WOLVES SHOULD NOT BE REINTRODUCED INTO COLORADO
WOLVES SHOULD NOT BE REINTRODUCED INTO COLORADO
Colorado State University released a survey that showed that 84 percent of citizens in Colorado support the reintroduction of wolves back into the state. Voters will decide in November on Initiative 107, which would reintroduce wolves into Colorado by 2023. The citizens supporting the reintroduction are naive and lack an understanding of the ramifications of such a plan. These supporters are living in a simplistic world; it is imprudent to support an initiative without researching what the consequences will be. The wolves will likely kill cattle, sheep, and pets, but so do mountain lions and coyotes. I was also naive in 1995 when the wolves were being reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park. I was visiting with a friend, discussing my excitement over the reintroduction of the wolf into Yellowstone. She did not share my enthusiasm and stated, “people will just kill the wolves.” That statement stayed with me as I have followed the reintroduction of wolves in the Rocky Mountain West.
We are proficient at killing wolves with guns, traps, and poison and by introducing the sarcoptic mange mite into the population. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a division that is known as Wildlife Services (WS) that kills more than a million animals a year, including wolves. In 2018 WS killed 1.5 million animals by trapping, poisoning, and shooting. Among the 1.5 million were 357 gray wolves, 68,186 coyotes, 338 black bears, 375 mountain lions, 1,002 bobcats and 3,349 foxes.
Until recently the last wolves roamed Colorado in the 1940s. One of the last wolves killed in Colorado was Rags the Digger. The name Rags came from his ragged coat, a result of being old, and Digger for his ability to set off traps hidden under a small amount of dirt. A Federal Predator Control Agent was determined to get Rags after Rags dug up several of his traps. The agent set a decoy trap that was partially exposed and had two other traps that were well hidden around the decoy trap. While Rags was digging up the decoy trap, the other two traps were sprung around two of his feet. The federal agent checked his traps the next day and saw that they were sprung and dragged away. He followed the trail for some distance and discovered Rags with the two traps around his paws. Rags began to approach the federal agent. The agent tried shooting Rags as he approached, but his rifle jammed. It wasn’t until his third attempt that he was successful in shooting Rags in the chest, just a few feet from where the agent stood.
It wasn’t until June 2004 that a wolf was confirmed again in Colorado. She was a young female, #293, from the Swan Lake pack in Yellowstone. She was killed by a vehicle on Interstate 70 near Idaho Springs.
In April of 2009, a wolf known as #341 but that was actually #314 from the Mill Creek pack, was found poisoned by Compound 1080 in Rio Blanco County on Bureau of Land Management property. She was eighteen months old, had a global positioning system (GPS) collar, and had traveled 1,000 miles from Montana to Colorado. Compound 1080 is illegal in Colorado and can be used only in a few states. The poison is effective and is placed in bait to be consumed by an animal. Dying from ingesting compound 1080 is not instant; it takes several hours and is agonizing. The killing of #341 is unsolved, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has closed the case.
The most recent wolf killing in Colorado was in April of 2015. A coyote hunter mistook a wolf for a coyote and shot it. Since the reintroduction of the wolf in the Western states, this mistake happens frequently, although a coyote is about half the size of a gray wolf.
A wolf pack is a social family that may consist of a mother, father, siblings, aunts, uncles, and even grandparents. Wolves are similar to humans: they care strongly for their young, enjoy play, and mourn the loss of a family member. Some grow up and leave the family but may come back and stay or visit.
In a wolf pack it is all about the pups, and every member contributes to raising them. If a parent dies, adoption is common. Pack members contribute to preparing the den for the birth of pups in the spring. All pack members bring food to the den for the mother while she is nursing the pups. In late June, when the pups start eating meat, they are not as dependent on their mother’s milk. She is more experienced at hunting than the subadults and will join the pack to hunt. The less experienced hunters stay at the den and take care of the little ones. Some nonpregnant females lactate and nurse; they can be as young as yearlings and will not reach sexual maturity for another ten months.
Wolves adore play; even when older, they do not lose their passion for fun. They engage in several forms of entertainment, from chasing one another to keeping objects away from other members of the pack. Play is essential for the young to learn the necessary skills to survive their future. Most important, play helps promote social bonding within the pack.
When a pack member dies, the other members will howl, and researchers have described the howls as sorrowful. Wolves will return to the site where a pack member died. A Yellowstone wolf, following the death of her mate, left her pups and yearlings and traveled to a remote area of the park. It is unusual to have a mother leave her family when they are so dependent on her. After about a week she returned to her family. Wolf researcher Diane Boyd twice witnessed a mother wolf bury a dead pup. When a member dies, the pack stops playing, and it may take several weeks for everything to return to normal.
When one of the alphas dies, especially the female, it is quite disruptive for the pack. Sometimes the unit does not survive the loss. Wolves must learn to hunt, know their territory boundaries, and raise their young to adulthood.
The late Gordon Haber researched wolves for most of his life in Alaska and spent a considerable amount of time studying the Toklat wolves in Denali National Park. In his book Among Wolves, with author Marybeth Holleman, he shared his observations of what happens when the experienced pack leaders are killed: “the removal of individuals can cause the extinction of unique behaviors critical to the function and cohesion of the family group, ultimately leading to its disintegration.”
In late January 2005 the Toklat alpha female was caught in a snare trap just outside Denali’s park boundary. Her GPS radio-collar locations, necropsy results, and other information indicated that she probably struggled for two weeks in the trap, until the trapper shot her.
The alpha male left the trapping area with nine other pack members after staying near her during her two-week ordeal. The pack traveled fourteen miles straight to the natal den where he and the female had produced most of the others in 2003 and 2004. There, they cleaned out the den in anticipation of her return. For two and a half months he continued to return to the trapping site, howling over and over. Two more wolves in the group were trapped there: a pup and a new female that had joined the pack. By mid-April he was shot just outside the park boundary. All that was left of the Toklat pack were inexperienced yearlings and two-year-olds.
When the Toklats lost all their adults, the inexperienced young had not learned to hunt Dall sheep, caribou, or moose. In addition, they had not learned where their established territory was and therefore used less than one-third of it. This reduced territory further limited an important food source in the winter, the scavenging of winter-killed large prey. Their sole source of food was snowshoe hares. Generations of knowledge were lost with the death of the older experienced wolves.
Reintroduction of the Yellowstone wolf is considered successful, which may be encouraging most people in Colorado to want to bring the wolf back to the state. There have been some benefits, the research is valuable, and many have enjoyed the opportunity to see a wolf.
Rick McIntyre retired in 2018 from the National Park Service after serving for forty-two years. The story about Rags the Digger came from his book War Against The Wolf. If you would like to further your knowledge of the wolves of Yellowstone, The Rise of Wolf 8 is excellent. It is the first book of a trilogy.
Rick McIntyre has spent more hours watching wolves than anyone, and his knowledge of wolf behavior is captivating. He has done a great deal to transform people’s views on wolves.
Prior to his retirement, you could drive on the road through the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone and look for his yellow Nissan Xterra. When you found the vehicle, you would find Rick and his high-frequency tracking equipment for the collared wolves. I found Rick’s vehicle in 2005 and had the opportunity to visit with him. The first thing he did was offer me his spotting scope to observe the wolves. His priority is always the wolf and sharing knowledge with people from all over the world.
After Rick’s retirement Doug Smith, with the National Park Service (NPS), determined that the Park Service does not want to track the wolves so that people can watch them. In addition, he would like to haze the wolves that get near the road where people can view them. His theory is that Yellowstone wolves get use to people watching them and are not afraid of hunters, resulting in them getting shot. The emphasis should be on what is happening to wolves outside the park, specifically trapping, shooting and poisoning by federal WS agents, who have an annual budget of $100 million. The NPS has forgotten that the taxpayers have spent $117 million dollars to reintroduce the wolf into Yellowstone and should be considered when decisions are made.
The wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone was somewhat successful until Colorado politician Ken Salazar, Interior Secretary for the Obama administration, ended the federal protection for wolves under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 2009. Losing this ESA protection resulted in thousands of wolves being killed.
A wolf known as O-Six, for the year she was born, was the granddaughter of the famous alpha pair #21 and #42 and the most popular wolf in Yellowstone. People from all over the world got the opportunity to see her, and she was special for many reasons. Nate Blakeslee’s book American Wolf introduces you to O-Six and is a good reference for understanding the politics of wolf reintroduction.
O-Six was one of the few that could take down an elk on her own. Wolves rely on a coordinated effort from all pack members to take down such large prey. She was able to survive on her own for an extended period because of this ability. Several Yellowstone visitors were able to witness her taking down an elk. She eventually joined up with two brothers, #754 and #755, that were both inept at hunting, but she was able to teach them. She selected one of the brothers, #755, for her mate, and this was the beginning of her pack. She was an excellent mother, producing three litters, all of which survived, which is unusual. O-Six was a strong leader of the Lamar pack wolves. Her mate, #755, and the brother, #754, were usually seen together. With her pack size and her leadership, she was able to defend her territory from other wolf packs seeking to overtake the region.
By fall of 2012, O-six was six and a half years old, and her pack started venturing east outside of the park boundaries near Crandall, Wyoming. This was a dangerous area because hunting and trapping were now legal. In addition, the federal government had shot and trapped nearly all the wolves in that area in 2008. Wolf #754 was known for his friendliness and play with the alpha’s pups, and he was a favorite of many wolf watchers. On November 11, he was shot by a hunter who came to Crandall specifically to hunt wolves.
The tracking collars indicated the pack was still in Crandall near where #754 was shot. After nine days they came back to the Lamar Valley but returned to Crandall in December. On the morning of December 6, O-six was shot in the chest. Her family of eleven members were reluctant to leave her and continued to howl while she lay there dead. In November of 2018, her daughter, known as Spitfire, was shot just outside the northeast entrance of Yellowstone.
When the state of Wyoming took over control of the wolves, they made wolf hunting legal 365 days a year for 85 percent of the state. Wolves are now classified as shoot-on-site vermin, and in 2018, 81 were killed. The remaining fifteen percent of the state, around Jackson Hole, is a trophy wolf hunting area; in 2017, forty-four were killed.
In the state of Idaho, in 2019, 45,000 wolf-hunting tags were sold. Trappers killed 200 wolves, and 188 were shot by hunters. Montana had similar numbers in 2019; trappers killed 130, and hunters shot 165 wolves.
The argument is always about the number of cattle and sheep wolves kill. The data was reviewed and shows they kill few cattle and sheep. Data published by the USDA, which oversees the division of the WS department that is responsible for destroying what they identify as problem wildlife, indicate that wolves killed 4,360 cattle in 2015. These kills were in the Northern Rocky Mountains and largely unverified. The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) notes that only 161 losses were verified. It is disconcerting that two governmental agencies can have such a large disparity in the number killed. In the United States, for every wolf that kills one sheep or head of cattle, three are killed by domestic dogs.
During the first decade after the reintroduction of the wolf into Yellowstone, the wolf population soared. To many people the thriving population was viewed as a positive for the wolf project. If you consider the thousands of Yellowstone wolves and their descendants that have been trapped, poisoned, and shot, the reintroduction should be considered one of the government’s extreme failures.
Wolves need space to support their packs, and Colorado does not have such space. Gordon Haber found that pack territories in the Denali region ranged from two hundred square miles to two thousand square miles. The area needed is based on the amount of prey available for the pack, and Denali National Park is 6 million acres in which innumerable prey animals are protected from hunters. Colorado does not have such vast amounts of land protected from hunting. The wolves introduced into Colorado will be forced to expand their territories to feed their families, and this will result in them getting into trouble. Federal and state agencies will be forced to eliminate these wolves.
Recently, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) confirmed a pack of six wolves in northwest Colorado. This pack is currently protected under the ESA, and killing them is illegal, although the federal government retains the authority to shoot, trap, or poison any wolves they identify as a problem. USFWS is responsible for the management of the wolves, and if the ballot initiative passes, management will not go to CPW but will remain with the federal government. The responsible action is to monitor what happens to this pack in the future before introducing more wolves into Colorado.
Voting no on Initiative 107 in November will prevent the future killing of wolves similarly to what is occurring in the northern Rocky Mountain states.
Scott Davis
Read MoreColorado State University released a survey that showed that 84 percent of citizens in Colorado support the reintroduction of wolves back into the state. Voters will decide in November on Initiative 107, which would reintroduce wolves into Colorado by 2023. The citizens supporting the reintroduction are naive and lack an understanding of the ramifications of such a plan. These supporters are living in a simplistic world; it is imprudent to support an initiative without researching what the consequences will be. The wolves will likely kill cattle, sheep, and pets, but so do mountain lions and coyotes. I was also naive in 1995 when the wolves were being reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park. I was visiting with a friend, discussing my excitement over the reintroduction of the wolf into Yellowstone. She did not share my enthusiasm and stated, “people will just kill the wolves.” That statement stayed with me as I have followed the reintroduction of wolves in the Rocky Mountain West.
We are proficient at killing wolves with guns, traps, and poison and by introducing the sarcoptic mange mite into the population. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a division that is known as Wildlife Services (WS) that kills more than a million animals a year, including wolves. In 2018 WS killed 1.5 million animals by trapping, poisoning, and shooting. Among the 1.5 million were 357 gray wolves, 68,186 coyotes, 338 black bears, 375 mountain lions, 1,002 bobcats and 3,349 foxes.
Until recently the last wolves roamed Colorado in the 1940s. One of the last wolves killed in Colorado was Rags the Digger. The name Rags came from his ragged coat, a result of being old, and Digger for his ability to set off traps hidden under a small amount of dirt. A Federal Predator Control Agent was determined to get Rags after Rags dug up several of his traps. The agent set a decoy trap that was partially exposed and had two other traps that were well hidden around the decoy trap. While Rags was digging up the decoy trap, the other two traps were sprung around two of his feet. The federal agent checked his traps the next day and saw that they were sprung and dragged away. He followed the trail for some distance and discovered Rags with the two traps around his paws. Rags began to approach the federal agent. The agent tried shooting Rags as he approached, but his rifle jammed. It wasn’t until his third attempt that he was successful in shooting Rags in the chest, just a few feet from where the agent stood.
It wasn’t until June 2004 that a wolf was confirmed again in Colorado. She was a young female, #293, from the Swan Lake pack in Yellowstone. She was killed by a vehicle on Interstate 70 near Idaho Springs.
In April of 2009, a wolf known as #341 but that was actually #314 from the Mill Creek pack, was found poisoned by Compound 1080 in Rio Blanco County on Bureau of Land Management property. She was eighteen months old, had a global positioning system (GPS) collar, and had traveled 1,000 miles from Montana to Colorado. Compound 1080 is illegal in Colorado and can be used only in a few states. The poison is effective and is placed in bait to be consumed by an animal. Dying from ingesting compound 1080 is not instant; it takes several hours and is agonizing. The killing of #341 is unsolved, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has closed the case.
The most recent wolf killing in Colorado was in April of 2015. A coyote hunter mistook a wolf for a coyote and shot it. Since the reintroduction of the wolf in the Western states, this mistake happens frequently, although a coyote is about half the size of a gray wolf.
A wolf pack is a social family that may consist of a mother, father, siblings, aunts, uncles, and even grandparents. Wolves are similar to humans: they care strongly for their young, enjoy play, and mourn the loss of a family member. Some grow up and leave the family but may come back and stay or visit.
In a wolf pack it is all about the pups, and every member contributes to raising them. If a parent dies, adoption is common. Pack members contribute to preparing the den for the birth of pups in the spring. All pack members bring food to the den for the mother while she is nursing the pups. In late June, when the pups start eating meat, they are not as dependent on their mother’s milk. She is more experienced at hunting than the subadults and will join the pack to hunt. The less experienced hunters stay at the den and take care of the little ones. Some nonpregnant females lactate and nurse; they can be as young as yearlings and will not reach sexual maturity for another ten months.
Wolves adore play; even when older, they do not lose their passion for fun. They engage in several forms of entertainment, from chasing one another to keeping objects away from other members of the pack. Play is essential for the young to learn the necessary skills to survive their future. Most important, play helps promote social bonding within the pack.
When a pack member dies, the other members will howl, and researchers have described the howls as sorrowful. Wolves will return to the site where a pack member died. A Yellowstone wolf, following the death of her mate, left her pups and yearlings and traveled to a remote area of the park. It is unusual to have a mother leave her family when they are so dependent on her. After about a week she returned to her family. Wolf researcher Diane Boyd twice witnessed a mother wolf bury a dead pup. When a member dies, the pack stops playing, and it may take several weeks for everything to return to normal.
When one of the alphas dies, especially the female, it is quite disruptive for the pack. Sometimes the unit does not survive the loss. Wolves must learn to hunt, know their territory boundaries, and raise their young to adulthood.
The late Gordon Haber researched wolves for most of his life in Alaska and spent a considerable amount of time studying the Toklat wolves in Denali National Park. In his book Among Wolves, with author Marybeth Holleman, he shared his observations of what happens when the experienced pack leaders are killed: “the removal of individuals can cause the extinction of unique behaviors critical to the function and cohesion of the family group, ultimately leading to its disintegration.”
In late January 2005 the Toklat alpha female was caught in a snare trap just outside Denali’s park boundary. Her GPS radio-collar locations, necropsy results, and other information indicated that she probably struggled for two weeks in the trap, until the trapper shot her.
The alpha male left the trapping area with nine other pack members after staying near her during her two-week ordeal. The pack traveled fourteen miles straight to the natal den where he and the female had produced most of the others in 2003 and 2004. There, they cleaned out the den in anticipation of her return. For two and a half months he continued to return to the trapping site, howling over and over. Two more wolves in the group were trapped there: a pup and a new female that had joined the pack. By mid-April he was shot just outside the park boundary. All that was left of the Toklat pack were inexperienced yearlings and two-year-olds.
When the Toklats lost all their adults, the inexperienced young had not learned to hunt Dall sheep, caribou, or moose. In addition, they had not learned where their established territory was and therefore used less than one-third of it. This reduced territory further limited an important food source in the winter, the scavenging of winter-killed large prey. Their sole source of food was snowshoe hares. Generations of knowledge were lost with the death of the older experienced wolves.
Reintroduction of the Yellowstone wolf is considered successful, which may be encouraging most people in Colorado to want to bring the wolf back to the state. There have been some benefits, the research is valuable, and many have enjoyed the opportunity to see a wolf.
Rick McIntyre retired in 2018 from the National Park Service after serving for forty-two years. The story about Rags the Digger came from his book War Against The Wolf. If you would like to further your knowledge of the wolves of Yellowstone, The Rise of Wolf 8 is excellent. It is the first book of a trilogy.
Rick McIntyre has spent more hours watching wolves than anyone, and his knowledge of wolf behavior is captivating. He has done a great deal to transform people’s views on wolves.
Prior to his retirement, you could drive on the road through the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone and look for his yellow Nissan Xterra. When you found the vehicle, you would find Rick and his high-frequency tracking equipment for the collared wolves. I found Rick’s vehicle in 2005 and had the opportunity to visit with him. The first thing he did was offer me his spotting scope to observe the wolves. His priority is always the wolf and sharing knowledge with people from all over the world.
After Rick’s retirement Doug Smith, with the National Park Service (NPS), determined that the Park Service does not want to track the wolves so that people can watch them. In addition, he would like to haze the wolves that get near the road where people can view them. His theory is that Yellowstone wolves get use to people watching them and are not afraid of hunters, resulting in them getting shot. The emphasis should be on what is happening to wolves outside the park, specifically trapping, shooting and poisoning by federal WS agents, who have an annual budget of $100 million. The NPS has forgotten that the taxpayers have spent $117 million dollars to reintroduce the wolf into Yellowstone and should be considered when decisions are made.
The wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone was somewhat successful until Colorado politician Ken Salazar, Interior Secretary for the Obama administration, ended the federal protection for wolves under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 2009. Losing this ESA protection resulted in thousands of wolves being killed.
A wolf known as O-Six, for the year she was born, was the granddaughter of the famous alpha pair #21 and #42 and the most popular wolf in Yellowstone. People from all over the world got the opportunity to see her, and she was special for many reasons. Nate Blakeslee’s book American Wolf introduces you to O-Six and is a good reference for understanding the politics of wolf reintroduction.
O-Six was one of the few that could take down an elk on her own. Wolves rely on a coordinated effort from all pack members to take down such large prey. She was able to survive on her own for an extended period because of this ability. Several Yellowstone visitors were able to witness her taking down an elk. She eventually joined up with two brothers, #754 and #755, that were both inept at hunting, but she was able to teach them. She selected one of the brothers, #755, for her mate, and this was the beginning of her pack. She was an excellent mother, producing three litters, all of which survived, which is unusual. O-Six was a strong leader of the Lamar pack wolves. Her mate, #755, and the brother, #754, were usually seen together. With her pack size and her leadership, she was able to defend her territory from other wolf packs seeking to overtake the region.
By fall of 2012, O-six was six and a half years old, and her pack started venturing east outside of the park boundaries near Crandall, Wyoming. This was a dangerous area because hunting and trapping were now legal. In addition, the federal government had shot and trapped nearly all the wolves in that area in 2008. Wolf #754 was known for his friendliness and play with the alpha’s pups, and he was a favorite of many wolf watchers. On November 11, he was shot by a hunter who came to Crandall specifically to hunt wolves.
The tracking collars indicated the pack was still in Crandall near where #754 was shot. After nine days they came back to the Lamar Valley but returned to Crandall in December. On the morning of December 6, O-six was shot in the chest. Her family of eleven members were reluctant to leave her and continued to howl while she lay there dead. In November of 2018, her daughter, known as Spitfire, was shot just outside the northeast entrance of Yellowstone.
When the state of Wyoming took over control of the wolves, they made wolf hunting legal 365 days a year for 85 percent of the state. Wolves are now classified as shoot-on-site vermin, and in 2018, 81 were killed. The remaining fifteen percent of the state, around Jackson Hole, is a trophy wolf hunting area; in 2017, forty-four were killed.
In the state of Idaho, in 2019, 45,000 wolf-hunting tags were sold. Trappers killed 200 wolves, and 188 were shot by hunters. Montana had similar numbers in 2019; trappers killed 130, and hunters shot 165 wolves.
The argument is always about the number of cattle and sheep wolves kill. The data was reviewed and shows they kill few cattle and sheep. Data published by the USDA, which oversees the division of the WS department that is responsible for destroying what they identify as problem wildlife, indicate that wolves killed 4,360 cattle in 2015. These kills were in the Northern Rocky Mountains and largely unverified. The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) notes that only 161 losses were verified. It is disconcerting that two governmental agencies can have such a large disparity in the number killed. In the United States, for every wolf that kills one sheep or head of cattle, three are killed by domestic dogs.
During the first decade after the reintroduction of the wolf into Yellowstone, the wolf population soared. To many people the thriving population was viewed as a positive for the wolf project. If you consider the thousands of Yellowstone wolves and their descendants that have been trapped, poisoned, and shot, the reintroduction should be considered one of the government’s extreme failures.
Wolves need space to support their packs, and Colorado does not have such space. Gordon Haber found that pack territories in the Denali region ranged from two hundred square miles to two thousand square miles. The area needed is based on the amount of prey available for the pack, and Denali National Park is 6 million acres in which innumerable prey animals are protected from hunters. Colorado does not have such vast amounts of land protected from hunting. The wolves introduced into Colorado will be forced to expand their territories to feed their families, and this will result in them getting into trouble. Federal and state agencies will be forced to eliminate these wolves.
Recently, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) confirmed a pack of six wolves in northwest Colorado. This pack is currently protected under the ESA, and killing them is illegal, although the federal government retains the authority to shoot, trap, or poison any wolves they identify as a problem. USFWS is responsible for the management of the wolves, and if the ballot initiative passes, management will not go to CPW but will remain with the federal government. The responsible action is to monitor what happens to this pack in the future before introducing more wolves into Colorado.
Voting no on Initiative 107 in November will prevent the future killing of wolves similarly to what is occurring in the northern Rocky Mountain states.
Scott Davis
