The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission approved more than $706,000 in wolf depredation claims for 2025 during its March meeting last week, an amount that exceeds the state’s annual wolf compensation fund by more than double.

The commission rejected another $53,611 in claims.

But more are expected, based on comments from Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff in January. 

Of the claims approved last week, $615,000 was listed on the commission’s consent agenda; another claim for $125,265 was split, with $91,170 approved for payment and the rest denied. There were several other claims recommended for denial by the wildlife staff, which the commission affirmed.

A Colorado Parks and Wildlife official told a joint meeting of the House and Senate agriculture committees in January that the division received more than $1 million in claims for the 2025 year.

The agency’s database shows 32 depredation events in 2025, with more than three dozen dead cows, calves, lambs and ewes, yearling heifers and dogs. Those kills happened in Jackson, Routt, Gunnison, Pitkin, Grand, Eagle, Rio Blanco and Montrose counties. 

The state’s wolf compensation fund receives $350,000 in general fund dollars per year, but the state is required by the wolf reintroduction program adopted primarily by Front Range voters in 2020 to cover all claims, regardless of amount. 

In 2024, the agency paid out more than $600,000 in claims and had to rely on other agency funds, including federal dollars and non-license fees, to cover the balance.

The agency has now paid out more than $1.3 million in claims in just two years. 

The 2024 claims came primarily from Grand and Jackson counties.

In January 2025, Colorado Parks and Wildlife released 15 wolves from British Columbia into Pitkin and Eagle counties. In addition, the agency also released the Copper Creek pack in Pitkin County, which had been responsible for numerous attacks on livestock and dogs in Grand County the previous year. 

Pitkin County saw the highest number of wolf kills in 2025, with 10 separate events that led to the deaths of 11 cows and calves.

What drives the high dollar claims is not the direct costs of replacing livestock, which are capped at $15,000 per animal. Rather, it’s the indirect costs, which include lost livestock and the impact of wolves on reproduction and market weights. 

And that’s the basis for a petition submitted to Colorado Parks and Wildlife in February by a host of local and national animal rights groups, including ColoradoWild, which previously included John Emerick, now a CPW commission-nominee, on its board. His partner, Delia Malone, is the founder of ColoradoWild, which is focused on wolf restoration efforts. 

The petition claims modifying payment for indirect losses will be a “great benefit” to livestock producers and that it will “strengthen the bonds” between ranchers and wildlife managers.

Compensation should be limited to actual losses of animals to comply with state law and to ensure the long-term viability of the compensation program, the petition states. 

In addition, compensation should be paid, with proof of the livestock producers’ prior efforts to minimize the conflict.

Current rules state that the basis for claiming indirect losses is decreased weights for calves and yearlings, and decreased conception rates for cows and sheep. The producer must submit data on conception and market weights for the three years preceding the first depredation event.

Under the petition, ranchers must prove, with a preponderance of evidence, that the indirect losses were caused by the gray wolves. Current rules require the rancher to show only a correlation between wolves and indirect losses.

“Current guidelines for indirect losses are grossly insufficient to prove that wolves were a contributing cause, let alone a primary cause, of loss,” the petition states. 

“To remedy this insufficiency, Petitioners request that the Commission adopt the proposed regulation above and develop specific guidelines regarding the documentation and proof to meet the evidentiary requirements in the proposed new regulation.”

The petition states that the lack of proof for indirect losses tied to wolves “opens the door to widespread abuse and misuse of taxpayer funds.” The letter cites other causes it claims are more responsible for indirect losses, such as climate change, poisonous plants, disease, illness, and other predators, even in areas where wolves are present.

The petition also acknowledges there is little peer-reviewed research on the indirect effects of wolves, making it difficult to estimate the extent of indirect losses.

Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management claimed in a Facebook post this week that the petition comes from the same advocacy groups “that championed the compensation program during the Proposition 114 stakeholder process, and are now filing coordinated citizen petitions to gut it.”

No date has been set for the commission to review the petition.