Wildlife officers shot and killed a wolf believed to be responsible for killing at least 22 sheep over the past year in a remote northwestern county, according to a state agency.

The animal came from the Copper Creek pack and is the 15th wolf to die in Colorado in the past two years. It’s also the second wolf from the Copper Creek pack to be shot by Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff due to chronic depredation of livestock.

Wildlife staff had been hunting for the wolf since last year and, at one point, believed they had shot it, but the animal survived and disappeared.

In a statement, Colorado Parks and Wildlife said that “visual evidence obtained at the scene confirmed the removed wolf is the same one that was depredating in Rio Blanco County in 2025 and early 2026.”

The agency added that the wolf had originally been part of the Copper Creek Pack but had not been with that group since September 2024.

The wolf traveled to Routt County, where it killed two more sheep on June 10 and June 11.

“The decision to pursue lethal actions is never an easy one, but the circumstances around this wolf’s repeated depredation history made this a difficult but necessary decision,” said CPW Director Laura Clellan. “The producers impacted by these depredations have worked diligently with CPW to identify and deploy all viable and reasonable nonlethal tools and techniques identified through their site assessment and consultation with our field staff.”

Gov. Jared Polis said the decision became necessary.

“This elusive wolf had a number of chances but sadly chose to continue to depredate, which necessitated this challenging management decision,” he said. “Colorado remains committed to recovering and maintaining a viable, self-sustaining wolf population in Colorado, while concurrently working to minimize wolf-related conflicts with domestic animals, with nonlethal means as our priority.”

Colorado’s voter-approved wolf-reintroduction program has cost the state millions of dollars since passing narrowly in 2020, largely on the strength of support from Front Range voters.

State spending has far exceeded what voters were told at the time, and reimbursements to ranchers for livestock losses in counties, including Eagle, Pitkin, Gunnison, Grand, Rio Blanco, Routt and Jackson, have outpaced the available general-fund dollars set aside for compensation.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife has had to pull money from other species-conservation programs to cover wolf-related expenses. And under the state’s newly approved 2026—27 budget, which takes effect July 1, the agency is barred from using taxpayer dollars to acquire additional wolves in the coming year.

Originally, Proposition 114 estimated the program would cost $800,000 per year.

Last July, a Colorado Parks and Wildlife official told the CPW Commission that the Blue Book — the voter guide explaining ballot measures — noted that “actual state spending will depend on the details of the plan” the commission developed and on the cost of compensating ranchers for wolf-related livestock losses.

For the first “biological year” for wolves, between April 1, 2024 and March 31, 2025, CPW reported 30 livestock and one dog were killed by wolves. In the second year, CPW reported another 44 livestock were killed, along with a dog.

That doesn’t acknowledge the trauma livestock experience when wolves are in the area, according to ranchers. That has led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in claims tied to lower birth rates and lower market weights, the ranchers said.

Earlier this year, the state Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee rejected two of three gubernatorial appointments to the CPW commission, in part because of a lack of experience with the constituents the appointees were intended to represent. The nominees, James Emerick and Christopher Sichko, withdrew their nominations moments before the Senate could vote on them.

The agency had already announced it would not seek more wolves in 2026.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife had told Colorado last year that it would be prohibited from obtaining wolves from anywhere other than eastern Washington, eastern Oregon, eastern Utah and Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. All of those states have said “no” to Colorado for more wolves.

There are just four of the original 10 wolves from the first group that were relocated to Colorado from Oregon in December 2023, and of the 15 that came from British Columbia in January 2025, eight are still alive. That’s a mortality rate of 40% for the Oregon wolves and 53% for the British Columbia wolves.

The wolf reintroduction plan said the state would re-evaluate the program if the mortality rate fell below 70% within the first six months of release.

That review was done after the mortality rate for the British Columbia wolves fell below the 70% threshold.

“When we did observe lower than 70% survival rate among the wolves translocated from British Columbia last summer, we initiated a review and found that no wolf mortalities were due to any of the capture, transport and release protocols and concluded changes were not warranted,” a CPW officer told Colorado Outdoors.