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 3 – Can we Coexist with Wolves?

Touring Copper Creek Den

KRISTAN UHLENBROCK: I’m bumping down a gravel county road, next to a trickle of a creek, through the rolling mountains and valleys of Middle Park, Colorado.

DOUG BRUCHEZ:  So this is Copper Creek - just this little thing right here.

KRISTAN: I’m with Doug Bruchez, who comes from a multi-generational Colorado farming family.

DOUG: One of my great-great-great-grandfathers was one of the first white settlers into the state of Illinois, and he had a bunch of kids, and the younger ones weren't going to get any of the farmland, and so they pioneered out into Colorado in the 1860s.

KRISTAN: We’re headed to where the Copper Creek Wolf Pack set up their den in early 2024 - the first wolves to have pups from the reintroduction effort.

DOUG: So, these open meadows that you're looking at right in front of you, I think there was seven or eight that were confirmed, and there was probably close to 15 to 20 head of livestock that were killed right here, out in these open fields.

KRISTAN: Doug and his neighbors were the first ranching families to lose livestock to a reintroduced wolf.

DOUG: It's very anti-climactic when you get up here. 

KRISTAN: (Laughs) Thanks for the warning. My observation is there's like houses everywhere.

DOUG: One of the homeowners up here, the wolves were using the back of his place as a thoroughfare. So, they were going right straight through this neighborhood, and he was getting pictures of them when they were going to my place and he'd call me, and he’d call me when they were coming back… pretty wild that wolves would choose to den in the middle of a neighborhood.

KRISTAN: Doug says there are about 60 houses in this rural community. I see homes sprinkled out along the hillsides. We look at the ridgeline off in the distance.

KRISTAN: How far would you estimate that as a crow flies?

DOUG: Half mile? If that. And if you follow this power line pretty much straight, you've got the Sagebrush Ridge and then you've got another Sagebrush Ridge that has a couple little Aspen pockets, and then you've got the Aspens hill behind it. That's the den. On the other side of that Sagebrush Ridge is where the sheep is right by their house. And so they literally had less than a quarter mile to go down to the buffet line.

KRISTAN: The reintroduction of wolves has created a new reality for many ranchers. Some have had their lives completely upended. While many expected challenges when reintroducing a large predator, the experience on the ground has proven to be both more complex and emotional than they anticipated. The story of the Copper Creek Pack has dominated Colorado news headlines, not just because they were some of the first wolves born from the reintroduction effort, but also because of their threat to livestock.

In this episode, we grapple with the early years of wolf reintroduction. What’s working? What’s not? And how do we balance what we owe nature with what we owe each other?

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.

Sleeping in My Truck

KRISTAN: The Bruchez’s ranch is next to the headwaters of the Colorado River. I shuffle into a large metal barn next to Doug’s house. Work cabinets and benches line the walls, and taxidermy looks down at us as we sit at a sizable wooden table. Doug and one of his brothers are talking business.

DOUG: People are like, “Oh, it's such a small percentage of livestock, it doesn't make a difference.” And it's like, well, overall in the state, yeah. But to an individual producer, it's going to put them out of business.

KRISTAN: Most of Doug’s family is involved in their ranching operation. And they’re also deeply engaged in local issues – from water conservation and restoration efforts to wolves.

DOUG: I am a fifth-generation cattle producer in the state of Colorado. I'm also a board member of our Middle Park Stock Growers, and I'm also on the board of our local HPP committee, and HPP stands for Habitat Partnership Program. It's a CPW group of people that work on solving wildlife and private land conflicts.

Our ranch, Reeder Creek Ranch, is family-owned. I live here with my whole family. I've got three brothers and my parents. I manage the day-to-day operations, so I do the cows and the hay. We run about 325 cows, and we put up about 2,000 tons of hay. We have the largest unincorporated ditch in the state of Colorado, in the Big Lake Ditch, that I am in charge of. The ranch is about 6,000 acres deeded. And then, with our BLM permits, we run on about 15,000 acres.

KRISTAN: And like with many smaller, family-run operations, the margins are thin.

DOUG: Inflation has hit us insanely hard the last bunch of years. A tractor that in 2020 cost $150,000, that same tractor is close to $300,000. Another great example is, we use mineral and salt to supplement our cows in the summer and winter, so I buy a lot of loose salt. A 50-pound bag of salt went from $3 to $9.

KRISTAN: And the wolves haven’t exactly been good for business either. But Doug says, business isn’t the only thing that wolves are affecting.

DOUG: It affects more than just your bottom line. When the wolves were here, I was sleeping in my truck, trying to keep the wolves out of the cows at night. And it really changes your whole dynamic of family life, of everything, because you're working 18 hours and sleeping four to six hours a day. I wasn't being a good dad. I wasn't being a good husband. It is a major strain on a family.

KRISTAN: He vividly remembers when it all started. In the spring of 2024, a few months after the first Colorado wolf release, that’s when his family and their neighbors started having problems.

DOUG: There's a lot of wolves in the state right now that are not causing anybody problems. When I'm talking about wolves, I'm not talking about wolves in general. I'm specifically talking about what happened to us with the Copper Creek Pack and how we had almost no help. We were completely unprepared. It was after the killing started that they started talking to us about dead pits and fladry and this and this. And it's like, we should have been having this conversation two years ago. Why are we just now learning about this?

KRISTAN: Within the first days of calving, one member of the Copper Creek Pack made its way into the heart of Doug’s operations.

DOUG:  On April 2nd, 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.” And that was the aha moment for me. So I ran down there, and luckily it had snowed about a half inch the night before, so we could see the tracks. It was just clear as day. You could see the wolves got in the middle of my cows, ran them all over the place, down there, and killed a calf. And, if we had not known that the wolves pinged down there and the tracks weren't there, you would've never known that this was a wolf kill.

KRISTAN: One of the frustrations I’ve heard from ranchers has been the challenge of confirming whether a wolf was the cause of death of an animal. There needs to be a preponderance of evidence that a wolf caused the damage for a CPW official to confirm it. As with most predator investigations, they’re looking for things like bite marks, tracks in the area, or any sort of bleeding or other wounds.

DOUG: I've been doing this my whole life. My dad's been doing this his whole life. We can kind of tell when you’ve got a bear or mountain lion in there. This is a whole different ball game, and because of the methodology of the investigation, it is very, very hard to confirm a wolf depredation.

KRISTAN: Doug’s lived experience of managing livestock told him that the changes he’s witnessing are unlike anything he’s experienced. And the concerns go beyond depredations.

DOUG: Every night you're chasing wolves out of your cows. It's important that people know the stress put on these animals and the constant chasing, it really had a gigantic effect on our weaning weights and on our birth conception rates.

KRISTAN: If CPW confirms a wolf killed livestock or an animal used for herding or guarding, then the rancher can file a claim for the fair market value of the animal, up to $15,000. Then, they can also receive reimbursement of veterinary costs for treating an injured animal, as well as indirect losses like decreased weight or conception rates, or missing livestock.

DOUG: And to put that in perspective, through the compensation process, we had to get all of our animal’s weights for the last four years. We averaged three years before wolves and then compare that to the year that you do have a confirmed wolf kill. My steers were 43 pounds lighter than average. My conception rates: I'm usually around 95 to 96% on my conception rates. I was at 90%. And that 4 to 5% doesn't sound that bad. But ranching is a very small margin enterprise, and right now to replace those cows, it's going to cost $5,500 to replace a bred cow right now. So, if you're down 15 cows, that's a huge financial burden to have to replace in your herd.

KRISTAN: Plus, there are other costs. Like the time and effort to replace a cow or to file a claim, with the chance you might not get reimbursed.

DOUG: It took a long time…  I actually asked my local DWM to help me because I wanted it to be as transparent as possible.

KRISTAN: A DWM is the District Wildlife Manager, who makes decisions and enforces laws related to wildlife in their region.

DOUG: And he spent probably four days with me putting these numbers together. And then it had to be approved by him, and then it went to his boss, and it had to be reviewed and approved by him. And then it went to the regional manager's desk and had to be reviewed and approved by him. And then it went to the game damage department of CPW and was reviewed and confirmed by them. And then it was so scrutinized, CPW got their attorneys involved to review all of these claims. And then it was so scrutinized after that, then the Attorney General's office took these claims and reviewed them.

Running a ranch, we have major payments every year, between equipment payments, cattle payments, land payments. It's kind of like your car payment, right? You’ve got to make it every month. And the compensation from the first confirmed one in April, we finally got a check, I believe, March 20th, 2025. So, it was almost a full year before the compensation came through.

KRISTAN: And while Doug was able to get through all the steps needed to file a claim, he’s concerned that the burden of proof might not account for all the indirect losses ranchers might experience.

DOUG: We've actually had to hire legal help to get it through the process because it's so complicated and there's so many people scrutinizing this that we finally just said, we need a professional that just can say, you understand this, explain it to them, because we can't do this anymore.

The only way you can get compensated is to have a confirmed wolf kill. There's a lot of our neighbors that did not have confirmed wolf kills, that had record low weaning weights and record low conception rates because the wolves were chasing their cows as well. They just never found one that was confirmed.

If a wolf comes down and kills one or two of your cows every year, I think that's what all of us ranchers expected. When you have them take up home on your herd of cows, it is every night. And that is not fair to the producers and that's not fair to the wolves.

KRISTAN: What was happening with the Copper Creek pack drew a ton of scrutiny. As some of the first reintroduced wolves, they sparked a lot of hope and strong feelings, not to mention political turmoil about what to do next.

DOUG: CPW in September actually came in and trapped the pack and removed them because it was so bad. And they took that pack, the Copper Creek pack, and they put it in a wolf sanctuary.

KRISTAN: The decision to remove the pack centered on a couple of main goals: one was to ensure the pups’ survival; a second goal was to reduce the depredations. At a press conference, CPW Director Jeff Davis discussed the complicated decision. Here are a few clips:

JEFF DAVIS (from Sept 9, 2024 CPW Copper Creek Pack Capture Operation Media Event): This is truly a perfect storm. This is a very, very unique situation right out of the gate. And part of that is making sure that the pups in particular have a second chance in the wild. This is about the time of year where pups will start going out on hunts with the adults, and what we didn't want is to see the pups going out on hunts with adults in situations where they may have been keying in on livestock as opposed to natural prey. So how do we solve a problem for the ranchers that are dealing with the wolf livestock conflict? Also balancing the mandate is to essentially create a sustainable population of wolves in Colorado. And this seemed like a unique response to a unique circumstance.

KRISTAN: The pack was captured and placed in a sanctuary, and the patriarch was in poor condition and died shortly after. An early analysis found a gunshot wound that had occurred prior to the operation. The investigation into the death is still ongoing with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. These wolves are listed under the Endangered Species Act, so there could be a significant fine if the case goes to court.

CPW released the female and four pups in January 2025. This coincided with the release of fifteen new wolves from British Columbia as part of the second translocation. All twenty wolves were released in Eagle and Pitkin Counties. Doug is frustrated by the re-release of the Copper Creek Pack.

DOUG: One of the agreements that the landowner and the producer made was that the only way they were going to give CPW access to the property to trap these wolves is if they are never released again. Leave them in the sanctuary, and we will let you do this. So they let them on, they trapped these wolves, they put them in the sanctuary, and then in January of 2025, they put them on private land in Pitkin County right next to the two largest cattle producers in Pitkin County.

KRISTAN: CPW has not made any public statements on whether this was the agreement. Several ranching organizations have written letters to the agency and commission regarding this issue. Doug views some of the decisions as being contrary to the wolf reintroduction plan.

DOUG: Nowhere in the wolf plan does it say that they're going to capture wolves and put them in a sanctuary. That's not in the wolf plan. And then it specifically says in the wolf plan that no known depredating wolves in Colorado will be translocated in Colorado because that is considered moving the problem along with the wolves. That's what they did in Pitkin County, so they're not following the wolf plan, they're picking and choosing which parts they want to follow at a huge detriment to livestock producers.

KRISTAN: How the plan gets interpreted has been the cause of some debate. The reintroduction plan is meant to guide decisions and also be adaptive, so there is a lot of pressure on the Commissioners and CPW to make the right calls. CPW’s Director Davis testified in a June 2025 legislative hearing about the decision to relocate the Copper Creek Pack.

JEFF DAVIS (from June 30, 2025 Water Resources and Agriculture Review Committee hearing): That was the perfect storm…that was my decision, I take full responsibility and I question that decision every day.

KRISTAN: I was talking with Doug in the summer of 2025, when ranchers in Pitkin County and the surrounding Roaring Fork Valley were having problems with members of the Copper Creek Pack. Between May 17-25, pack members were connected to four livestock attacks in eight days, meeting CPW's criteria for chronic depredation and lethal action. On May 29, CPW killed a male yearling from the pack in an attempt to change the group's behavior. A few weeks later, another depredation was confirmed. And then in August, another. And while these wolves are no longer running through Doug’s cattle, what his counterparts are experiencing two counties over makes what happened in 2024 still very present.

DOUG: This almost killed my dad. He knew how stressed out I was last year and how little sleep I was getting, so he was really trying to help out and get involved. He just turned 70, and he started having some problems, and we took him to the ER, and they said that his heart was only functioning at like 40%. So, they took him down to Denver, and he was in the ICU for four days, and his official diagnosis was congestive heart failure due to acute stress. It almost killed him. He’s got to be on full-time oxygen now.

I've had to get to know every politician in the state to try and explain that this is not normal and this is not okay. If you’ve got problem wolves, the wolf plan says they will resolve it, not minimize it. They need to resolve this. This isn't a hate on all wolves conversation. Wolves are doing what wolves do. Wildlife managers need to do what wildlife managers do.

KRISTAN: Up near the original Copper Creek Pack den site, we get back into Doug’s side-by-side to head down to his barn.

DOUG: You guys good?

KRISTAN: On the drive, I can tell he’s tired from the amount of emotional energy this is taking – whether it’s sharing his story to engaging with government officials, to ensuring his family business stays running.

DOUG: We're not out here stomping our feet and saying, “Poor me.” It's when it happens the way that it happened here, it's not acceptable. And the way that it's happening in Pitkin County right now, it's unacceptable. They've got five conflict specialists, three range riders. How is any of this sustainable? Are they going to do this year after year?

KRISTAN: If they were to resolve the Copper Creek Pack and these depredation issues, how do you think things would feel then?

DOUG: I think people would quit talking about it. I mean, it hits home for me because of what happened to us last year, and them telling us that they would not re-release them, and then they re-released them, and they're doing the same thing. My goal is to help those guys down in Pitkin County not make the same mistakes we made, and kind of slingshot them into knowing who and what they can and can't do. We're just trying to help those guys out that are going through the same thing that we went through.

KRISTAN: What happened with the Copper Creek Pack is filled with so much emotion from so many perspectives: deep joy for the first pups born from the relocation efforts, tremendous stress when the livestock depredations started, hope and dread, and loss – from all sides.

The restoration of gray wolves isn't an abstract conservation issue for Doug and his family. It’s a lived experience. One where he’s trying to steward his animals and land while learning to live alongside wolves. What’s striking about Doug’s story is that he’s not angry at wolves. Rather, he’s frustrated with a process that feels opaque and shifting. A lingering question remains: can this process rebuild the trust that’s been lost and rise above the political turmoil surrounding it?

This Has Gotten Political

SENATOR DYLAN ROBERTS: What I have seen as part of my role as the senator who represents the areas where the wolves were first reintroduced and where a lot of the depredations have happened, and are continuing to happen, is to be a voice for the policy and not the politics, where I can go to my colleagues and the Democratic party and say, “I'm a Democrat, but this is not going well.” And try to take politics out of it, or at least try to minimize the politics as much as possible, and say, “Let's focus on the policy here. Let's be responsible lawmakers. Let's work across the aisle and let's work on the right thing to do.”

I'm Dylan Roberts. I'm a state senator here in Colorado, Senate District 8, which encompasses ten counties in central and northwest Colorado.

KRISTAN: When Doug Bruchez mentioned reaching out to politicians, Senator Roberts was one he was referencing. On a warm, sunny morning, I meet up with Senator Roberts at his wife’s office off the main street of downtown Frisco. Views of the mountains and the historic park and museum harken back to the region’s mining days.

SEN. ROBERTS: Of course I believe I have the most beautiful district in all of Colorado, but I do know for sure that I have the most politically diverse, geographically diverse, and economically diverse senate district in Colorado. My district stretches from Idaho Springs all the way to the Utah border, and then all the way north to the Wyoming border. I have some of the most premier ski resorts and ski towns in the world: Breckenridge, Vail, Steamboat, Winter Park. And then I have very rural agriculture communities, like Kremmling and Walden and Rifle, but then energy-producing communities like Craig and Hayden and Rio Blanco County, and then even have the gambling communities in Gilpin County.

KRISTAN: One of the younger members of the Colorado legislature, he’s built a reputation for working across the aisle. 99 of the 100 successful bills he’s sponsored have received bipartisan support.

SEN. ROBERTS: Something that I try to do very diligently is try to find where a majority of my district is on whatever issue we're working on. I'm never gonna make a hundred percent of my district happy, but I try to respect the individual character and priority of each of the communities in my district. And when I can find a common thread, those are kind of the issues that I like to work on.

KRISTAN: Senator Roberts remembers when he first started engaging in wolf conversations.

SEN. ROBERTS: It must have been in 2019. And I think I started hearing from people on both sides. There was a thought that potentially the legislature would introduce a bill to create a reintroduction program, but that bill never came during the 2019 session. And then, it didn't come at the beginning of the 2020 session.

KRISTAN: By the end of the 2020 legislative session in May, there was no legislation for restoring wolves, so advocates continued their efforts to build support for the ballot referendum, which passed.

SEN. ROBERTS: That's when I first realized this is going to be a very difficult issue because we have a ballot measure now that has been passed mostly with Front Range votes and most of the Western Slope communities being against, but then passed by such a narrow margin that both sides are going to have strong footing: the pro-wolf people are going to say, “well, we passed, we got approval by the people of Colorado,” and then the folks opposed saying, “well, it barely passed, so maybe this isn't a good idea.” I knew that this was about to become a really controversial and difficult subject for our state.

KRISTAN: Senator Roberts has mixed feelings about Colorado’s direct democracy system, where citizens can propose a new law, which can then be voted on by the public.

SEN. ROBERTS: Direct democracy is a feature that Colorado has had since our inception as a state, and several other states, particularly here in the west, have fairly liberal ballot access rules. And so, this has been an institution in Colorado that has led to some important policy changes over time that both sides of the aisle care about. For example, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights that many people in Colorado value and hold up to be very important, was a citizen initiative. The legalization of marijuana and creating a paid family leave program were also citizen initiatives, so I'm not sure that needs to go away in Colorado, but I am absolutely and adamantly opposed to this “ballot box biology,” where you're doing wildlife management, where you're making scientific and biological decisions with a one to two sentence question on voters' ballots. And having the voters of the entire state vote on something that's only going to impact one part of the state does not seem equitable and does not seem like good public policy to me.

KRISTAN: Since the referendum has passed, he’s been one of the more vocal politicians speaking on the program, and what he thinks is not going well for his constituents.

SEN. ROBERTS: I think the original fault of this program has been the rushed timeline. We were not ready at the end of 2023. We were not even close to ready at the end of 2023, at least out here on the western slope where the wolves were being placed, and the ranchers and the livestock that were going to be impacted by it were not ready. They didn't have the tools from the state government that they had been promised as far as non-lethal mitigation, as far as conflict minimization, as far as knowing how the compensation was going to work or just general trust between ranchers’ communities and the state government. If we had taken a year or two extra to get those things in place, I think a lot of the trust that has been broken would still be there, and I think this program would be going much better.

KRISTAN: Like so many things in life, the narratives we hear or believe don’t always capture the full picture. There are elements of truth, but also biases and interpretations.

SEN. ROBERTS: There is a belief that sometimes the decision-making is being made at the Governor's level rather than at the agency level where the biologists and the scientists and the wildlife managers work. And that is when you get politics reinserted into the issue. A lot of the folks who work at CPW are incredibly smart and experienced and hardworking and not political at all, and they just want to do the right thing based on their education and experience. But there is a perception, I think rightly in some cases and wrongly in other cases, that they're being overruled by political decisions.

This has been really hard for the agency, for CPW. And I think the folks on the ground are working as hard as they possibly can with the resources they've been given and doing their very best. And so, it pains me to know that state employees like that are struggling so much with wanting to do their job, but then also living in these small communities that feel betrayed or not listened to by their state government because of the wolf reintroduction program. So I would want the general public to know that the agency itself, CPW, is full of talented, dedicated unpolitical, nonpolitical folks, who are just doing their job.

KRISTAN: Senator Roberts thinks that the mistrust that now exists between CPW and some of his constituents might have broader impacts than the whole wolf situation.

SEN. ROBERTS: I've heard from individual landowners as well as colleagues of mine who have heard from their constituents, “Why would I engage in a partnership with CPW anymore?”

KRISTAN: And if this disengagement happens, there are ripple effects.

SEN. ROBERTS: The biggest impact of trust being broken is, and is going to continue to be, CPW being able to do the work that they do across the state. They do so much more than wolf reintroduction. They do such important work to preserve landscapes and habitat, and allow people to hunt and fish and enjoy state parks, and enjoy what makes Colorado, Colorado. A lot of times that work involves working with private landowners to put in place habitat protections for wildlife corridors or potentially even taking land under conservation easement to preserve that habitat. Of course, if you're ever talking about a new state park and land acquisition or doing research on aquatic species or terrestrial species, that all involves interaction with private landowners across the state.

KRISTAN: So the Senator likes to highlight how the agriculture community connects to larger issues of conservation and the economy.

SEN. ROBERTS: When I go down to the capitol and talk to colleagues from the front range or hear from pro-wolf people, there's always comments about, “well, these depredations, these cows and other livestock that are being killed are such a small percentage of the amount of animals that are killed every year by other predators or by weather or other things.” Statistically, that might be true, but it's very offensive to say because, first of all, before the wolves were here, these animals were not dying by wolves. And two, that totally discredits the individual rancher and the individual livestock producer that has dedicated their life to this profession. Not to make a lot of money, because most of them don't make a lot of money, but because they love it and they want to contribute to their state and to the agriculture economy.

KRISTAN: The Colorado agricultural economy represents about $47 billion annually. And cattle are the top ag commodity the state produces. Colorado is also known for its outdoor culture and recreation opportunities. So much so that our state released a Colorado Outdoor Strategy this year to unite public and private partners and stakeholders to advance conservation, outdoor recreation, and climate resilience across the state. And it calls out that keeping agricultural lands in production is part of this strategy.

SEN. ROBERTS: Agriculture, in my opinion, helps preserve the parts of Colorado that everybody loves: the open spaces, the natural environment. Agriculture landowners are often the biggest participants in conservation easements and the ways that we preserve open space. And we need that to continue if we're going to keep Colorado the way that we all love Colorado to be. As the world changes and as climate change continues to disrupt things, getting our food closer to home is going to continue to be more important than ever.

KRISTAN: One problem Colorado, like many states, faces right now is an uncertain economy – from the tariffs impacting supply chains or policies impacting the workforce, to the state’s billion-dollar budget shortfall caused by many factors. In the summer of 2025, the Colorado General Assembly convened a special session to address this billion-dollar deficit. And Senator Roberts has been watching the budget, keeping an eye on the costs of the wolf reintroduction program.

SEN. ROBERTS: The cost of this entire endeavor has gotten wildly out of control in my opinion. The wolf reintroduction program was going to cost the state, once it was fully up and running, about $800,000 a year. We just received the financial accounting for this most recent year, fiscal year ‘24 through '25, where the cost expended to the Wolf Reintroduction Program is going to exceed $3 million. So that's $2.2 million over budget, or $2.2 million over what the voters were promised this would cost.

KRISTAN: The funds to support the wolf program come from the state general fund, along with revenue generated by CPW and other sources. During the plan development, the Stakeholder Advisory Group called out that the initial fiscal assessment did not accurately anticipate the costs of the program.

SEN. ROBERTS: My priority will continue to be, and I think even more so given the financial reality that we're seeing with this program, ensuring that this program has the resources that it needs in order to support the ranching community. I wish it weren't so much money, but it needs to be what it needs to be. So it would continue to be my priority that we fund this program and all of the conflict minimization, the compensation requirements, and everything else that goes into supporting the impacted individuals and communities is fulfilled.

KRISTAN: After the most recent release of wolves earlier this year, Senator Roberts has started to see a shift.

SEN. ROBERTS: I think there was a little bit of shift in mindset in the agriculture community and in the communities out here as a whole, of okay, these wolves are here now, we are going to have to learn how to live with them. There's no putting this toothpaste back in the tube, and we need to figure out what life looks like next.

KRISTAN: Reintroducing wolves didn’t unfold as many would have liked. But there are still those who hope these early stumbles lead to something sustainable, for wolves, for ranchers, and for the institutions that must somehow hold it all together.

SEN. ROBERTS: At the end of the day, these are all policy questions. And I think we have seen when good decisions have been made on this, it's when people have been able to take a step back, especially when the agency takes a step back, tries to make the right management decision that's not influenced by politics. I think that's what led to the first lethal take, over in the Roaring Fork Valley, last month. And I'm glad that they didn't succumb to any pressure from wolf advocates to not do that. They made the right decision. And I think everybody on all sides of this, if everybody can understand that these are choices that we have to make, that we can hopefully arrive at better decision-making if we slow down and we trust one another, and we try to get to the right place.

Lessons from Year One

ERIC ODELL: The expectation may have been for perfection at the very beginning: everything’s in place before the first crate is opened. And that kind of comes back to that adaptive side of things and learning what we need to do and learning what needs to improve.

KRISTAN: This is Eric Odell, who you’ve heard from in previous episodes. He’s the Wolf Program Manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. For Eric and CPW, the wolf reintroduction effort, including the challenges with the Copper Creek pack, has become more than just a management challenge – it’s also a communication and relationship challenge.

ERIC: In the first year, some communication was had, but clearly not enough, and we heard that loud and clear.

KRISTAN: As they prepared for the second release in January 2025, Eric and his colleagues embarked on a more intentional engagement process.

ERIC: And so, beginning in the fall of 2024, before our capture effort, several conversations with county commissioners, local electeds, our state legislature, representatives, and senators. So a lot of very deliberate, intentional conversations about this is what we're planning. This is the general timeframe that we’re working in – we can’t be entirely specific about that just because so much is unknown.

KRISTAN: The hope was that this time with the release of fifteen wolves from British Columbia, they could rebuild trust in the process and the plan.

ERIC: That was a very harsh criticism that we heard very publicly, that we did not do an adequate job of that in the first year. And so that changed a lot. And my sense is that that was beneficial—that the efforts that we did to be more transparent, to be more open within those kind of conversations, has benefited us in the way wolf restoration has happened this spring, the spring of 2025 versus in the spring of 2024.

KRISTAN: Beyond communication, CPW also scaled up their capacity to minimize wolf and livestock conflicts and respond better when something does happen. When the first wolves were released, there was experience in the field, but the full infrastructure wasn't quite there.

ERIC: And typically our experience up to this point has been with bears and mountain lions and coyotes as well. And we'll compensate for those losses that are from bears and mountain lions; we don't for coyotes. And so this was a new thing. Each of those species have different ways of attacking their prey. And so they're well trained to identify those different kinds of aspects as to how to determine what caused the death of that livestock. And at that time we were very young in terms of what our program looked like from a livestock conflict avoidance program. We had a few staff that were specifically hired to this. Since then, we've increased that. We've hired many more wildlife damage specialists.

KRISTAN: And they’ve developed more guides and deployed more tools – from fladry, which is electric wire with flags, to range riders who spend time with livestock during vulnerable periods. And Eric is intentional about the language they use around these efforts.

ERIC: We're really careful to say we're never going to prevent conflict. If you say you're going to prevent conflict the first time that happens, you’ve failed. So we never use the term prevent conflict, but we try to minimize and avoid conflict to the greatest degree. And so coexistence is that: balancing the needs of the species and trying to find ways and using the resources that the state can provide.

KRISTAN: One of the challenges he faces is managing expectations about what the agency can actually know regarding wolf locations at any given moment.

ERIC: Right now we have probably 90% of our wolves collared.  I'm concerned that we're setting this expectation that we'll be able to say where all of our wolves have been.

KRISTAN: This won't last as the population grows.

ERIC: When we get to that situation where we have just a couple of collars in every pack, we're not going to be able to provide that level of resolution as to where wolves are.

KRISTAN: This creates a fundamental tension. Ranchers want to know where wolves are in order to better protect their livestock. However, the technology and the nature of wolf behavior mean that accurate, instantaneous information just isn’t possible.

ERIC: It's a dangerous situation to say there's no wolves in the area. We can never say there's no wolves in the area because the collars will fail. They're not failproof. There could be other animals that come in that don't have collars on. There can be other animals that are migrating in from Wyoming or Utah or Idaho, population from Montana, populations that don't have collars on. We get those from time to time as well.

KRISTAN: Also as wolf population grows, behavior patterns start to change.

ERIC: Right now what we have are a lot of individual animals, once there's reproduction and there's kind of this pack establishment, the behaviors of wolves is going to change a lot. And so instead of being these animals that are wandering crazy distances over all different kinds of unpredictable ways, we'll have animals develop a pack and start to develop a territory, which they'll defend. And so then that territory becomes a much more predictable area, and where we might expect those animals to be. And for the most part, wolves will stick together, more or less, throughout the year.  That's important in terms of how we do some of our monitoring. So, our goal is not to have a collar on every wolf, but to have two collars in every pack.

KRISTAN: Tracking wolves in the future will require a number of tactics.

ERIC: It just becomes more of relying on signs, relying on watching the livestock behavior, looking for wolf scat, wolf tracks, hearing wolves. All of those different kinds of things become very important for us to know about from the producers, from our own biologists, from our own district wildlife managers that are out in the field.

KRISTAN: It’s hard to have an exact count of wolves in Colorado. When interviewing Eric in May, there were probably 25 to 30 wolves. In addition to Copper Creek, three new packs have just formed. The state is monitoring the One Ear pack in Jackson County, the King Mountain pack in Routt County, and the Three Creeks pack in Rio Blanco County. But what should the population ultimately be? That's still an open question.

ERIC: Just reintroducing a certain number of wolves does not make a population. From a genetics perspective, part of maintaining a self-sustaining population is looking at the genetic health of animals as well. So, we're well on the way of doing that, but we're not done.

KRISTAN: Because intentional wolf reintroduction efforts are still in the early years, it’s important to ensure that the wolves that are brought here do well, so they can reproduce, form social structures, and start creating a sustainable population.

ERIC: Wolves in the wild don't live that long. A five-year-old wolf is a very old wolf. The plan says three to five years of reintroductions. This is year two. We want to do year three and really get that population going. Just reintroducing a certain number of wolves does not make a population. You have to have breeding and ultimately recruitment, which is when there's new animals brought into the population, through reproduction. We don't know what our population objective for wolves should be because we haven't had the experience of living with wolves. And so the next several years are going to be important for us to learn all the challenges and opportunities that are there and what we need to think about as we develop the next iteration of the plan and move wolf management along as we have with other species.

KRISTAN: There's no simple instruction manual for reintroducing an apex predator to a landscape where they've been gone for eight decades. The first year taught CPW hard lessons - about communication, about capacity, about the gap between what people expect and what's actually possible. And since then, they've tried to adapt: more staff, more outreach, more tools. But even with better resources, some challenges remain fundamental. You can't collar every wolf. You can't predict every movement. You can't prevent every conflict. This is a real-time adaptive management process, with many acknowledging that some things can only be learned by doing.

Our Moral Obligation

KRISTAN: When I was doing research for this podcast, I came across an opinion piece by Carl Safina called, The Real Case for Saving Species: We Don’t Need Them, But They Need Us. Carl is an extremely prominent voice for conservation. His writing focuses on humans’ role in nature and our obligations to other species. He’s written ten books, starred in a PBS series on the ocean, and has brought his passion and knack for writing to countless other endeavors.

But back to this article that caught my attention. In it, he argues that the Endangered Species Act is about our responsibility to not let species go extinct. He writes that the act doesn’t say that we necessarily “need” every species, but that we have harmed them, and that is where our responsibility lies. One sentence really struck me. He wrote: “Humans have considered ourselves the most moral of species. A moral species has moral obligations.” So I thought it would be worth stepping away from what has been unfolding in Colorado to give him a ring.

CARL SAFINA: Most of what we think of as thriving in the modern sense, which is development, the economy, products, trade… that has all come by destroying nature to varying extents because it all comes from converting natural things to human things, either products or clearing areas for agriculture or for development of various kinds. So, what we think of as our great modern successes mostly come from the destruction of nature, not from the salvation of nature.

KRISTAN: And when it comes to wolves, I was curious how this relates. From Carl's view, the issue revolves around a much deeper reflection about how we view other living things.

CARL: I do think that it's crucially true at this point that they need us. That if we don't care about them from a strictly moral point of view, meaning they deserve to be on this planet with us because the planet produced them, they are living things, all life is holy in its way, life is a miracle... We owe the existence of life its continuity. It is a bad thing to disrupt the processes by which life can continue as it has done for several billion years, and all of these species we're talking about are tens of millions of years old. They're supposed to be here. Their future is not supposed to be imperiled.

Almost all wild animals, species are at their lowest populations in history. That is true for basically all of the birds and mammals on our continent, and the world for that matter, with a few exceptions and a few recoveries. But for the most part, we have taken over something like a third of the land surface. And that means that those places that used to produce billions of other animals and plants cannot do that anymore. And that trend will continue unless we help to elevate and prioritize the idea of coexistence.

KRISTAN: Colorado's wolf reintroduction, seen through this lens, becomes a barometer for whether we can reverse that trend. Whether we can find ways to share landscapes. One concept that is ripe for deep thinking is the concept of existence value. Meaning something has value that does not arise from its use. We benefit from knowing it exists. This raises numerous ethical debates, particularly when it relates to decision making

CARL: Really all of the things we're talking about have mainly to do with values. Some of it has to do with the information that informs values or should inform values and policies, but mainly has to do with values: how we view and see the natural world.

KRISTAN: Carl says that we already determined that wolves and other species have an existence value because we passed the Endangered Species Act.

CARL: Which is entirely a moral law. It says it's the policy of the United States that we won't let anything go extinct. It doesn't say, if it pays for itself, or what it needs to be able to generate financially. And yet, we keep trying to revisit the question as though we didn't already get past it and realize that it is our policy to not let things go extinct.

KRISTAN: If something has an existence value - and we as a society believe this - then it can be additive to the other arguments for wolf restoration, like the idea that wolves benefit ecosystems by serving as an apex predator that keeps prey populations, such as ungulates, in check. Or that wolves bring economic value, such as tourism.

CARL: Wolves have certain kinds of values to some people and very negative values to other people. The increased visitation to Yellowstone and all of the businesses around Yellowstone that have to do with tourists, and restaurants, and hotels, and guiding companies, and things like that are worth vastly vastly more than the cows that are killed by wolves, which are very very few.  

KRISTAN: Many researchers are arguing that we should be careful about purely ascribing economic value to species and nature because this has led to a biodiversity crisis. Instead, we should consider a whole suite of values that a species can provide. And Carl describes how for generations, there are people and cultures that treat wolves as if they have the right to exist, regardless of what economic value they bring.

CARL: We can look to other people like the native groups in Minnesota, the native groups in British Columbia, their approach to living with predators. And there are practical examples that we can use, there are ethical approaches that we could adopt or tweak or make work for us and learn from.

KRISTAN: There can be strong rhetoric around wolves. It’s often what might grab a headline or fuel a video or a podcast. They are one of those species that Carl says can bring out "the best or the worst in people."

CARL: It's both a real issue and it's a metaphor for a lot of other things, and the polarization is unnecessary. I've heard things on both sides that just leave me shaking my head. If people don't come with their ideology as a shield and just come and say, “Okay, we have an issue here. You want this, but we want this. How can we solve it? How can we come to some halfway point? How can we compromise on it?” There is a lot of progress in conversations like that.

KRISTAN: And it’s not unique to wolves or to Colorado. He shares a longer view of where this might all lead.

CARL: My hope is that these things come in waves and that pendulums swing, and I think that's what will happen. And we'll start to wonder about and see about our desired place in the world, the desired world we would want to live in, and try to exert more of our mind and our emotions to live in a world that has human dignity and room for everything else that lives here.

Closing

KRISTAN: Balancing different values is never easy, and it’s never perfect. Our backgrounds, experiences, and communities we come from all influence what we prioritize. But research shows that when decisions incorporate more values rather than prioritizing just one, we end up with more just and lasting solutions. And when local values are integrated into conservation, specifically in decision-making, better outcomes result. In the wolf story, there are so many values at play. It’s not as simple as weighing a rancher's livelihood against a wolf's place in the landscape. It’s about respect for these different value systems, finding ways to compromise, and a willingness to learn as we go.

Next time on Gray Territory, we turn our attention to solutions. What does coexistence actually look like on the ground?

SHELBY NEIBERGER: Every wolf pack is has their own personality, and so it's basically about learning each pack.

ADAM VANVALKENBURG: She’s done 1.59 miles within two days.

KRISTAN: It’s a Fitbit!

CHIP ISENHART: Yeah, it's a Fitbit on your cow.

COURTNEY VAIL: The long game is to hopefully help humankind evolve in such a way that we can coexist side by side with wildness.

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 and Max Neumeyer. Original music composed and performed by Brett Kretzer with Andy Reiner and Dr. Joy Adams. Additional tracks by Epidemic Sounds. For a full list of credits, check out the show notes.

Episode 2: Who's Voice Counts?

Episode 4: Solutions for Coexistence