The panel of legislators charged with crafting the budget on Monday rejected a proposal that proponents said would increase transparency around how much Colorado Parks and Wildlife spends to bring additional wolves into the state.

At the same time, the wildlife agency is seeking $450,000 in general funds for fiscal year 2026–27 — twice what it spent in 2025 — to acquire more wolves, even though the agency has not identified where the animals would come from.

The request arrives as the state faces a projected $1.5 billion shortfall in the general fund budget in next year’s spending plan.

Joint Budget Committee staff had recommended creating a separate budget line beginning in 2026–27 to clearly show the state’s spending on wolf acquisitions. Currently, those costs are folded into a broader wildlife operations line item.

The state wildlife agency has maintained that its annual wolf report already provides sufficient transparency, though the most recent report did not disclose the cost of acquiring 15 wolves from British Columbia in January 2025.

“Separating wolf reintroduction expenses into its own line item could allow for increased transparency and clarity on the funds used for wolf reintroduction,” the staff said in its analysis.

The analysis said Colorado Parks and Wildlife disagreed, and “their strong preference is to not create a new line item, but instead to rely on reporting for transparency and clarity.”

The 2024-25 wolf report notably never reported how much the agency spent to acquire 15 wolves from British Columbia, Canada early last year.

Rep. Kyle Brown, D-Louisville, was skeptical of adding a new line item, stating he didn’t know what lawmakers would gain by doing so.

Meanwhile, Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, R-Brighton, questioned how — without the line item — lawmakers would know whether Colorado Parks and Wildlife had met all the management requirements or just spending more money on introduction efforts first.

Kirkmeyer added that another layer of transparency could also show whether the state has met the requirements set by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year.

The Joint Budget Committee (JBC) analyst presented two options: The line item for the 2026-27 budget or a new request for information on the agency’s efforts to complete preventive measures tied to wolves.

The JBC opted for the latter, although the agency has yet to report to the legislative committee on its progress on those preventive measures.

During a January hearing with the JBC, neither lawmakers nor the agency asked about or reported on the status of preventive measures.

The information on preventive measures came from a special session in August last year, when lawmakers placed restrictions on Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s spending authority to acquire more wolves until all state-funded preventive measures have been implemented “to the highest degree possible.”

The legislation stripped the division of $264,268 set aside for wolf acquisition and diverted those funds to health insurance subsidies.

The amount came from an estimate provided by the agency, based on the expenses from the first capture operation in British Columbia, which the CPW told the JBC was a “best-case” capture scenario.

The agency was allowed to receive gifts, grants and donations to replenish those funds. As of January 2026, CPW had received $549.05 in donations and $15,000 from Great Outdoors Colorado for a grant tied to a research project. Another $6,433 came in from an unidentified federal grant.

For the 2026-27 budget, the division is seeking nearly double the amount for wolf relocation efforts that it spent in 2025 — a total of $450,000 in general funds — based on an expectation of “a less-than-ideal capture scenario,” with complications from weather or other factors.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife announced in January 2026 that it would not bring in more wolves during the winter season, effectively holding off until late 2026 or early 2027.

That’s likely because no other state will give Colorado more gray wolves. Washington state’s wildlife commission rejected a CPW request in November, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service ordered Colorado in October to stop bringing in wolves from any place other than six western states. That effectively banned Colorado from bringing in more wolves from British Columbia.

Of the 25 wolves exported from Oregon and British Columbia in late 2023, 14 have died, a survival rate of 44%.

The state’s wolf plan estimated the population’s survival rate would be between 70% and 85% in the program’s early years.

A survival rate of less than 70% within six months of release would trigger a review of management protocols, including whether there were an unusually high number of wolf mortalities in the first few years.

The wolf program is budgeted for $2.1 million per year, nearly three times the amount the 2020 ballot measure estimated it would cost.

The costs of covering ranchers’ losses from dead and missing livestock and impacts on conception and market weights are expected to exceed $1 million in 2025. CPW has already paid out more than $724,000 in compensation claims through the first of March. The agency reported in January that it had received 26 claims for 2025.

The wolf compensation fund is budgeted at $350,000 per year, but claims in 2024, the first year with significant losses, surpassed that amount. Payments for 2024 losses, issued in 2025, totaled more than $600,000.

The 2024–25 wolf report showed only $393,000 in payments made through the end of the “wolf year” on March 31, nearly all of it tied to claims from two ranchers in Grand County.

The report did not mention any outstanding claims unpaid at that time, although the agency paid $197,712.86 in July 2025 for additional claims.

The claims that come before the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission exceed $20,000; the agency can pay out claims under that amount.

The CPW wolf depredation page showed the agency paid out another $15,892.66 between April 1, 2024, and March 31, 2025, for 10 claims on livestock killed by wolves.

The state is required by the ballot measure to pay those claims, even if the wolf compensation fund is insufficient, requiring the state to rely on other non-license fees and cash fund sources.

A July 2025 financial report showed that, through July 2, 2025, the state had paid nearly $8.1 million for the wolf reintroduction program in its first three fiscal years, nearly four times the program’s initial estimated cost.

That figure did not include the additional $197,000 compensation to ranchers for livestock losses paid out in late July, 2025.

The 2025-26 annual state budget identified, but only in a footnote in the Department of Natural Resources budget, spending authority of $2.1 million for the implementation of Proposition 114 for the reintroduction and management of gray wolves.