Colorado Parks and Wildlife on Sunday announced that 20 wolves, including 15 from British Columbia, have been released in Eagle and Pitkin counties.

A statement from CPW said the Copper Creek pack, a mother wolf believed responsible for some of the livestock killings in Grand County, and her four pups were also relocated to those areas.

The statement added that no further releases are planned for the 2024-2025 capture season and that they anticipate up to five release seasons of wolves.

Seven males and eight females came from British Columbia over six days.

The agency claimed wolves were captured from areas in British Columbia “where predator reduction is occurring to support caribou recovery.”

CPW said it is responsible for all costs associated with the capture and transport of these gray wolves, and the agency said it did not compensate or pay for the wolves themselves, although it did not disclose how much it spent.

The agency also claimed the Canadian wolves “do not overlap with areas where livestock are present, so there are no concerns that the wolves selected have been involved in repeated livestock depredations.”

Some of the wolves brought to Colorado from Oregon came from packs with recent histories of livestock depredation. However, the wolf management plan claimed Colorado wouldn’t seek wolves with that history.

More than two dozen livestock have been killed by the Oregon wolves in the past year, including the male and female pair that produced the Copper Creek Pack. CPW has received more than $581,000 in claims from three Grand County ranchers, along with a warning last week from Sen. Dylan Roberts, D-Frisco, whose district includes all of the counties where wolves have been released except for Pitkin County. “We are going to have a very difficult conversation if CPW reduces the amount that those producers have requested,” Roberts told a CPW official.

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Roberts also asked last week if CPW had done site assessments in Eagle and Pitkin counties, which help ranchers determine what non-lethal efforts to take to protect their livestock from wolves, and was told only that “meetings” had been held in those counties, indicating site assessments were not done before the wolves were released.

While the agency pledged to work on a list of seven action items requested by a coalition of 26 livestock groups, the failure to complete those action items before the Canadian wolves were released led Roberts to state that those items should have been in place first, not after the next wolves were released.

Among those seven action items: site assessments, the range rider program, and a transparent plan for communicating with ranchers, affected communities and local government officials “in advance” of wolf releases.

CPW’s statement also addressed one of the questions raised about the legality of bringing Canadian wolves to the United States, stating it’s allowed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), administered by the Canadian Wildlife Service. 

Canadian wolves are known to carry tapeworms; according to the British Columbia government, “B.C.’s wild dogs (or canids) – including wolves, foxes, coyotes – are thriving in B.C. But some canids in B.C. and Alberta are now being diagnosed with a tapeworm (Echinococcus multilocularis) that can also infect humans and domestic dogs…We are in the process of doing more research to better understand this risk to both humans and domestic animals in Western Canada.”

The CPW statement said the wolves were vaccinated and collared. Last week, agency officials acknowledged that all wolves brought to Colorado carried tapeworms.

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“As restoration efforts continue, CPW is committed to working with livestock owners, communities, state agencies and all partners to reduce the likelihood of wolf-livestock conflict. Our goal is to keep ranchers ranching, while at the same time restoring a healthy, sustainable population of gray wolves to Colorado as mandated,” said CPW Director Jeff Davis in Sunday’s statement. 

That mandate came from a narrowly approved ballot measure in 2020, almost entirely with support from Front Range voters. The mandate dictates wolves placed west of the Continental Divide. Voters in every county where wolves have been placed, except for Pitkin, voted overwhelmingly against the ballot measure.

The livestock inventory for Eagle County, including sheep, cattle, goats and hogs, totals more than 14,000, according to the 2022 Department of Agriculture farm survey. Most of that is either cattle or sheep, and calving season for cattle begins next month.

The livestock inventory for Pitkin County, where the majority of livestock is cattle, was 4,744 in 2022, also according to the USDA.

The wolf management plan dictates that wolves be released on state public lands or on private lands with the landowners’ consent.

Most of the state wildlife areas where wolves could be placed are not listed on the state wildlife area database.

Pitkin County has three, although two are not listed on the CPW state wildlife area database:

• Coke Oven, on Forest Service Road 105, also known as Frying Pan River Road, 37.5 miles east of Basalt;
• Basalt SWA, also on Frying Pan River Road, three miles east of Basalt and which also crosses the Eagle County line;
• Williams Hill, located on Highway 82, halfway between Basalt and Woody Creek.

Eagle County has six, including Basalt, although three are either along rivers or cover multiple counties. 

• Brush Creek, immediately south of Sylvan Lake;
• Eagle River, along I-70 and which only covers the Eagle River;
• Frying Pan River, east of Basalt and which only covers the river; 
• Gypsum Ponds, along I-70 at Gypsum; and
• Radium, which straddles Eagle, Grand and Summit counties