Colorado is the first state to intentionally bring back wolves by popular vote. But voting was just the beginning. From the ballot box to paws on the ground, join us for Gray Territory, a new limited series that takes a deeper look at wolf reintroduction and explores the complicated reality of coexistence. 

The series is season five of the award-winning podcast, Laws of Notion, hosted by Kristan Uhlenbrock, Executive Director of the Institute for Science & Policy. For more information and resources from this episode, check out the episode summary page. Enjoy the transcript, and to listen to the audio version visit institute.dmns.org/gray-territory.

 

Episode 2 – Whose Voice Counts?

Wolf Votes follow Politics

KRISTAN UHLENBROCK: 50.91% yes. 49.09% no. In the November 2020 election, Colorado became the first state in U.S. history where voters decided to bring back an apex predator. The vote to reintroduce gray wolves was closer than any other measure on that year's ballot. It revealed something deeper than a simple yes or no.

BECKY NIEMIEC: My first reaction was surprise. And my second reaction was, “Oh my gosh, I need to study what happened here.” And so that’s exactly what we did.

KRISTAN: Becky Niemiec, a social scientist from Colorado State University, had surveyed Coloradans a year before the election. 84% supported wolf reintroduction. The actual vote: barely 51%. Either something had shifted, or her survey had missed something. She needed to find out which.

BECKY: So we decided that the best way to learn what happened would be to do another survey immediately after the election using the exact same methodology and participant recruitment strategies.  What we found is evidence of both of those hypotheses.

KRISTAN: In the post-election survey, Becky and her colleagues found that 64% of people surveyed supported reintroduction.

BECKY: The first thing to note here is 64% is still very different than about 51%. And so, this shows that public polling is very difficult and is often not accurate.

KRISTAN: Humans are complicated creatures. We can say one thing and then do something else – what’s known in a survey as a response bias. In Becky’s survey, she found this to be true. However, taking that into account, there was still a significant shift in public opinion. And Becky wanted to find out what influenced this.

BECKY: We asked people, "Where did you get your information from?" They said news coverage.

KRISTAN: She and her colleagues then dug into Colorado’s ten major news outlets, looking specifically at their coverage from Jan 2019 to Jan 2020, when signatures were being gathered for the ballot referendum.

BECKY: One of the things that we noticed was that news coverage focused more on the negative impacts of wolf reintroduction rather than some of those positive arguments. So that suggested that the public may have read the news, saw these potential negative impacts they weren't thinking about before, and then changed their beliefs and their opinions. This really shows us that, while polling was off, absolutely, there was a shift in public opinion that may have been driven by media coverage.

KRISTAN: They dissected the data even further.

BECKY: We got together all this precinct data on things like people's distance to proposed wolf reintroduction, measures of livelihoods, occupation, hunting, participation in outdoor recreation, tourism, demographics, all that kind of stuff...

KRISTAN: Including voters’ political identities.

BECKY: Another key component of this story of what happened when wolves got on the ballot is that wolf reintroduction really became politicized.

KRISTAN: From national politicians to the governor’s office to local county commissioners, elected officials were taking to the stump to weigh in. The issue was political, and how people voted often fell along partisan lines.

BECKY: We looked at the precinct level to determine what was the best predictor of people's votes on 114. And what we found is that votes for wolf restoration were most associated with support for presidential candidates. That was the strongest predictor. And specifically, individuals who voted for the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate were more likely to vote for Prop 114.

KRISTAN: In other words, Biden voters were more likely to vote in favor of wolf reintroduction, and Trump voters were more likely to vote against it.

BECKY: There's this growing body of literature looking at wolf reintroduction and management all across the United States that's increasingly pointing to the role of political party affiliation and sociopolitical identity in people's ideas and attitudes around wolves.

KRISTAN: Becky and her colleagues were sitting in the middle of a real-world social science experiment of a historic nature. One that could have significant implications for future conservation and land management decisions. So they tried to understand people’s behaviors, beliefs, and opinions from every angle, including the role of political messaging and campaigns. One phrase kept coming up across all media: ballot box biology.

BECKY: Basically, it's this concept that we should be leaving all wildlife management decisions to the experts, that the public shouldn't be influencing wildlife management via the ballot, that that's against science. I'm starting to see that phrase more and more in media outlets and podcasts, all over the place, not just in Colorado, but in the West. And so I think this is another way in which the public perceptions around wildlife are being impacted by wolf reintroduction.

KRISTAN: It’s interesting how a simple phrase can carry so much complexity. That’s often the case with political messaging campaigns.

BECKY: I think this narrative that has come out of wolf reintroduction brings up some pretty fundamental questions around wildlife management more broadly around, do we want to hear the public values in wildlife management? And if so, on what sorts of questions? And that's something that we as a society really need to grapple with.

KRISTAN: In this episode, we explore the gap between democratic ideals and messy reality, how a vote becomes policy and then becomes lived experience, and who gets heard along the way.

Welcome to Gray Territory: The Return of Wolves to Colorado. I’m your host, Kristan Uhlenbrock, and this is Season 5 of Laws of Notion, where we push against our preconceived beliefs and think critically about the world around us.

The Role of Expertise in Decisions

KRISTAN: Hi! Hi, puppies!

KELLY DUNNING: They’re very friendly, they’re just very annoying. Stay down.

KRISTAN: Hi! They’re so excited! Well, we have some dog lovers.

KELLY: Please yell at them for me (laughter). Stay down, pal!

KRISTAN: To understand why wolves became a ballot issue, we need to understand how wildlife decisions usually get made in America, which is why I drove to the mountains of Colorado near Kremmling to talk with someone who has spent her career studying contentious conservation issues around the world.

KELLY: My name is Kelly Dunning. I am the Timberline Professor at the University of Wyoming in Sustainable Outdoor Recreation.

KRISTAN: We’re sitting at Kelly’s dining room table. Research papers are piled on one end, abutted against her standing desk. Through the window, you can see a few other houses dotting the open spaces where ranchers and wildlife have coexisted for generations.

KELLY: This community that we're in right now, Old Park, it's kind of one of those communities that remains affordable. You have a lot of middle-class and working-class folks here. A lot of producers, ranchers, farmers, a lot of retirees, a lot of families.

KRISTAN: Kelly moved here two years ago with her husband and two kids. She is the Director of the University of Wyoming’s Wildlife and Wilderness Recreation Lab. She researches conservation policy where tourism plays a significant role in local identity. Her work has taken her into communities across the globe, knowledge that she’s now applying to her own backyard. She studies what academics call "multi-stakeholder governance" - basically, how to make decisions when everyone disagrees.

KELLY: Imagine the two people who disagree the most, whether you're talking about ocean policy or wolf reintroduction. We want to find public policy options that everybody can live with.

KRISTAN: I wanted to talk to Kelly because she's both studying governance and living it - she lives only a few miles from where the first wolves were released.

KELLY: The first year did not go well. I love wolves, and I love rural communities. It didn't go well for wolves or for people out here.

KRISTAN: To understand the wolf reintroduction, it’s important to understand a little history of wildlife management. Much of today’s conservation and management decisions find their roots in what’s called the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. The term was officially coined in 2001. However, the Model's origins trace back to the 1800s, when there were few laws protecting wildlife. Humans were driving species toward extinction—the passenger pigeon gone forever, bison nearly wiped out.

Then attitudes shifted. New laws emerged. And the prominent philosophy became that wildlife belongs to everyone, not just private landowners, and it should be preserved for future generations.

KELLY: The North American Model is widely mimicked. I have students from Nepal, I have students from India who come here to learn our system so that they can go to their home countries as very senior fish and wildlife folks and mimic what we do. So this is something that we should all, as Americans, be very proud of.

KRISTAN: While the North American Model is a framework to describe what guides decisions, there are numerous laws and policies that support it. Kelly highlights a critical one.

KELLY: It kind of looks like this: the authority for decision-making over wildlife tends to rest with state fish and wildlife. And that is for game species. The most popular, obviously out here, is mule deer and elk.

Now you may say, well, what about species like grizzly bear or wolves? Those are listed species on the Endangered Species Act. It's the most widely mimicked wildlife conservation policy on Earth. It's the best. It has teeth, it works, it's effective, it brings species back from extinction. The bald eagle is the most famous example for our country. That is at the federal level through U.S. Fish and Wildlife. There is an interplay, where states are in charge with all these recreational species, but when you are dealing with a listed species, that is something that you will work with the federal government on.

KRISTAN: One tenet of the North American Model is that decisions should be informed by science. And that we should focus on the overall health of a species rather than any individual animal. And there is a tool used by many government agencies to do just that.

KELLY: One of the best teaching cases that we use in wildlife conservation is what's called adaptive management.

KRISTAN: Adaptive management means a strategy is informed by scientific information and evolving conditions. It provides wildlife professionals with flexibility and accountability. Kelly uses waterfowl hunting as an example.

KELLY: We take all of the numbers across 50 states for what waterfowl hunters have harvested and scientists at USGS and Fish and Wildlife say, what do our populations look like this year? Based on the take, what can they look like next year? State biologists work with federal biologists on this amazing computational model to manage waterfowl stocks. It's modeled all over the world. It's one of the best success stories with data-driven decision-making for species and ecosystems.

KRISTAN: In addition to how decisions are made, how they are funded is just as critical. Historically, those who use the resources have helped fund their conservation, like hunters and anglers.

KELLY: Most money for conservation in states comes from a state-federal matching program for hunting license sales.

KRISTAN: In Colorado, for example, more than half of Colorado Parks and Wildlife's revenue comes from licenses, fees, and permits. In addition to park entrance fees, the state issues about one to two million licenses to hunt and fish annually. This can be used to unlock federal money, through programs that impose an excise tax on fishing and hunting equipment - money that would be hard to come by without these federal taxes.

KELLY: Every type of equipment that's used for hunting, there's an 11% excise tax on all that equipment. And imagine telling an American, regardless of their political party, that you want to put an 11% tax on something - nobody would agree to it.

KRISTAN: The user-pay, user-benefit model is one that draws attention because there is a direct line between the money, such as an excise tax on hunting equipment, and the service, such as support for a state wildlife agency's budget. This funding structure is important because it could influence priorities. Some argue that because the state receives a significant source of revenue from hunting and fishing, this creates an inherent bias towards managing wildlife for hunters rather than the broader public’s values.

However, if you examine all the funding sources, it is pretty complex and much more diverse. The federal government, nonprofits, philanthropy, and other revenue sources also play a role to support conservation and management. And looking beyond revenue streams, to how our government agencies function, it’s important to remember that they were designed to represent the public’s interests, and often this is through the direction of elected officials and public engagement processes. Here’s Kelly again:

KELLY: Now, how does the state know what we want done with our wildlife? This is where nonprofits and community groups come into play, the idea of asking people what they want to see.

KRISTAN: Nonprofits that work in conservation have increased over the years as people often find that it’s easier to have their values represented as a collective.

KELLY: It's really kind of a pain to read the federal register every day or follow state season setting, where they set the length of time for the hunting season and quotas and stuff like that. This is why nonprofit groups exist: to give us an organized venue that we can kind of get our thoughts together and kind of systematize how we are going to talk about what we want with wolves or lynx or whatever it is.

KRISTAN: And she also points out that the system does include multiple ways for the public to engage and have their views heard.

KELLY: So one of the things that makes America's model for wildlife conservation so great is that we have a huge role for everyday people to get involved, whether that's a public comment period on something that impacts local wildlife or just community meetings, because the public owns wildlife and the state holds it in trust for us.

KRISTAN: Kelly sees Colorado's wolf vote as a challenge to this system.

KELLY: Maybe back when I was a grad student, if you had said, hey, a ballot referendum, I would've said that is a very new and innovative way to democratize the way that we think about and govern wildlife. Now that I've seen it play out, I understand that when you give power a certain way, you take power away from another group. And who did the ballot referendum take away power from? Well, it's all of the scientists, experts, and specialists in Colorado Parks and Wildlife. They are typically the people working hand in hand with the federal government.

KRISTAN: For Kelly, this isn't just about the process of how decisions get made, but the people who work to build trust and relationships in the communities they serve.

KELLY: That is where the ultimate decision-making authority should rest. It's where you have a really big concentration of scientific expertise. It's where you have people who live hand-in-hand in rural communities. When you talk to ranchers out here, they know the local USDA or the local park service or the local fish and wildlife person, or Colorado Parks and Wildlife person.

I say trust the science and the scientists. And all the scientists, I torment them. They're my college students. So I've really put them through the gauntlet. And then they go and they get these CPW jobs, and I trust them, having trained them, to make these science-based wildlife and fish decision-making. And when we take that power away from the scientists, I'm worried about it. What's next?

KRISTAN: Kelly's belief in the system runs deep. While not perfect, she sees how the North American Model and our institutions have delivered real conservation success stories. Yet some believe our current wildlife decision-making models gloss over failures and aren’t adapting to people’s shifting values.

But for any system to work, that requires some degree of trust. And trust? That’s gotten complicated.

Values vs. Expertise

KRISTAN: Back on the Front Range of Colorado, Becky Niemiec has also been studying how we make conservation and wildlife decisions. And she sees some significant problems with how it works in practice.

BECKY: So there's this idea of wildlife management being a technocracy, and this is the idea that wildlife management is solely a biological question. It should be left to the biologists. They can make all the decisions, and the public really doesn't need to be involved. And this kind of technocratic model of wildlife management has often been some of the narrative around the North American model of wildlife management.

But when you actually look into how wildlife management decisions are made, in reality, these decisions are made at the intersection of biological research, absolutely, but also values. Biological information can really provide us with insight into how individual animals, populations, species, and ecosystems interact and change, but ultimately biological science cannot tell us whether we, as a society, want certain animals on a landscape or whether we want to protect or treat animals or kill animals in certain ways. Those later questions, those are actually value-based questions.

KRISTAN: And values-based questions are inherently political. Becky reasons that the North American Model, despite its democratic principles, has historically privileged certain voices and values over others.

BECKY: Wildlife management has always been value-based. It's just that in the past, wildlife management has been typically making decisions based on what we call "domination values" that traditional stakeholders have. You know, the whole concept of the North American Model of wildlife conservation is, we manage wildlife for people's benefits, for hunting, for fishing, to benefit people who are using animals in that way.

But the public's values are starting to change. A lot of studies have documented this. People have different connections to wildlife, and that's why they're turning to the ballot initiative. They're saying, “Hey, a lot of us are starting to have different values around wildlife. We want a say in things, and we don't feel like we can get a say, so that’s why we’re going to the ballot.”

KRISTAN: You may remember hearing this in the last episode from Rob Edward. He’s the president of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund, who felt like he and the constituencies he represents had spent years trying to work within the system but weren’t feeling heard…

ROB EDWARD: There was no statement coming out that said, yes, the state of Colorado should take the bull by the horns and get wolves recovered so that they can get them off the state and federal endangered species list sooner rather than later. The state wasn't going to do that. The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission at the time wasn't willing to do that. But we had done our due diligence. We could say that proudly and fairly, but there wasn't going to be any movement if we didn't move it.

KRISTAN: Which is why they took wolves to the ballot. From Kelly Dunning’s perspective, she acknowledges that a ballot initiative can give people a voice, yet the impacts of an initiative, should it pass, might be greater for some than others.

KELLY: The positive side of a ballot referendum is you really are getting the voice of the people. The flaw with this particular ballot referendum is the people that voted for wolves are not the ones that bear the consequences of wolf release. Most of the votes for wolf release came from more densely populated areas. And where were they released? Just down the road here in ranch country.

KRISTAN: And like with most divisive issues these days, there may be larger global concerns at play.

KELLY: I understand why people voted for wolf release. It's a once-in-a-generation extinction crisis. Wildlife is not doing well. Whether we're talking about here, Southern Africa, Europe, wherever you're working, we're really genuinely in the midst of an extinction crisis. Who bears the emotional and real-life impacts of those crises: future generations. Our children and our grandchildren. The stakes are really high to do a good job to protect wildlife, and I think that the intentions behind this sort of thing, giving people the opportunity to provide input, are wonderful.

What I would ask the listener is, if you want to provide input, have you ever done a request for public comment from your local parks and wildlife authority? Have you ever been to a public meeting to get your opinion on wildlife set up by Colorado Parks and Wildlife? Have you ever been to a local chapter meeting of a nonprofit like Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership? Have you ever done any of those things? And if the answer is no, I would encourage you to do that. That's your right. You're a public land owner, you're a wildlife owner. I believe that it is your job to provide public comment.

KRISTAN: Yet while Kelly believes in these roots of civic engagement, she acknowledges that most people don’t engage in the ways she mentions.

KELLY: We're actually working on a study right now about why nobody does this. The numbers are historically low, whether you're talking about Colorado or Wyoming, which are very different states politically. It's the same problem. People don't show up unless it's an opportunity to scream at your local parks and wildlife person, whether that's the feds or states.

So what I would suggest as a middle way is really exercising your right as a public landowner, as a wildlife owner and steward, and finding out what are the species that I care about? When are the next public meetings about these things where I'm asked to give my input? Rather than the two extremes, which are like, nobody ever showing up and all the decision-making authority just resting with political figures, or the other side, which is we referendum everything.

KRISTAN: And for Becky Niemiec, she sees opportunities to improve how our government institutions think and act.

BECKY: It's often assumed that the job of our government agencies is to provide information to people to help them understand wildlife management issues and maybe implement any practices they need to reduce conflict with carnivores, like wolves. But all of this research shows that really the biggest barrier to successful wolf reintroduction and conservation initiatives is this social conflict. And I think what's super fascinating is we can't just reduce social conflict by that traditional technocratic approach. You can give people all the information they want to learn about wolves. You can tell them anything they need to learn about livestock husbandry practices to reduce conflict with wolves. But that doesn't address the social conflict, because the social conflict is driven by perceived threats to people's identities. It's driven by assumptions that different groups make about each other and make about the conflict. It's driven by this perception of feeling like you're not being heard and that the other group is responsible for the conflict.

KRISTAN: Kelly notes that without meaningful engagement, social conflict can rear its head in unproductive ways.

KELLY: It's how you have long-lasting, effective laws around wildlife. And if you make decisions that just kind of fly in the face of local interests, it's harder to keep these laws popular. It’s a harder pill to swallow.

KRISTAN: She points to how the Endangered Species Act gets pulled into politics when people feel like they're not being heard.

KELLY: And then the politicians step in. Some of the most contentious politicians of our lifetimes step in, whether it's our congresswoman here or the president of the United States. They step in, and they say, “Alright, stroke of a pen, grizzlies, delisted, wolves are delisted.” And then it just blows up, and it becomes more politically contentious than the most politically contentious issues you can imagine. And that is exactly where wildlife people do not want to be. We do not want to be talked of in the same way that really divisive political issues... I don’t even want to say an example of another, just because it’s so divisive.

KRISTAN: This is what concerns Kelly the most. Because this divisiveness is permeating so many interactions with wolf reintroduction.

KELLY: When you ask people, whether they're democrat, republican, independent, “How do you feel about Colorado Parks and Wildlife? Wyoming Game and Fish?” It's good. They’re a part of the community. They're not against me. They're not political. That has changed too. The amount of trust that this has eroded is troublesome for me. Just from the perspective of how do we get back to not having this urban-rural divide, but of equal importance, how can we get back to having the everyday person in Colorado, whether you're living in Boulder or Grand County, have a lot of faith and trust in Colorado Parks and Wildlife scientists and managers? We have to get back there, and we have to get back there quickly, because when that trust goes away, people take things into their own hands.

KRISTAN: Here are two experts, both committed to conservation, both believing in public participation and democratic processes. And yet both of them are grappling with how we move forward and how the diversity of values and perspectives gets heard in wildlife decisions.

First Paws on the Ground

KRISTAN: The passage of the wolf reintroduction ballot initiative presented Colorado Parks and Wildlife with a directive from the voters. And the clock was ticking.

ERIC ODELL: Proposition 114 became state law, and state law is Colorado Revised Statute 33-2-105.8. We know that number really well by now.

KRISTAN: This is Eric Odell, whom you heard from in the last episode. He’s the Wolf Program Manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, or CPW.

ERIC: It puts us in a challenging situation. As wildlife professionals, we take our jobs quite seriously, and we're well trained to do the work and make decisions, and prioritize agency resources on a lot of different things. And so, it's a challenging circumstance to find ourselves in.

KRISTAN: The new statute directed CPW to do a few things.

ERIC: One was to restore wolves west of the continental divide, so it gave us a geographic restriction as to where wolves should be restored.

KRISTAN: Second:

ERIC: It told us that we had to develop some state recovery goals, to know when wolves would be self-sustaining within the state, so it required us to have some target for at least species recovery, not necessarily a management target.

KRISTAN: And also:

ERIC: It required us to develop programs to manage the conflict that was certain to arise. What we know is that where wolves and livestock are on the same landscape, there's going to be conflict. And so, we had to develop programs to compensate for those losses and minimize them as well. And then of course, it had a timeline.

KRISTAN: CPW had three years.

ERIC: So this began in November of 2020, and through the end of December 2023 was when we had to take the steps necessary to begin wolf reintroduction.

KRISTAN: Eric and his colleagues had to get to work. And it started with getting people - both within CPW and the general public - on the same page.

ERIC: How do we develop a plan to restore wolves? And what does that mean? What does wolf restoration mean to you? What are the things that we need to think about? We had a lot of conversations with our Parks and Wildlife Commission, as they were the ones that were ultimately directed through the legislation to do this.

KRISTAN: CPW hired an outside facilitator to convene two stakeholder groups. One was a Wolf Technical Working Group. This group focused on various aspects of wolf conservation and management, including population objectives, damage prevention, and compensation planning.

ERIC: And that was a group that was made up of academics, those that were involved in the restoration of wolves to Yellowstone and Central Idaho in the mid-nineties, people that were directly involved with Wolf Management in other states. We had county commissioners and then other agencies, federal agencies.

KRISTAN: The second group focused on gathering community input for CPW to consider as they were crafting the plan.

ERIC: And then we had a separate group that was called our Stakeholder Advisory Group. And this was a group that made up the whole spectrum that you might imagine that has opinions on what wolf management looks like. So it had NGO groups, wolf advocates, it had hunters, and it had agricultural ranching interests as well as tribal representation, and county commissioners were on that as well.

KRISTAN: Over the next year and a half, these groups convened, looking for consensus on almost every possible question.

ERIC: What's an appropriate way of compensating landowners that are confirmed to have lost livestock through wolf depredation? What feels fair and what feels appropriate? How do we restore wolves? How do you capture wolves? How do you transport wolves, and how do you release them? What are the different kinds of things that we need to consider? What are the numbers that we need to consider in that?

KRISTAN: While these working groups were underway, so were Commission meetings and public hearings.

ERIC: What's really important to understand is that neither of those groups, neither the technical group or the stakeholder group, wrote the plan. They were really advisors to staff as we took all of their input and considerations and put a plan together.

KRISTAN: In December 2022, the plan was presented to the 11-member, politically appointed CPW Commission, which sets regulations and policies for the agency.

CPW COMMISSIONER CARRIE HAUSER (December 9, 2022 meeting recording): Okay, good morning everyone. As we all know, Proposition 114 narrowly passed in November 2020 and is now state law. This draft plan represents the division’s very best effort to develop a blueprint and common-sense approach to implement Proposition 114...

KRISTAN: The Commissioners weighed in with their perspectives and what they were hearing from public comments. CPW revised the plan and presented an updated version five months later.

ERIC: And this is one of the things that I never would've expected: when the ballot initiative passed in November of 2020, we knew that a plan had to be developed, but I expected it to be a very contentious thing. When we presented the final plan to the commission, they approved it unanimously, an 11-to-zero vote.

KRDO REPORTER SCOTT HARRISON (May 3, 2023 News Clip): (Clapping) A sense of accomplishment, and maybe relief too, as the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission clears the way for gray wolves to be re-established in their native habitat on the state’s western slope...

ERIC: When our commission said, "We support this plan," that was to me a real testament to the process that we had done to develop this was robust and took into consideration a whole bunch of different perspectives and put together something that was probably not perfect, but certainly an agreeable way to begin this adventure of wolf restoration.

KRISTAN: Many of the people who participated in the working groups and were part of the plan development have praised the process, even those who strongly disagreed with parts of the plan.

ERIC: The whole plan is built on compromise in a lot of ways, and it's built on an adaptive framework that we're going to learn as we go. So we certainly did not think that we got the plan right a hundred percent from the very beginning.

KRISTAN: One question was: How many wolves are needed to become a self-sustaining population?

ERIC: We don't know what it's like to live with 50 wolves. We don't know what it's like to live with 200 wolves. And so it would be premature for us to make those kinds of thresholds within the plan at this point.

KRISTAN: Which leads to a bigger question….

ERIC: How can we work to have both sustainable wolf populations and maintain ranching on the landscape? And so one of those things was how wolves would be managed, and ultimately providing some opportunities in very, very rare instances where lethal management of wolves is appropriate. And that was something that we heard loud and clear from our technical group, that that was something that needed to be included.

KRISTAN: To reduce conflict, CPW needed a toolbox of techniques to manage wolves, some that are extremely controversial.

ERIC: There were some that were absolutely opposed to any kind of harmful management of wolves, either complete lethal management or even harmful management where animals were going to be hazed away. And so, a lot of those discussions were fairly tense at times trying to figure it out. And we never reached a hundred percent agreement on some things. And so those are the kinds of things that we'll think about and rework as we get more experience and understanding of what coexistence with wolves looks like.

KRISTAN: The plan passed in May 2023. And by the end of the year, CPW was aiming for the first release of wolves. Outreach began with states and Tribes that had wolves on their landscapes – specifically, populations that were not listed under the Endangered Species Act. At the time, the gray wolf had been delisted in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, the eastern portions of Oregon and Washington, and the northern part of Utah. CPW finally found traction with Oregon.

ERIC: Our director reached out to his counterparts in those western states, and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife was the first to get back with us to say, "Yeah, we would be interested in being a partner." October ‘23 is when we had our MOU, our memorandum of understanding, signed with Oregon, and that leaves us a couple of months to put all of the logistics together. We have a plan, we have an agreement, and now it comes time to put the rubber to the road and make wolf restoration truly begin.

KRISTAN: In that short window, Eric and his colleagues had to move quickly. There were a thousand details, processes, and logistics to sort out.

ERIC: Lots of collaboration with our partners at Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, talking about different maps, talking about different areas to target, talking about the logistics. How do we do our helicopter contracting? How do we do just the fundamental logistics? Where are we basing out of? How are we going to transport wolves?

KRISTAN: And there were hurdles galore. Like the custom crates designed to transport the wolves from Oregon to Colorado, which ultimately didn’t fit in the private plane being donated to fly them.

ERIC: How do we get all of our equipment and gear for capture and handling, and veterinary care? How do we get our veterinarians certified so that they can write the health certificates that need to happen as we transfer wolves from one state to another? What kind of permitting is required? How do we get the drugs that we use for mobilization?

Somewhat controlled chaos, I think is a good way to characterize it, because it was nonstop.

KRISTAN: Beyond the logistical obstacles, there were also legal ones. One tool CPW wanted was something known as the 10(j) Rule. 10(j) is a section of the Endangered Species Act that allows the federal government to designate a population of an endangered species as experimental, giving a state flexibility to manage it.

ERIC: So what happens with any endangered species, wolves or any species that's federally listed under the Endangered Species Act means that take is prohibited. And take is a legal term from the Fish and Wildlife Service, and it means not only lethal take, not only killing an animal, but also harming or harassing or different kinds of ways that you interfere with natural behaviors of that species.

What it does is it establishes a population as a non-essential experimental population. And so it relaxes those take prohibitions. And so it allows beanbags to be shot at wolves. It allows some incidental take to happen in otherwise legal activities. And in very precise instances, it allows lethal management of wolves. So some wolves can be killed even though they're a federally listed species.

KRISTAN: If CPW didn’t have the 10(j) exemption, once they released wolves in Colorado, the wolves would be considered federally endangered. The wolf reintroduction plan viewed the 10(j) rule as a critical management tool to help reduce conflict that may arise.

ERIC: And so without 10(j), our hands are really tied. It's a fully endangered species on the landscape and you really can't do much of anything to try to change any undesirable behaviors of those animals.

KRISTAN: Plans for reintroduction continued while CPW awaited the 10(j) exemption from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They got it on December 8, 2023. At the same time, the CPW team was looking for a weather window, hoping to get some snow cover in eastern Oregon so it would be easier to spot wolves that they could capture.

ERIC: Then we start to head out to Oregon at the beginning of December. And as we're doing that - I mean, this is truly as we're pulling out of the parking lot with our pickup trucks full of crates and all of our capture gear - a lawsuit is filed against the Colorado Parks and Wildlife and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by some livestock production groups asking the courts to put a cease and desist on our translocation efforts. Ultimately, the case was dismissed, and we were cleared to move forward.

KRISTAN: The team got to Oregon and got to work. And it didn’t take long before they had captured their first wolf.

ERIC: We caught 10 wolves in less than a week.

KRISTAN: The wolves were flown back to Colorado, and between December 18th and 21st, all ten were released on the Western Slope. Eric remembers the day of the first release.

ERIC: We put the crates on the ground, and it was very calm. You could smell the wolves. The wolves have a very distinct smell. I had gotten accustomed to that because I had just spent four hours flying in the airplane with them. But to those that had not seen a wolf before, that was part of the novelty. And so, the crates were put on the ground, very brief comments were made, primarily by the governor, and then it became time to open the crates. And so we did this very methodically, one at a time.

KRISTAN: Some of the wolves came from the same pack, so CPW wanted to release them together.

ERIC: The door opened and the animal, you see the paws go out and touch ground for the first time. It went up a little hill. And then, all five of them took different paths. Four of them took different paths, one took a path through the woods. But they would go up to the small top of the hill, one animal turned back and looked back at us and carried on. So it was a matter of just a few seconds from the time that they left the crate until they were to the top of the hill and then out of sight.

There's a lot of emotions, both good and bad, in terms of what this means. There was a lot of just uncertainty with the communities in terms of what does wolf management look like now. So it's a whole new chapter of the work that our agency does.  I think that there's a lot to be said that wildlife management before wolves is probably very different than wildlife management after wolves.

KRISTAN: In those few seconds, from crate door opening to wolves disappearing over the hill, Colorado crossed a threshold. A state that had systematically eliminated wolves almost a century ago was now bringing them back. And what came next was even more difficult: learning to live together.

Loss of Trust

KRISTAN: Colorado’s first wolf release happened in Grand County, roughly 60 miles west of Boulder, in an area called Middle Park. Middle Park is one of three large mountain valleys tucked in the Colorado Rockies, alongside North Park - where Adam VanValkenburg from our first episode has his ranch - and South Park, which inspired the animated sitcom by the same name. Middle Park serves as the headwaters of the Colorado River, land that Ute tribes once inhabited seasonally, and the Arapahoe and Cheyenne used to hunt.

Today, many ranching families can trace their roots back through multiple generations. Including Tim Ritschard.

TIM RITSCHARD: My name's Tim Ritschard. I'm the President of the Middle Park Stock Growers Association, also a fifth-generation rancher in Grand County.

KRISTAN: I meet up with Tim on his ranch, not far from Kelly’s place. And about 18 miles from where the first wolves were released. He gives me a hands-on experience of tagging newborn calves.

KRISTAN: So one says 1 7 1 1. Is that the number?

TIM: Yep. 17 11 and then 44 Y 91 is the color of the tag because we kind of have the ranch cows, my cows, my dad's cows, my brother's cows, my sister's cows...

KRISTAN: Does Y stand for yellow?

TIM: Sí, yeah, it does. Right here. I always have to check the sex, so I know because the way we do it is we tag him specifically. So I give him their shot and then I, so I looked under his backside to see if he was a male or a female, or as my daughter would say, a bull or a heifer. And so, this one's a bull, so I’ll tag him...

KRISTAN (Entering Tim’s House): Ok.

TIM: What are you thinking?

KRISTAN: I’d love to sit in here with you if that’s okay. You want us to take our shoes off?

TIM: Yeah, please. Well, my wife’s not home, I was walking through my house with my shoes on earlier... (laughter)

KRISTAN: Sitting with Tim at his kitchen table, he remembers the moment he heard about the first wolf release.

TIM: I had some friends that were down there and saw all the cars and came to service and called a bunch of people and said, “Hey, they're doing it right now.” And we were all like, whoa. So then it got real, people started paying attention to where it was going on. When the whole ballot deal, I think we all kind of sat on our hands because we go, there's no way this will pass. And then obviously it did.

KRISTAN: A new reality was setting in.

TIM: Right after they dropped them off, people were reaching out to me and asking stuff, and we had no idea… our county commissioners, our county manager, nobody knew, nobody knew anything.

KRISTAN: One challenge Tim and his neighbors were experiencing was knowing where the wolves were at any given moment.

TIM: It's hard because the collar data is so delayed, and so they might call you and say, “Hey, there was a wolf here, or there were wolves here.” Well, what we don't know is, was that at eight o'clock last night? Was that at four o'clock this morning? Because that's a big difference.

KRISTAN: Releasing wolf data is complicated for a couple of reasons, partly because of the sensitive nature of the issue. For example, there are concerns about people trespassing on private land to catch a glimpse of a wolf or that someone would kill one. But also, there are limitations to the actual data. The collars only upload a signal about once a day, and you can’t predict where a wolf is headed. These factors were creating a challenge: ranchers were looking for more information and CPW could only provide so much. Tim sees this as one reason why things started to break down.

TIM: I think that's where the lack of trust started because they weren't telling us anything. They weren't telling us where they were. It just started, and people got pissed, and they said, we don't want you. And so they just completely shut CPW off of stuff.

 People are saying if you come in your uniform, you're not welcome. If you come with your wife and your kids and you’re in civilian clothes, come on in. But if you come in your vehicle, don't even bother, or your uniform, stay away.

KRISTAN: Part of the trust issue seems to be rooted in not only a desire for more information but also more certainty. If this happens, then what? For example, when wolves were first released, Tim notes that the compensation program hadn’t been completely figured out, and the state lacked a definition for chronic depredation, meaning a wolf or pack repeatedly injures or kills domestic animals over a specific period of time.

This was one reason why CPW wanted a 10(j) exemption, so they could reduce this type of conflict before it happens. Most ranchers I spoke with don’t mind wolves. It’s when wolves begin interfering with their operation, whether harassing their livestock or actually killing something, that they have issues. Tim and others were also asking for a more responsive system.  

TIM: So we felt like there needed to be a rapid response team. You start having a depredation, then someone's out there immediately.

KRISTAN: Because not all these pieces were in place when wolves were first released, many in the nearby ranching communities were feeling frustrated.

TIM: Again, when all this started happening, there was a trust issue that started with CPW, with all the wolf stuff. And so I think a lot of people still do not trust CPW still. There's a fine line right now.

Where it's going to get tricky is if you find something dead, keeping that preserved until somebody can get there to look at it. And that's why we really push for a third-party person to do that. That's what we really feel needs to happen, because once again, the trust with CPW. CPW has the collar data. CPW can confirm the kill. CPW's the one that pays us. So they're the judge, the jury, and the executor.

KRISTAN: This all came to light for Tim’s neighbors. Just a little over three months after the release, Colorado confirmed its first wolf depredation.

TIM: The first confirmed depredation was April 2nd, 2024. We believe there was others before that, but because of the lack of knowledge and training, nobody understood what a wolf kill was. Nobody, not us, not CPW.

I probably was on the phone from eight in the morning till ten o'clock at night. Whether it was talking to my friends about what was going on, whether it was talking to the Colorado Cattleman’s Association about what was going on, hey, this is what we're dealing with. This is what we're doing. This is what we need. Whether it was talking to CPW, whether it was talking to reporters, you name the news outlet or paper, I probably talked to them.

KRISTAN: Tim is talking about what became known as the Copper Creek Pack. The pack formed in the spring of 2024 after two Oregon wolves mated and gave birth to four pups. Members of this pack ended up killing more than a dozen sheep and cattle, and put extreme stress on multiple ranching families.

TIM: The stress that those guys went through with all this was unbelievable. I mean, maybe sleeping two or three hours a night, going out, chasing that stuff off, and I mean, it was unbelievable. And I think the impact - there was much, much more impact than people realize. And I think than we'll even know.

KRISTAN: A little over a year after the release, in January 2025, CPW published a definition for “chronic depredation”: three or more kills by the same wolf or wolves within 30 days. And the compensation program, that’s still a point of contention and something we’ll talk about in the next episode. For Tim and his neighbors, every day brings new calculations. They’re living in a new environment, and the early part has gotten off to a rocky start.

TIM: I think it goes back to being prepared. We had two years to prepare for this thing, and it seems like we've never prepared for a thing, really, is what it looks like.

KRISTAN: And that rocky start is causing ripple effects.

TIM: I've tried to explain this to CPW's Range Riders, because I was part of their process with them. I said, it's going to be tough for you guys because most people are going to say you work for CDA or CPW. No thanks. We don't want you. And so that's where it's going to get tough, and it is going to take a while to mend those bridges back.

Closing

KRISTAN: The wolves introduced to Colorado in December 2023 carried more than just GPS collars. They carried a democratic experiment. A historic vote had become policy. A policy became ten wolves on the landscape. And now those wolves are encountering the reality of modern Colorado. With it come questions that cut to the heart of democracy itself: how does a plan that was built to adapt, to learn, to evolve, translate for those seeking answers today? And when trust breaks down, how do you build it back?

Next time on Gray Territory, we hear from a ranching family who experienced what it was like living next to the Copper Creek Pack.

DOUG BRUCHEZ: My guy was down there at 6:30, and he called me and he said, “Hey, there's another dead calf down here.” And then at 6:45, I got a phone call from CPW and they said, “The wolves pinged right in the middle of your cows.”

KRISTAN: And we ask big moral questions about how to navigate today’s environmental challenges.

CARL SAFINA: Almost all wild animals are at their lowest populations in history, and that trend will continue unless we help to elevate and prioritize the idea of coexistence.

Credits

KRISTAN: Laws of Notion is a production of the Institute for Science and Policy at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. To learn more, visit lawsofnotion.org. I’m your host, Kristan Uhlenbrock. This episode was produced by me, Tricia Waddell, and Jordan Marks. Sound design by Seth Samuel. Additional support from Kate Long, Max Neumeyer, and John Sanderson. Original music composed and performed by Brett Kretzer with Andy Reiner and by Dr. Joy Adams. Additional tracks by Epidemic Sounds. For a full list of credits, check out the show notes.

Episode 1: Wolves are Back

Episode 3: Can We Coexist with Wolves?