The email came swooshing into Don Gittleson’s inbox shortly after he finished feeding cows. He came to the house to check the laptop. The poor cell service in the hard country where Gittleson Angus is located near Walden didn’t allow reception. He wasn’t particularly surprised to see the email, signed by Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Jeff Davis, denying his request to remove two problem wolves. Disgusted, but not particularly surprised.

Gittleson’s formal request, answered finally once the wolf release photo opps concluded near Radium, denied his request to remove wolves 2101 and 2103. It was essentially a request to use the 10(j) rule to remove chronically depredating wolves. The rule was a small victory for livestock producers, but it appears those in the highest echelons of leadership perhaps never had any intention of allowing its use.

Gittleson is still treating a heifer attacked by 2101. The inside of her back leg has a hole the size of Gittleson’s fist. It’s tender skin, not unlike the inside of your own thigh, and the swelling is pulling the jagged edges of the tissue and muscle apart, complicating the healing process.

Stay up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

Veterinary care and good sense have kept an abscess at bay thus far, though the pain and pressure is difficult to manage. When she was run down and attacked by the wolf, she also likely received an injury commonly referred to as a “stifle” injury. It is traumatic damage to the ligaments around the stifle joint, the first joint below the hip on a cow’s back leg. It’s more common in old cows that fall on the ice, or bulls injured while fighting or breeding. It’s similar to a nasty knee injury to an athlete’s ACL. It’s typically a signal the cow or bull is headed to the food chain.

If Gittleson can baby her through this, and keep infection and inflammation away, this is likely her fate as well. When she goes to town, he will get salvage value for her, paid by the pound, and he will leave the money on the table her calves over the next 10 years or so may have brought each fall. The standard answer about such situations from CPW is referring to the up to $15,000 Gittleson can earn. He chuckles and shakes his head at the suggestion, still sitting at the kitchen table in his worn chore clothes. They don’t seem to understand not only dead cattle have value.

Wolves 2101 and 2103 have chronically depredated livestock in the North Park area. There are 13 cattle and four domestic dogs on 2101’s rap sheet, the most recent days before the absurdly dramatic release of the first five wolves from Oregon. There are 12 cattle on 2103’s record, plus three lambs killed in November and left – uneaten and two of them barely damaged – not far from Gittleson’s operation.

Davis’s letter denying the request encouraged Gittleson to continue the use of conflict minimization tools. If the depredation continues, as it will, the decision will be reviewed. CPW referred me to the Wolf Management Plan when I inquired about this denial. In the plan, chronically depredating isn’t clearly defined as opposed to simply depredating, but for some reason that isn’t immediately obvious, this isn’t at the level of chronic that inspires CPW to keep their word.

Gittleson closed the laptop and glanced at the clock. He had one more set of cows to check before taking a cat nap so he could make his nightly trek to the cattle around 7 p.m. If it’s quiet, he may be able to return to the house until about 11, but it’s at that point, he stays with the cattle, awake and watching and listening, until 7 a.m. or so when he can return to the house.

Gittleson has jumped through every flaming hoop CPW leadership has presented. He has been gracious with his time, tolerant to offers of help that turned out to be quite the opposite, and has invested far more time, effort, labor, money and sleepless nights than ought to be asked of a man. If he and other livestock producers were clinging to the 10(j) rule as a last-ditch saving grace, it appears to be one more thing under the thumb of Gov. Polis that won’t be allowed to see the light of day.

It is time wildlife management not be part of the agenda of a governor hellbent on getting his way. It’s too late to put the wolves back in the crates, but it’s not too late for the governor to allow the experts to do their jobs.

And it’s not too late for all Colorado voters to demand transparency and an end to ballot-box biology.

Rachel Gabel writes about agriculture and rural issues. She is assistant editor of The Fence Post Magazine, the region’s preeminent agriculture publication. Gabel is a daughter of the state’s oil and gas industry and a member of one of the state’s 12,000 cattle-raising families, and she has authored children’s books used in hundreds of classrooms to teach students about agriculture.