Colorado’s wildlife officials on Friday announced reaching an agreement with indigenous tribes in Washington state to capture 10 to 15 wolves that will be released in Colorado at the end of the year.

The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation will allow Colorado Parks and Wildlife, part of the state’s Department of Natural Resources, to catch wolves on tribal lands from December 2024 through March 2025, the prime capture season.

“We are grateful to the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation for working with our agency on this critical next step in reintroducing gray wolves in the state,” said CPW Director Jeff Davis. “This agreement helps CPW to continue to meet our unanimously adopted Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan goal of translocating 10-15 gray wolves per capture season for a total of 30-50 wolves.”

Jarred-Michael Erickson, chairman of the Confederal Tribes of the Colville Reservation, added that “the Colville people strongly believe in preserving our environment, including its fish and animals.”

“We are thrilled that our restoration efforts on our own lands have progressed far enough that we can share some of these magnificent creatures with the citizens of Colorado,” Erickson said. 

Tribal representatives will provide guidance to Colorado on target packs, avoiding packs with known active chronic depredation behavior, wildlife officials claimed in a news release Friday.

In contrast, several of the wolves that the Polis administration released in Colorado last month came from packs with histories of killing livestock. CPW, in its wolf restoration plan, had pledged not to bring in wolves with depredation histories, but the Fence Post’s Rachel Gabel, who is also a columnist for Colorado Politics, reported the first five wolves from Oregon came from the Five Points Pack, which injured one calf and killed another in in July of 2023.

Gabel reported that the pack also killed a cow on Dec. 5, 2022 and injured a 900-pound yearling heifer on July 17, 2022.

First gentleman Marlon Reis, Gov. Jared Polis’ spouse, later criticized Gabel, attacking her journalism and saying, “Never trust anything Rachel Gabel writes.” Reis posted those comments on Facebook but took them down later. He did not refute her report.

CPW announced it would not release any more wolves in Colorado during this capture season, although the state wolf restoration plan could allow for five more.

“The additional time will allow the agency to assess the releases in December and let CPW staff adjust to any increased workload of having wolves on the ground in Colorado, as well as allow time for the additional resources for CPW and the Colorado Department of Agriculture to support ranchers proposed in the Governor’s budget to become effective July 1,” the agency said in a statement Friday.

CPW has taken heat for failing to notify ranchers in Grand and Summit counties the wolves were being released, despite previous pledges from the agency that ranchers would get a day’s notice. Some said they found out about the releases from TV news and not from CPW, and that the agency’s failure to notify them has substantially damaged relationships between the agency and ranchers on the Western Slope. 

State Sen. Dylan Roberts, D-Frisco, told 9News the agency could have given ranchers 12-hour or 24-hour notice, but that didn’t happen.

“The celebratory projection of what happened … belies a lot of angst and worry in our communities on the Western Slope,” he said. 

Reid DeWalt, assistant director for aquatic, terrestrial and natural resources with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, told the state Senate’s Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee last spring the reintroduction of wolves wouldn’t be a surprise to those who live nearby.

“They’ll know that [wolves] are in that area and those conversations are happening right now at our local district wildlife manager level,” DeWalt told lawmakers.

Colorado farmers and ranchers may get little more than a day’s notice on gray wolf reintroduction

Davis, the CPW chief, called the December effort “incredibly successful,” despite the agency’s keeping local ranchers and even public officials in the dark. 

“Our focus will be on refining our internal processes, continuing the work we’re already doing to bolster our staff expertise and honing our notification structure so the public is well informed regarding release efforts, while also balancing the need for the safety and security of staff and gray wolves,” Davis said in a statement Friday.

Colorado voters, almost entirely along the Front Range, approved a ballot measure in 2020 to reintroduce wolves west of the Continental Divide. Voters in the counties where wolves are being reintroduced overwhelmingly rejected the ballot measure. 

Prior to the reintroduction, wolves had already come from Wyoming into Jackson County, in northern Colorado. Those wolves killed at least 14 cattle, three sheep and three working cattle dogs on six ranches — killings confirmed by CPW.

Rancher Don Gittleson reported wolves have attacked seven cattle and calves on his ranch. He said he asked CPW to remove the wolves but they refused, telling him to use non-lethal mitigation efforts that he maintains don’t work. 

According to reporting from Wyofile, at least three of the six wolves returned to Wyoming where they were legally killed by hunters.