Colorado’s wolf reintroduction program suffers from a math problem.
The amount of money set aside each year to pay ranchers for impacts to their livestock from the controversial program isn’t keeping up with the size of damage claims.
Eight claims from 2025 already total more than $724,000 — and more claims are expected to be approved next month. With only about $400,000 remaining in the Wolf Depredation Compensation Fund, Colorado Parks and Wildlife will use other funding sources to compensate ranchers.
Last year’s claims, combined with those from 2024, bring the total payments made to ranchers to more than $1.3 million — outstripping the $875,000 allocated to the program so far.
Although CPW spokesman Travis Duncan says the agency has the money to pay for future claims, the continued high cost of claims has prompted fears outside the agency about the long-term solvency of the program.
“This is a voter-mandated program and it is written in (the law) that losses must be compensated,” said Erin Karney Spaur, executive vice president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. “You’re pretty much robbing Peter to pay Paul. What other programs are you robbing from to pay for the depredation program?”
At the same time, wildlife advocates have submitted a plan to to tighten the rules about who can be paid from the fund. The proposed changes would require the use of nonlethal mitigation measures and require a higher burden of proof that a wolf caused damage.
“Itap not a slush fund,” said Ryan Sedgeley, the southern Rockies representative for the Endangered Species Coalition, one of the organizations pursuing changes to the program.
But livestock groups fear that the proposed changes, if adopted, will make it even more difficult for ranchers to be made whole from the wide range of impacts wolves can have on their operations.
“These producers are (already) not getting 100% whole or compensated for all of those losses,” Spaur said.
CPW officials dipped into other pots of money outside of the depredation fund to pay for the claims approved so far and plan to continue to do so.
“Funding for the approved, but not yet paid, claims will be determined upon payment and are currently anticipated to be split between the Wolf Depredation Compensation Fund and non-license revenue in the Wildlife Cash Fund,” Duncan wrote in an email to The Denver Post.
The imbalance in the compensation program has also caught the attention of federal officials, who in recent months have questioned the state’s wolf reintroduction effort. New leadership at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Trump administration took an adversarial stance on the program and stopped the release of more wolves planned for this past winter.
The federal agency on April 6 issued a request for comments on how CPW is handling the reintroduction program. The state wildlife agency is able to manage the federally protected species through an agreement with the federal agency.
— which remains open until June 5 — federal officials asked for information about the compensation program.
“Over the past few years, many wolf-livestock depredation events have been verified in Colorado and the total number of verified depredations and associated claims has vastly exceeded the funds currently available under Colorado’s existing livestock compensation scheme,” the notice states.
State law requires ‘fair compensation’
Since CPW began the reintroduction of wolves in Colorado in 2023, the canines have killed or injured 76 head of livestock and two working dogs, .
Wildlife officials released 25 wolves in the state over two winters after voters in 2020 mandated the reintroduction of the native species. After a number of deaths, the state now has 18 collared wolves, plus others without collars and an unknown number of pups across four established packs.
requires that the wildlife agency “pay fair compensation to owners of livestock for any losses of livestock caused by gray wolves.” State lawmakers in 2023 to pay for the claims and tasked the CPW Commission with creating a claims process.
While crafting the law, lawmakers worried there would be too much money left over in the Wolf Depredation Compensation Fund after all claims had been made. They created rules mandating the use of any leftover money.
But the problem has been the opposite, and CPW has instead scrounged to find other sources of money to pay the claims.
So far, CPW has paid $490,422 to producers from the compensation fund, $25,581 from the general fund, $6,315 from federal grant money, and $141,656 from wildlife cash funds not derived from hunting and fishing license sales, Duncan said.
The CPW Commission makes the final decision on all wolf depredation claims totaling more than $20,000. The volunteer commission, whose members are appointed by the governor, has drawn criticism from ranchers and wildlife advocates alike for perceived unfairness in the process.
“Part of the issue now is CPW is the judge, the jury and the executor,” said Tim Ritschard, the president of the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association.
Petition for change
A coalition of 19 wildlife organizations is pursuing a citizens’ petition to tighten the program’s rules.
The group — which includes the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center, Roaring Fork Audubon and WildEarth Guardians — filed the petition on Feb. 6. The CPW Commission will decide whether to approve the changes, but a hearing on the petition has not yet been scheduled.
“The current wolf compensation program is so broad that it now covers claims beyond its intended purpose of reimbursing livestock owners for actual, verified wolf-caused losses,” the petition states. “This lack of clarity places stress on both ranchers and wildlife managers and could jeopardize the compensation fund’s long-term economic viability.”
The coalition is pushing for two major changes.
First, if the petition is approved, ranchers would be required to use nonlethal methods to ward off wolves from their herds after a depredation occurs. If CPW officials can prove that a rancher did not use such methods after the first depredation, his or her compensation claim should be denied, the petition states.
Under current regulations, ranchers remain eligible for compensation — though less of it — even if they do not prove they made efforts to mitigate conflict.
The second proposed change would heighten the burden of proof needed for ranchers to claim indirect losses from wolves, such as decreased calf weights and lower conception rates. The change would require ranchers to prove by a preponderance of evidence that wolves caused the negative changes and to rule out other potential causes, like weather, disease or drought.
Colorado’s wolf depredation compensation program is the broadest in the country, Sedgeley said. It is one of only four states that compensate for indirect losses.
Payments for indirect losses have made up the bulk of payments from the depredation fund. For example, one rancher’s claim paid in 2025 totaled about $387,000: $15,000 for livestock killed or injured by wolves, $178,000 for reduced calf weights, $90,000 for decreased conception rates, $100,000 for missing calves and $3,500 for missing sheep.
Those first claims set a precedent for payments that could render the program unsustainable in the long term, Sedgeley said.
“Those first claims set the standard,” he said. “And thatap that there are no standards.”
Ranchers disagree.
Ranchers are having to hire lawyers — at their own expense — to navigate the claims process, Ritschard said.
Already, they have to compile data to show their herds change to seek indirect loss compensation, said Spaur, from the cattlemen’s association.
The claims process has become smoother as ranchers have learned how the system works and CPW has provided better guidance, she said.
“It’d be a real shame, as we’re going through this period, to raise the bar on compensation and raise it so high that itap almost unachievable to get compensation,” she said.
Sedgeley said the petition seeks to bring parts of the wolf compensation program in line with the , like bears, elk and mountain lions. In that process, the claimant must prove the damage was caused by the species and also has a duty to mitigate the harm experienced.
Claims approved under that program — which covers nine species — totaled $602,787 in the 2024 fiscal year, . That year, mountain lions and bears killed or injured more than 1,000 head of livestock, the report shows. Landowners are not compensated for indirect losses from those species.
“Why don’t we talk about the elk and the black bears in the same way?” Sedgeley said. “They kill so much more livestock and cause so much more damage than the wolves. It boggles my mind.”
