There is a rancher in Grand County who is utilizing livestock guardian dogs and lights (and has construction in progress with all the commotion that entails) to address an ongoing wolf depredation problem. Since April, the ranch has lost seven cattle to wolves. Between July 17 and July 28, the ranch lost nine sheep, and the search is on for an additional five missing sheep or their carcasses. The sheep attacks all occurred in broad daylight near the house and barns.

The photos of the sheep attacked are on my phone, alongside others of calf spines picked clean, 600-pound yearlings skinned with men’s hands next to tears in their muscles to gauge size, heifers bleeding in the snow and lambs with intestinal contents dripping from a woolly, bloody hole in their belly.

In June, the ranch’s sheep fled a pasture and were huddled on the driveway. A wolf trotted through the pasture behind them toward the rancher who yelled to spook the predator and recorded a video as it turned and moseyed away.

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While Colorado Parks and Wildlife folks were still searching for the five missing sheep, Shannon Lukens at Steamboat Radio followed a tip and confirmed the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington rescinded their agreement with CPW to provide up to 15 source wolves for release later this year. In a June 6 letter to CPW Director Jeff Davis, the tribe cited concerns communicated to them by tribes in Colorado who have publicly objected to the release of wolves and claimed there was not “necessary and meaningful consultation” with them as potentially affected tribes.

CPW did manage to keep that little tidbit under their hat for nearly 60 days, including during two commission meetings on June 12 and June 13 and in July. The depredations weren’t on the agenda of the July 18 and July 19 commission meeting when wolves were discussed on the morning of July 19. CPW sat on the confirmed depredations for two days prior to posting it on their webpage. It was a demonstration, once again, of their transparency resembling that of crude oil.

Another ranch family in Grand County experienced a near disaster on July 25. The family’s two children, a 12-year-old and a 10-year-old, were exercising their 4-H lambs with a four-wheeler when their mother spotted movement out of the corner of her eye. She managed to snap a photo of the wolf hiding and following them in a dry creek bed 15 to 20 yards from the kids and lambs.

Again, this was in daylight, and had the wolf attacked the lambs, the two kids would have been forced to either drag the lambs — with the wolf in pursuit — behind the four-wheeler or leave the lambs and flee on foot from an apex predator and hope he prefers lamb. Can you imagine your elementary school-aged children forced to make that decision?

I admit I’m hesitant to reach out to CPW for comment or confirmation on any depredations or sightings because I know I’m likely to receive little other than a link to the wolf map, which is as useful as teats on a boar. There are certainly hands on those reins and they’re white-knuckling through these developments.

Now, with more questions posed to voters like the potential slaughterhouse ban in Denver and the mountain lion and bobcat hunting ban statewide, Colorado voters are going to make decisions about what they value.

Voters must decide if they value a family’s ability to earn a living and contribute to their community. They must decide if they value another family’s ability to break a cycle of generational poverty through the dignity of hard work. They must decide if they value a mother’s ability to raise her children in the country, as she was raised, and do it without constant fear. They must decide if they value the sovereignty and culture of the tribes within the state’s boundaries. They must decide if they value food access and the ability to purchase local food. They must decide if they are willing to be reasonable or if they’ll be swayed by the extremes on either end. I believe most Coloradans have similar values and want to make the best decision but they’re being asked to decide questions with outrageously far reaching consequences on topics they’re unfamiliar. Refusing the rhetoric of the extremists is the first step. Making changes to the requirements to place a question on the ballot is the next.

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.