The early weeks of calving season in the Colorado high country brought with them the first two livestock-wolf conflicts of the state’s wolf reintroduction. The rhetoric heats up in North Park and Grand County, and the livestock industry statewide has lashed out at Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) for their role in returning wolves to their natural place on the landscape.

As described in Colorado Politics coverage, the livestock industry is attempting to leverage their land holdings to force CPW to manage for their special interests. Cattlemen’s groups have threatened to take away CPW’s access to their ranches, access that helps CPW manage the state’s wildlife resources for the good of the people and ecosystems.

No one is happy to see wolf-livestock conflicts, but they are not unplanned for. CPW gave livestock interests an outsized role in advising their wolf plan, which provides excessive permissions to kill wolves, and record-breaking levels of compensation for ranchers. The plan lays out the agency will reimburse producers for livestock lost up to $15,000 per animal, even if the ranchers have done nothing to dissuade wolves from preying on their herds through proven coexistence techniques. A fiscally responsible conflict mitigation bill was struck down last week by the Senate committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources. The bill would have required ranchers use techniques to dissuade predation on their animals in order to receive CPW reimbursement for any native carnivore depredations.

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Ranchers have claimed the techniques and technology are too expensive for them to implement despite the fact tools are available completely free of charge through funds established by Colorado State University and the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project. Coloradans can support the coexistence effort by purchasing a “Born to be Wild” Colorado license plate. Since the plates debuted in January, the sale of 3,189 has raised more than $160,000 for CPW’s conflict minimization programs.

The development of the Colorado Wolf Plan was based on political compromise, and ranchers comprised nearly one-third of the Stakeholder Advisory Group, despite studies indicating wolf depredation makes up less than 1% of unintended cattle deaths in states with livestock and wolves. In fact, a judge ruled against cattlemen’s groups in December, citing wolves were unlikely to cause significant harm to livestock operations.

More Coloradans are invested in our state’s public lands and wildlife than ever before. As of an August 2023 financial report from CPW, income from park passes and entry fees has more than doubled from $16.61 million in fiscal year 2018-19 to $40.95 million in fiscal year 2022-23. Funds generated from camping, special use and outfitter permits, and recreational vehicle registration have also increased substantially. Conversely, the number of hunting tags and fishing licenses sold decreased during the same time period. The interests and values of Coloradans are shifting, and the management of our wildlife and natural resources must shift to reflect them.

The need for the CPW-facilitated reintroduction process was clearly demonstrated last week, when a Wyoming man captured and tortured a wolf, parading it around local bars before killing it, for which he will only be penalized $250. Anti-wolf groups deny the need for reintroduction, insisting wolves would travel down from the Northern Rockies on their own, but in reality a stable population for Colorado cannot cross the gauntlet of free-for-all wolf killing in Wyoming.

The livestock industry has had an outsized role in the management of public land and resources in our state ever since the violent displacement of indigenous people. By holding CPW’s programs hostage to unreasonable demands, the livestock industry refutes their own claim to be Colorado’s original conservationists.

Colorado’s new generation of conservationists are calling on CPW to manage for the betterment of wildlife, watersheds and ecosystems, not for the profit margins of the livestock industry. Colorado needs to prioritize policy to make us resilient against the climate and biodiversity crises, and rewilding to reestablish the natural function of our ecosystems is key to that effort. CPW should not apologize for carrying out their duty to the public, as managers of a public resource.

Delaney Rudy is the Colorado director of Western Watersheds Project, a nonprofit conservation group working to protect and restore wildlife and watersheds throughout the American West. She was born and raised in Colorado and lives on the Western Slope.