The Grand County Board of Commissioners sent a letter in October to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission supporting a request to delay the release of more gray wolves until the wolf management program is equipped to handle the consequences of reintroduction.

The letter supported the 26 other organizations that filed a citizen petition Sept. 27 asking for the wildlife agency’s commission to adopt a rule that would delay the release of wolves. The request came a few weeks after the state agency announced the source of Colorado’s next 15 wolves for the state’s reintroduction efforts.

The Grand County commissioners said they felt it was “extremely important” to support the citizen petition “because Grand County’s ranchers and ag community have suffered tremendous loss and stress as a result of the agency’s lack of preparedness to manage reintroduced wolves.”

---

---

“Grand County stands behind the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association, and with ag communities across the state, respectfully requesting that (Colorado Parks and Wildlife) adopt this rule before any additional wolves are released in Colorado,” Grand County Communications Director Christine Travis wrote in a statement.

The other organizations that supported the proposed rule change include Club 20, the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, Colorado Farm Bureau and the Colorado Wool Growers Association. The original rule change proposal was submitted to Colorado Parks and Wildlife on Sept. 3.

---

---

Citing concerns over how Parks and Wildlife has addressed wolf-livestock conflicts thus far, the petition requested that the agency hold off on any additional release until specific conflict mitigation strategies are fully funded, developed and implemented.

In a Nov. 14 presentation to the Parks and Wildlife Commission, Middle Park Stockgrowers Association President Tim Ritschard said the programs meant to minimize conflict are undeveloped and underfunded.

“Let’s learn from the program’s mistakes,” Ritschard said. “We still do not have an implemented range rider program, carcass management or site vulnerability assessment program.”

He argued that the commission has the authority to delay further action according to Proposition 114.

“You are not required to introduce wolves at a certain pace; you are only required to introduce wolves by Dec. 31, 2023. You have done that,” Ritschard said. “Now, your mandate is to adaptively manage wolves. This means that you should be willing to change your approach to address issues as they arise.”

Following Ritschard’s presentation, the commission did not take any further action on the request, citing the agency’s protocols for handling citizen petitions. The agency and the Colorado attorney general review all citizen petitions, and then the Parks and Wildlife staff develop a recommendation to bring to the commission to decide whether to deny or grant the petition a rule-making hearing.

Because of the required procedure and the fact that other citizen petitions were submitted prior, Parks and Wildlife staff could not give an estimate for when a recommendation on the wolf reintroduction petition would be given.

“We have a duty to listen to and/or consider all petitions, all of which need to have weigh-in from the director and his team,” Commissioner Murphy Robinson said. “I think that we would be out of compliance with our own policies and procedures if we didn’t also look at the other petitions that came before, as well.”

Commission Chair Dallas May agreed with Robinson.

“Our policy is very clear. We have clear direction, and we’re in big danger if we vary from that,” May said. “We are going to follow our process.”

May added that a special meeting is unlikely to happen.

“There have been numerous calls for the chair to call for a special meeting. In my opinion, that’s fruitless because until we have written recommendation from the division, we don’t know what we’re discussing,” May said.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Jeff Davis responded to the original letter Nov. 1, acknowledging each of the listed concerns and wrote that pausing wolf releases is not consistent with the mandate.

“As we learned from wolf reintroduction in the northern Rockies, more wolves on the ground will contribute to pack formation, which will create wolf territories and therefore more predictable wolf travel and behavioral patterns. Currently, we have individuals or loose pairs of animals traveling 100 to 200 miles per week, which makes it challenging to predict where wolves will be and thus how to deploy coexistence techniques and strategies to avoid/minimize conflicts with livestock,” Davis wrote.

During the meeting Nov. 14, Davis also said the agency has received around 500 emails urging the agency to deny the petition.

“That’s the privilege and honor of being a public servant: How do you balance these? It’s not lost on us … the longstanding work that went into good relationships with our rural landowners and ranching community in particular,” Davis said. “It’s not lost on us how important these relationships are and how emotional this is for everyone.”

In response, the Grand County commissioners offered the following statement: “If the reintroduction program is not paused in order to fully vet the requests in the petition, we will be disappointed that — once again — our rural communities’ voices went unheard.”