The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Wednesday that it had completed necropsies on two female wolves that died in the spring.

Both were among the 15 wolves relocated to Colorado in January from British Columbia.

Female 2514 was found dead in Rocky Mountain National Park on April 20. The cause of death, according to the necropsy, was a mountain lion attack.

That’s the second wolf to be lost to a mountain lion since the reintroduction of wolves began in December 2023. Another wolf, one that came from the group of wolves from Oregon, was killed in Larimer County a year earlier.

Female 2512 died in northwest Colorado around May 15.

The cause of death, according to the necropsy, was secondary trauma from a lawful foothold trap used for coyote control.

A statement from Colorado Parks and Wildlife said that state law generally bars the use of those kinds of traps, but there’s an exception for lands with commercial livestock production. The traps are permitted under a 30-day permit, which was issued by CPW.

A trapper who discovered the wolf notified CPW, which then released the animal. However, the agency received a mortality signal from the wolf’s collar the following day.

Neither CPW nor the Fish & Wildlife Service plans to take legal action against the landowner, as the trap was allowed under the permit. However, CPW said it was suspending the practice of issuing those 30-day permits for those foothold traps pending an internal review.

Necropsy results are still pending for male 2507, a British Columbia wolf that died in northwest Colorado on May 31.

The British Columbia wolves were released in Pitkin and Eagle counties in January but have traveled far beyond those areas. Two went into Wyoming and died there. U.S. Fish & Wildlife staff shot one wolf after it killed five sheep. No cause of death was given for the second wolf.

Five of the 15 British Columbia wolves have died since arriving in Colorado, and the state’s wolf management plan calls for an evaluation of the “short-term success of wolf reintroduction effort.”

Among the criteria for that review: a survival rate of less than 70%, which would initiate a protocol review.

State wildlife director Jeff Davis noted at the commission’s meeting in June that the survival rate, at 67%, has now dropped below the 70% trigger.

Davis said officials are looking for any aspect of the “translocation protocol” that could be modified to prevent the same trend from occurring in the next round of translocations.

CPW said the survival rate for the wolves is “within normal margins.” The average lifespan of a gray wolf is three to four years.

Three of the 10 wolves brought to Colorado from Oregon have also died, and a ninth wolf, a yearling from the Copper Creek pack, was killed by CPW in May after the Memorial Day weekend attacks, when wolves killed livestock on two ranches in Pitkin County.

A video posted on Facebook on June 23 shows two wolves trying to separate a cow from the herd in the Capital Creek Valley near the McCabe Ranch, where wolves have killed several calves.

CPW had hoped that killing the yearling wolf would change the behavior of the rest of the pack, but last weekend, a Copper Creek wolf killed another calf in Pitkin County. That brings the number of calves or cows killed by wolves in Pitkin County this spring to eight.

A wolf or wolves also killed two lambs in Rio Blanco County last week.

CPW reported that at least three new wolf packs were born during the spring, although the number of pups born is unknown.

The wolf program has cost Colorado taxpayers more than $8 million over five years, exceeding the estimated cost by a significant margin when voters approved of the wolf reintroduction program in 2020.

The latest wolf map, released Tuesday, shows wolf activity in Hinsdale, La Plata, and San Juan counties in southwestern Colorado. Wolf activity was also observed as far south as Salida, in Chaffee County.