At least one of Colorado’s collared wolves roamed widely across southwestern Colorado in the last month, a new map of wolf locations released Wednesday by shows.
One of the state’s 19 collared wolves traveled quickly through a number of watersheds in that region, including near tribal land, according to a CPW news release. shows a wolf presence in a string of watersheds stretching from Alamosa west to Durango and then north, near Grand Junction.
“This wolf has consistently shown broad movement but has not localized in any particular region,” the release states.
Other wolves were present in the state’s central mountains: close to the Wyoming border, near Walden; in watersheds around Vail; and near Aspen, Rifle and Meeker.
While some wolves continue to move broadly, the wolves that make up the state’s four packs have established territories and are not roaming as widely, according to CPW.
CPW staff are still tallying the number of pups born to the packs last year that survived through the calendar year.
State wildlife officials announced last week that they would not release more wolves this winter, as previously planned.
CPW had planned to capture up to 15 more wolves in Canada for the reintroduction program, as the agency did last winter. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — under new leadership in the Trump administration — scuttled that agreement in the fall and said bringing Canadian wolves to Colorado would violate a legal agreement between CPW and the federal agency, called a 10(j) agreement.
CPW’s new acting director, Laura Clellan, in a Jan. 16 letter obtained by The Denver Post, responded to questions from the head of Fish and Wildlife. She argued that the relocation effort last winter was within the parameters of all legal agreements between the two agencies. Clellan also noted that the federal agency last winter did not raise any concerns with the use of Canadian wolves and authorized the operation.
“We respectfully disagree with any interpretation that the 10(j) rule limits the source population for wolves or otherwise prohibits CPW from sourcing wolves from British Columbia,” the letter states.
