Jeff Davis, who resigned as director of Colorado Parks and Wildlife late last month, will continue to receive the same salary in his new role as a senior policy adviser to the Department of Natural Resources, according to the department.

Davis will still make $186,470 annually.

Davis chose to step down, rather than be fired, according to 9News, which reported that he signed a settlement agreement on Nov. 22 that also stated he would not sue the department. No reason was provided in the settlement agreement for why Davis would be fired.

Davis’s new role as senior policy adviser for strategic priorities began on Dec. 1 and will continue until May 15, 2026, according to the agreement.

The position did not exist until Davis was appointed to it, according to the leadership list for the executive director’s office. Davis is also not currently listed as an employee in the executive director’s office.

Davis landed the new position despite an August order from Gov. Jared Polis for a hiring freeze that would last until the end of the year, intended to help address a significant deficit in the 2025-26 budget.

The director’s position at Colorado Parks and Wildlife is not yet listed on the state’s job opportunities website, where, despite the hiring freeze, more than state 450 jobs are currently posted. That includes 24 positions at the Department of Natural Resources, although all but a few are temporary.

Davis became Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) director in May 2023, coming to Colorado after almost 23 years with Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, including as its deputy assistant director and assistant director of the agency’s habitat program.

His biggest job at CPW, a division of the natural resource agency, was managing the state’s wolf reintroduction program, which Front Range voters narrowly approved in 2020. That program mandated that wolves would be on the ground in Western Slope counties by late 2023.

The ballot measure did not specify how many would be necessary to sustain the population – that came from a management plan that calls for 30 to 50 of the apex predators to be brought to Colorado. To date, the state had brought in 25, of which 10 came from Oregon and 25 from British Columbia, the Canadian province. Of the 25, 10 have died from a variety of causes.

While the wolves’ reintroduction isn’t the only program that Colorado Parks and Wildlife manages – the state has 43 parks, manages 960 species and 350 wildlife areas – it has dominated board meetings and visits by Davis to the state legislature.

Lawmakers have heavily criticized Davis for the program’s problems, including dead wolves and a cost to taxpayers that is, so far, five times the estimate provided to voters in 2020.

Dozens of livestock have also been killed in seven counties, costing the state more than $600,000 in compensation for ranchers, far exceeding the amount of money set aside for those expenses. Ranchers have also complained that Colorado Parks and Wildlife failed to provide deterrents for wolf depredations until after the slaughters began, both in 2024 and 2025.

The Copper Creek pack, a mating pair and four of five offspring born in 2024, were captured in September 2024 after multiple claims that the male of the mating pair was killing livestock in Grand County.

The male died shortly after being captured due to a gunshot wound. The female and four offspring were released in Pitkin County in January and, within a few months, also began killing livestock in the area. Two of the yearlings, including the fifth, which was uncollared, were killed by CPW staff because they were killing livestock in Pitkin and Rio Blanco counties.

One of the Copper Creek yearlings killed a heifer in eastern Gunnison County two weeks ago.

During a special session in August, legislators attempted to pause the reintroduction program, but under the threat of a veto from the governor, instead decided that Colorado Parks and Wildlife could not spend state dollars for the next batch of wolves.

The state had signed a contract with British Columbia for $400,000 for more wolves, but where or how Colorado will get its next batch of wolves – the state plan calls for up to 50 – is up in the air. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service told the state it may not bring in gray wolves from Canada or Alaska. Any wolf brought to Colorado as part of its reintroduction program must come from one of the lower 48 states, the federal agency said.

Major General Laura Clellan, a retired adjutant general and executive director of the Colorado Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, has been appointed acting head of Colorado Parks and Wildife while a search is underway.