in conservation and coexistence, and the wolf reintroduction program illustrates those values,” Saltzburg said.
The Colorado governor's office and Colorado Parks and Wildlife are in touch with the Interior Department about the letter and evaluating “all options” to allow wolf releases this year, Gov. Jared Polis spokesperson Shelby Wieman said by email.
Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson Garrett Peterson, whose voicemail said he wouldn't be available until after the government shutdown ends, didn't immediately return a message seeking comment.
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