Colorado senator says divide between wolf advocates and ranchers has 'never been greater'

Yahoo

19-02-2025

State Democratic Sen. Dylan Roberts didn't hold back when each panelist at the outset of Colorado Public Radio's panel discussion in Loveland was asked what is and isn't working with Colorado wolf restoration.
Roberts, whose district covers much of western Colorado where wolves have been reintroduced the last two years, said what's worked is there are 29 wolves in Colorado.
His what's-not-working answer made it painfully obvious why continued struggles lie ahead for the reintroduction of wolves made possible by the passage of Proposition 114 in 2020.
"What's not working is at the expense of doing that (releasing wolves) so quickly, the divide between the people who support wolf reintroduction and the folks living with the impacts has never been greater, and there has been so much animosity because of that rushed process," he told the public audience Feb. 6 at the Rialto Theatre.
Panelists at the lively and candid event in addition to Roberts included Western Slope rancher Lenny Klinglesmith; two wolf advocates in CU professor Joanna Lambert and Rocky Mountain Wolf Project board member Courtney Vail; and Eric Odell, Colorado Parks and Wildlife wolf conservation program manager.
You can listen to the entire panel discussion on a variety of topics on the Colorado Public Radio website.
Vail countered Roberts' assessment by pointing out the collaboration that is taking place on the ground between wolf advocates, ranchers and CPW, a message she said hasn't been accurately portrayed in the media and public narrative. She said that "intense focus" on negative messaging is what is not working.
"We have created a wolf crisis when in fact there are a lot of good stories in Colorado coming out hopefully in the future as we continue to talk about these things," she said. "Collaboration is working and I think the media needs to do a little better job of talking about the good stories of what is working for producers and for wolf advocates in Colorado. Those stories aren't making it into the media."
Odell said CPW has done a good job capturing and transporting wolves while keeping human and animal safety front and center. He said the agency is working on what it can do better.
"We are developing ways to coexist, to mitigate and minimize some of that challenge with some of those range riders and site assessments," he said. "We are a lot further down the road than we were last year, and there's still a lot of room for improvement."
Klinglesmith credited Rocky Mountain Wolf Project and Vail for raising nearly $700,000 through its Born to be Wild specialty license plate sales, which will be used mainly to fund the $500,000 expected cost to employ 12 range riders this year, as well as other nonlethal tools for ranchers.
He said despite those efforts, plus state and federal funding, it will take more money to fund costly nonlethal tools to continue to keep an increasing number of wolves from conflicts with livestock.
"Those funds are already gone," he said. "I went to apply for a grant and they are taking no more applications. Federal money through the Western Landowners Alliance — they expected five to 10 applications and last I heard they had 50 to 60 applications. It's not going to go far enough."
Roberts said CPW's work leading up to the latest wolf releases was better than the first round but that it was "a low bar" to improve. He said CPW's secrecy during the state's first wolf releases in December of 2023 in Grand and Summit counties was "offensive" to the people he represents.
"There are a lot of wolf advocates in here (the Rialto Theatre) and I want you to put yourself in the position being one of those people in Grand County (where) this is your livelihood, dedicated your life to; this is what your family has grown up doing and you want your kids to do," Roberts said. "And there are predators being released right now next to you with absolutely no warning and with a lot of the mitigation tools not being in place yet because it was all rushed to meet this artificial deadline at the end of 2023."
There was lively discussion about the legitimacy of wildlife measures being voted upon through ballot initiatives, often referred to as "ballot box biology."
Colorado was the first state where voters approved reintroducing wolves. In the past, reintroduction has been done by the federal government.
The 2020 measure narrowly passed, 51% to 49%, further widening the state's urban-rural divide.
Thirteen of 64 counties voted in favor of the measure, including eight on the Front Range — Denver, Boulder Larimer, Adams, Broomfield, Jefferson, Arapahoe and El Paso — along with West Slope counties — La Plata, Pitkin, San Juan, San Miguel and Summit.
"If you look at how the vote shook out, there was a concentration in a few counties of overwhelming support," Vail said. "But if you look at every county, there was support for wolves. It's a matter of degree. It's inaccurate to say that it was only Front Range that wanted wolves in Colorado."
Lambert said the vote wasn't ballot box biology.
"It was founded on decades of impeccable science that was coming out of Yellowstone and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, from reintroductions throughout different parts of the United State and from around the world," Vail said. "It wasn't about ballot box biology but about do the citizens agree that it is or is not important to work towards the recovery of an endangered species policy."
Roberts "vehemently disagree(d)" that reintroduction of a predator should happen through a popular vote. He said Colorado is one of the easiest states to get ballot measures on the ballot but said unlike Proposition 114, most ballot measures voted on impact the entire state.
"Legalization of marijuana, universal preschool, those touch all four corners of the state and voters get to weigh in," Roberts said. "Many people voted in favor of (Proposition) 114 that will never think about it ever again; will never be impacted by it in their entire lives. But the people who have to deal with the consequences have to deal with it daily."
He added the reason Proposition 114 went to a ballot initiative is wolf advocates failed to convince previous Colorado Parks and Wildlife commission members and the state wildlife agency of its merits. He said legislators were working on putting parameters on the reintroduction before wolves were released but were thwarted.
"They didn't trust the science, didn't trust the biologists; they just went straight to the voters with a lot of money frankly and got their ballot measure passed," Roberts said.
Vail said wildlife commissioners and legislators aren't biologists and wildlife experts and wolf advocates were allowed to do what they did through the democratic process.
"We are doing ballot box all the time to shape our worlds the way we want to see it," Vail said. "I feel fully comfortable with that process and it's an evolution and in time we will find out if it's successful or not and it's up to us to determine if it is or not."
Klinglesmith said it "blew my mind" when Odell said during a state wolf stakeholders group meeting that wolves could double their population every other year.
He said the reintroduction measure wasn't necessary and now that it's passed, the state should move slower in releasing more wolves to the state.
"There is a lot of bitterness, animosity on the Western Slope that felt an unaffected majority imposed a harmful thing on an affected minority," he said.
Wolf advocates pushed the ecological value of wolves leading up to the Proposition 114 vote and more recently, including wolves' importance in rebalancing Colorado ecology, a trophic cascade, and the predator's ability to help reduce chronic wasting disease in deer and elk in Colorado.
Trophic cascade refers to how the addition or removal of apex predators at the top of the food chain affects animals and plants further down the chain, which in turn impacts the entire ecosystem.
That idea became widely popular in 2014 when the short film "How Wolves Change Rivers" was released claiming wolves were largely responsible for the recovery of wetlands and willows in Yellowstone National Park by reducing elk browsing.
The findings of a 20-year CSU study released last year vastly downplayed the significance of wolves' restorative impact in the national park while revealing the restoration of apex predators, including wolves, to Yellowstone after a long absence failed to reverse the effects of their removal from the ecosystem.
The study also pointed out that doesn't mean wolves shouldn't be reintroduced into areas such as was done in Colorado.
Lambert acknowledged the video was a "Disney version" of the trophic cascade story but said it did a lot of good work in terms of messaging the significance of predators in food webs on landscapes.
"The critique that I would make of that is nothing in the natural world is that simple," Lambert said.
Lambert added the ecological impact of wolves in Colorado is likely not going to result in a trophic cascade.
"The idea now that rivers are going to transform and that there is going to be less erosion and more beaver and all of those elements that have been depicted … we are looking right now at 29 wolves across an enormous landscape of western Colorado with 22 million acres of public land compared to 2.2 million acres in Yellowstone," she said. "The scale is completely different so to expect some kind of extraordinary shift ecologically is just not realistic."
As of April 2022, chronic wasting disease has been detected in 40 of Colorado's 54 mule and white-tailed deer herds, 17 of 42 elk herds and two of nine moose herds, according to CPW.
Vail said wolves will help reduce the spread of chronic wasting disease in the state, which will help ranchers and outfitters who benefit from the state's lucrative deer and elk hunting seasons.
"What wasn't mentioned about the economic value of wolves is they are really helping the state combat CWD," Vail said. "They sniff out diseased animals and we've eliminated that component of that food web that will help us regulate that."
Odell disagreed with Vail's value of wolves' impact on CWD, saying the fatal disease of deer, elk and moose is endemic and well-established in Colorado and that wolves will likely not have any impact on the disease.
"Will wolves solve the CWD problem in Colorado? Probably not," Odell said. "Bringing in another predator that might be able to cue in might help to some degree. That said there are areas where wolves have been present for quite a while and CWD is gaining a foothold despite the fact there are wolves on the ground."
Klingelsmith said he understands the intrinsic value some put on wolves but said he doesn't see the benefit because for him, "I can't sleep at night, I can't go to my daughter's rodeos and not wonder what is getting killed (back at the ranch)."
Klinglesmith believes ranchers can live with wolves in Colorado to a degree but that the predator needs to be managed, including by lethal means. He added there is a "misconception that ranchers are wolf haters" that lingers since wolves were largely killed off in Colorado and elsewhere by ranchers and the federal government decades ago.
"There is this misconception out there that we are still the ranchers of the Great Depression," Klinglesmith said. "During the Great Depression is when the poison was released and the government decided to declare federal war on predators because people were starving and predators were competition for food.
"We're not there anymore. We manage forage and land and our product is grass and browse we market through cattle, sheep, elk and deer and that revenue source is what keeps that space open, keeps houses and development off of it. That needs protected."
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Colorado wolf advocates' and ranchers' divide 'never been greater'