A bear was spotted Tuesday evening roaming around the Anthem Ranch neighborhood in north Broomfield.

The bear has since left Broomfield as of Wednesday morning, according to a . People spotted the bear in the area of Colorado 7 and Lowell Boulevard and then on Bierstadt Loop, according to an .

Police had asked people to bring their pets inside if they lived in the area, according to the post.

Officers had kept Colorado Parks and Wildlife in the loop while monitoring the situation Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, according to the post.

A bear sighting in Broomfield isn’t out of the ordinary, according to Parks and Wildlife spokesperson Kara Van Hoose.

“As long as they can find food, they’re going to continue into metro areas,” Van Hoose said.

Parks and Wildlife has seen bears make their way to Centennial and even Aurora, she said. If a bear got into downtown Denver, that would be weird, Van Hoose said, but Broomfield makes sense.

People should be more vigilant about their trash to help keep bears out and keep bears safe, Van Hoose said.

That means taking trash out in the morning rather than at night, not putting pet food outdoors, cleaning grills and taking down bird feeders from Easter to Thanksgiving, she said.

Hazing a bear with flashing lights, banging pots and pans, or setting off a car alarm could help make it uncomfortable and stop trying to find food in the area, Van Hoose said. ]]> /2026/05/13/bear-spotting-broomfield-police-wildlife/feed/ 0 7756930 2026-05-13T10:05:31+00:00 2026-05-15T15:15:42+00:00 /2026/05/07/colorado-wolf-reintroduction-annual-report-releases/ Thu, 07 May 2026 19:47:59 +0000 /?p=7751877 Colorado’s voter-mandated wolf reintroduction is at a critical juncture two years after the first canines were released in the state, wildlife officials said Thursday.

At least 32 wolves are roaming Colorado after two rounds of releases and last year’s breeding season, which produced at least 14 pups, according to Brenna Cassidy, Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s wolf monitoring data coordinator. Cassidy and other CPW officials presented to the agency’s commission , including the most detailed information about the state’s wolf population to date — including the number of pups born last spring to the state’s four packs.

The survival rate for the pups was high, Cassidy said, helping mitigate the impact of the deaths of 10 adult wolves.

“We’re at an interesting and tenuous time for this population,” Cassidy said.

CPW officials planned to release between 10 and 15 wolves from Canada in January to add to the state’s population, but the agency canceled those plans after the new head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Trump administration warned that using wolves from another country would violate the state’s agreement with the federal agency. CPW disputed the federal agency’s new interpretation, which was a reversal of its previous approval of the use of Canadian wolves.

But the state agency pivoted and attempted to find a domestic source for the canines. The agency canceled the release for the winter when officials could not find another source.

The setback has made it difficult to predict when Colorado’s wolf population will be considered self-sustaining, said Eric Odell, CPW’s wolf conservation program manager.

Colorado voters in 2020 narrowly approved the reintroduction of the native species and mandated that CPW create a self-sustaining population. State biologists have since released 25 wolves into the state in two batches.

High reproduction and survival rates could result in a growing wolf population, Odell said. But one year of high mortality or low birth rates could set the program back.

“We’re very much at an inflection point,” he said.

Ten wolves died during the last biological year, which began April 1 and ended March 31. One of the wolves was killed by a mountain lion and six were killed by people, including one struck by a car and two killed by CPW. Three deaths remain under investigation.

CPW biologists, meanwhile, have spent thousands of hours studying the wolves’ activities and their impact on other species.

A map released Thursday as part of the annual report shows that the vast majority of tracked wolf activity since last spring occurred in a corridor in the state’s central mountains, stretching from Walden in the northern part of the state to just north of Gunnison. While the wolves spent time across most of the Western Slope, they spent significantly more time in the central corridor.

Twenty-four of the 32 known wolves were members of the state’s four packs. Those packs have established territories and stayed relatively close to their dens, though they still logged hundreds of miles of travel, Cassidy said.

The One Ear pack roams around Walden. The Three Creeks and King Mountain packs established themselves southwest of Steamboat Springs. And the Copper Creek pack lives south of Glenwood Springs.

The eight wolves that are not in packs rambled much farther and were less likely to stay in a specific area, Cassidy said. On average, wolves in packs traveled 679 miles last year, and those not in packs traveled 730 miles, she said.

CPW scientists this year completed a three-year data collection period for a study on how wolves and humans influence elk herd sizes and movement, according to the annual report. They are also studying how wolves impact moose calves and how drones can be used to haze and monitor wolves.

CPW officials also outlined to the commission their programs to reduce the risk of wolf conflict with livestock. The state now owns more than 500 devices it can loan to ranchers to scare away wolves and more than 45 miles of fladry — fabric that can be attached to fences to scare off wolves.

CPW also hired 11 range riders last summer to .

Those nonlethal management methods reduced the risk of depredation but were not 100% successful, said Ethan Kohn, a wildlife damage specialist.

“Nonlethal tools are an important part of the toolbox, but they are no a complete solution,” he said.

Wolves killed or injured 42 head of livestock and one working dog during the last biological year, according to the annual report. CPW expects to pay about $1 million to ranchers for depredations and other wolf-related impacts on their herds, such as lower birth rates and reduced weight, said Ray Aberle, the deputy assistant director of outdoor recreation and lands.

The agency has the money to pay all claims, he said.

Odell, who is retiring in July after 26 years with CPW, said the wolf restoration program he helped create is growing and adapting. Implementing the controversial program was complex and difficult, he said.

“I’m proud of what we’ve built and I’m confident in where it’s headed,” he said.

The attack was described by officials as a single event Monday afternoon along the Mystic Falls Trail.

A large area of the park near the Midway Geyser Basin was temporarily closed pending an investigation. The area includes at least five trails and several backcountry campsites.

Park officials said one or more bears were involved, but did not specify which species. The park has populations of both grizzly bears and black bears, which can be difficult to tell apart at times. Grizzlies can be more aggressive and they grow much larger — as much as twice as big as black bears. Black bears usually have darker coloring.

Further information — including whether the victims were hiking together and whether they were hospitalized for their injuries — was not being immediately released, said Yellowstone spokesperson Ashton Hooker.

Yellowstone gets more than 4 million visits by tourists annually and attacks by grizzlies or black bears are rare.

In September, a hiker suffered injuries to his chest and arm in northeast of Yellowstone Lake, and a grizzly just west of Yellowstone in 2023. The last fatal bear mauling in the park was in 2015 when a 63-year-old Billings, Montana man was killed while in the park’s Lake Village area.

The fate of bears that attack humans is typically dictated by the circumstances of the encounter.

Following the 2015 fatal attack, officials captured and killed an adult female grizzly because it had eaten part of the victim’s body and hid the rest, which is not normal behavior for a bear defending its young.

By comparison, last year’s attack on the Turbid Lake Trail happened during a surprise encounter between the victim and the bear. The animal’s reaction was considered natural, so it was not relocated or killed.

The heavily traveled Mystic Falls trail where Monday’s attack occurred includes a loop that leads to a 70-foot (21-meter) tall waterfall. The trailhead is about two miles (three kilometers) northwest of Old Faithful.

Those experiences stay with you. They also teach a simple lesson: when it comes to wildfire, denial, delay and ideology come at a very high cost.

That is why wildfire awareness matters. May is not just a marker on the calendar. It is the beginning of wildfire season. It is a warning. In Colorado, this is the moment to prepare for the dangerous months ahead and to be honest about what real prevention requires — proactive forest treatment prevents the worst.

Wildfire is not only a forest issue. It is a public safety issue. It is a health issue. It is an economic issue. Lives are put at risk. Homes, businesses and ranches are destroyed. Watersheds are damaged. Entire communities are left to recover for years. Even far from the flames, smoke can turn the air hazardous, especially for children, seniors and those with respiratory conditions.

Colorado has learned these lessons the hard way. We know wildfire cannot be eliminated. But we also know the severity of these disasters is not simply something we are powerless to address. There are practical, science-based steps we can take to reduce risk. The problem is that for too long, too many people have treated active forest management as too invasive rather than absolutely necessary.

That needs to change.

We should say clearly what too often goes unsaid: healthy forests do not maintain themselves, and neglected forests do not become safer with wishful thinking. In many high-risk areas, doing nothing is not conservation. It is complacency and it is dangerous.

For years, there have been loud voices opposing the very tools that can help reduce catastrophic wildfire risk — strategic thinning, fuel reduction, forest clearing where appropriate, and prescribed burns when conditions allow. Too often, these arguments are dressed up as environmental virtue. In reality, blocking responsible management can leave forests less healthy, communities more vulnerable and firefighters facing even greater danger.

Colorado needs a more mature conversation, especially as we deal with prolonged drought, warming temperatures, pine and Ponderosa beetles, and other threats to forest health. Stewardship is not abuse. Forest management is not the enemy of healthy ecosystems. If anything, refusing to use proven tools in fire-prone landscapes is its own kind of recklessness.

We should be working closely with the United States Forest Service and the Colorado State Forest Service and local governments to accelerate projects in areas already designated as high wildfire threat. We should prioritize the places where fire risk, community exposure and forest conditions demand action most urgently. We should support mechanical thinning, hazardous-fuel removal, and controlled burns when science and on-the-ground expertise indicate they make sense.

And yes, when and where appropriate, responsible access and carefully managed resource activity can be part of healthier forests and stronger rural economies. That should not be controversial. It should be common sense.

None of this means every acre should be treated the same way. It means decisions should be driven by science, local knowledge and public safety — not by rigid ideology or pressure from groups more interested in stopping management than solving problems.

Colorado’s forests protect water supplies, support wildlife, provide recreation, sustain local economies and define the character of our state. If we want those public benefits to endure for generations to come, we have to be willing to manage these lands responsibly.

The costs of inaction are simply too high. Every year we delay needed work, we increase the odds that the next fire will burn hotter, spread faster and do more damage. Every year we refuse to confront reality, we make future losses more likely and more expensive.

Coloradans deserve better than another season of hand-wringing followed by disaster. They deserve leaders willing to act before the emergency, not just speak solemnly after it.

We have both seen wildfire from the seat of state leadership. We know the fear, the destruction and the heartbreak it leaves behind. We also know Colorado has the expertise and the tools to do better.

Learn to Live Wildfire Friendly with less ideology, more science; less obstruction, more stewardship; less talk, more action.

Because when wildfire threatens Colorado, doing what works is not optional. It is our responsibility.

Gov. Bill Owens is a Republican who served from 1999 to 2007. Gov. Bill Ritter is a Democrat who served from 2007 to 2011.

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, which owns Matthews/Winters Park, acquired the for $7.3 million last week, with The Conservation Fund serving as a facilitator in the transaction. Great Outdoors Colorado contributed $2.3 million toward the purchase.

The acquisition expands Matthews/Winters Park, which already has nearly 14 miles of trails in the Morrison valley between 7,000-foot peaks to the west and the Dakota Ridge hogback to the east. Its trails are popular with hikers, trail runners and mountain bikers, and it borders Red Rocks Park, which is owned and managed by the city of Denver. Red Rocks Park has a trail network of more than 10 miles that connects with Matthews/Winter trails.

The Braun Ranch acquisition expands Matthews/Winters to the west, topping out at more than 1,000 feet over the Morrison Valley and offering a view that includes Mount Blue Sky, 35 miles to the west. Matthews/Winters Park has two parts, north and south of Red Rocks Park. Braun Ranch is expanding the northern part.

“Absolutely thrilled with the acquisition,” said Hillary Merritt, who manages land conservation for Jeffco Open Space. “It is such a great opportunity for us to connect two currently disconnected parts of the park, and it¶¶Òőap really a beautiful property.”

The viewpoint at the top, with vistas to the west, north and east, is nearly as high as Lookout Mountain just to the north. The main trailhead for Matthews/Winters Park, located just south of the Interstate 70 Morrison exit, lies 800 feet below. The expansion area is also accessible from Red Rocks Park via the Red Rocks Trail, which connects to the Morrison Slide Trail within Matthews/Winters.

“You can be on the trails of Matthews/Winters that everybody knows and loves,” said Justin Spring, Colorado director for The Conservation Fund. “And, in the near future, have the chance to go further west and have more of a backcountry experience — really get away from the city.”

Spring said he and Merritt have been working on the acquisition for a year and a half. The Conservation Fund, a nonprofit, identifies at-risk landscapes to prevent them from falling into the hands of developers and facilitates their transfer from private ownership to public land agencies.

“We saw this property was for sale,” Spring said. “It¶¶Òőap been on the market for a couple years. There were developers looking at it, and then interest rates went up. It created a remarkable window of time where it was too expensive to buy and hold and speculate as a developer. We were fortunate to stumble into it when it was at a better price point, and we brought it to our friends at Jefferson County.”

Great Outdoors Colorado accepted a grant application outside of its normal cycle of grant submissions in order to make the deal possible.

“We had to move quickly,” Spring said. “They agreed to accept a grant application out of cycle because they saw how timely and urgent this opportunity was.”

Matt Brady, a regional program officer for Great Outdoors Colorado, said preserving wildlife habitat was one of the reasons the agency was so supportive of the deal.

“This is obviously a migration corridor for elk and mule deer, so that is added benefit, especially in this foothills transition zone where there is rare connectivity at this scale,” Brady said. “There is strong development pressure in this part of the state, so it definitely checked the box in that sort of thinking.”

Great Outdoors Colorado was also mindful that Jeffco Open Space draws visitors from far beyond the county’s borders. Of its 27 parks, 24 are situated along or in the Front Range foothills, and Jeffco estimates that its parks attract 10 million visitors annually. Only one national park attracts more. Rocky Mountain National Park attracts just over 4 million visitors annually.

“The Matthews/Winters open space property is a highly trafficked trail system,” Brady said. “Jeffco is aware that they’re serving a population of recreationalists that is much broader than the county, with the millions of people that live and recreate on the Front Range.”

As of last Wednesday, Braun Ranch is officially part of Matthews/Winters Park. Jeffco plans to build at least one trail from the existing Morrison Slide Trail to the top of the expansion area. There is no timeline yet for construction.

“Siting a trail is going to be a little bit challenging,” Merritt said. “We certainly want to do an investigation of natural resources and make sure we are creating a sustainable trail, because it is quite steep. That will be part of the challenge. We’re hoping (to build) at least one trail that would get us from one side of Matthews/Winters to Mount Morrison. That would be in conjunction with Denver Mountain Parks, because that is their property, but we already have one trail that goes up the other side (from the south), and this might be a good opportunity to connect.”

Boulder County Sheriff’s Office officers rescued a pelican Monday afternoon after it became tangled in a power line near Longmont.

About 1:30 p.m., the sheriff’s office received a report of a pelican that had hit a power line. The pelican was flying with its squadron — a name for a group of pelicans — when it hit the line and fell near the water treatment facility at North 75th Street and Colorado 66, according to Vinnie Montez, a sheriff’s office spokesperson.

Two sheriff’s office animal protection officers helped free the bird and took it to Birds of Prey, a Broomfield-based nonprofit, for care and rehabilitation. The organization has a flight cage big enough to house pelicans, Montez said. It has helped 90 birds so far this year, .

“When a ‘squadron’ member needs backup
we answer the call,” the sheriff’s office . ]]> 7491496 2026-04-23T08:24:49+00:00 2026-04-23T09:07:19+00:00 /2026/04/22/colorado-wolves-map-central-northwest-mountains/ Wed, 22 Apr 2026 20:57:13 +0000 /?p=7490737 Colorado’s wolves roamed a smaller slice of the state in April as spring denning activity began.

All of the wolves tracked by the state remained largely in the northwest quadrant of the state between March 24 and April 21, according to released Wednesday by Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

Their territory stretched west from Vail and Walden to near the Utah border in Moffat County. Wolves also roamed near the Wyoming border, north of Steamboat Springs, and as far south as the Gunnison area.

The wolves have begun their denning season, CPW officials said Wednesday. Wolves breed in the winter and hunker down to have pups in the spring. After the pups are born, the female stays with them near the den while the male hunts in the surrounding area.

CPW biologists will monitor the wolves for denning activity and evidence of new pups.

Colorado has 18 wolves outfitted with collars, plus pups and others that wandered from neighboring states. The canines have established four named packs, though many wolves continue to wander solo.

The 3-2 vote by , in favor of the State Sunlight/Long well pad proposed by Crestone Peak Resources, came after about five hours of testimony and deliberation. The decision ends what had become one of the more contentious battles over energy extraction in Colorado.

Board Chair Jeff Robbins acknowledged that the application from Crestone had evoked a strong reaction from homeowners living nearby. But in the end, the company complied with rigorous state oil and gas regulations enshrined in a law known as Senate Bill 181, which was passed by state lawmakers seven years ago.

“At the end of the day, State Sunlight/Long achieves the balance we were told to look for,” Robbins said.

The two commissioners who voted no were Trisha Oeth and John Messner. The approvals process for the Sunlight/Long well pad encompassed seven hearings before the commission, stretching over several months.

Nearby homeowners rose up in opposition, claiming that the project would pose health hazards to those living nearby — in particular, to school-age children. They also worried about the drilling’s potential environmental impacts on the Aurora Reservoir, which is a water source for the 400,000 residents of Colorado’s third-largest city.

“I cannot believe that the state came down on the side of the industry yet again,” Randy Willard, the president of opposition group , said in an interview minutes after the vote came down Tuesday afternoon. “The group as a whole is severely disappointed.”

The group had pushed back on the proposed project using the 2019 oil and gas reform law as a guide, Willard said.

The 2019 law prioritized public health, safety and the environment when regulators consider oil and gas development — a profound change from the industry-focused approach Colorado had taken for decades.

“We’ve done everything we feel is possible under 181, only to find the industry comes out on top yet again,” Willard said. “I don’t know what else we’re supposed to do.”

In December, the state commission voted 4-1 to put a stay on the project, ordering Crestone to return with a list of alternative sites from which it could drill.

Crestone, a subsidiary of Denver-based SM Energy Company, came back this month with a slimmed-down proposal, knocking down the number of wells at Sunlight/Long from 32 to 24.

The company insisted that after examining 11 other potential sites, most of which were farther away from homes, its preferred site near Aurora’s Southshore neighborhood and the reservoir remained the best place to locate its wells.

Civitas Resources was Crestone’s parent company until late January, .

Jamie Jost, an attorney for Crestone, spoke to the commission during an online hearing Tuesday that, at one point, was attended by nearly 1,000 people. She called the site the “most vetted, most analyzed” location for the pad.

The company said the site would have the least impact on wildlife and waterways across 26,500-acre Lowry Ranch, a stretch of rolling prairie owned by the Colorado State Land Board where Crestone has plans to drill just over 100 wells in total — down from 166 just a couple of years ago.

Dan Harrington, SM Energy’s asset development manager, told the commission that reducing the number of wells at Sunlight/Long would curtail the time needed for drilling and fracking.

“This will reduce operational duration by about 25%,” he testified.

And the scaled-back operation will emit fewer emissions, including of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, volatile organic compounds and methane, the company in favor of its preferred site.

Mike Foote, a former Democratic state lawmaker who represents the neighbor opposition group as its lawyer, testified that Crestone didn’t conduct an honest comparison of alternative sites.

“It found things wrong with everyone else’s suggested sites instead of coming up with something that worked,” he said.

But Nathan Bennett, SM Energy’s director of permitting and compliance, said Crestone looked at other potential locations with an open mind. The company, however, said the alternate sites had problems, with questions raised about whether Xcel Energy could provide electricity to some of them to power electric drilling equipment.

Other locations, the company said, would have required much longer truck trips and called for running pipe over more ecologically sensitive areas.

Commissioner Mike Cross said Crestone’s proposed site for Sunlight/Long was well outside the state’s required 2,000-foot distance buffer from homes. He said the company’s commitment to use quieter and cleaner electric equipment on site was a positive aspect of the project.

“The best practices that we’ve seen from operators in the state, we’ve seen in this application,” he said. “It does meet our rules.”

But Willard, who has been working to defeat the application for nearly two years, said neighbors were already complaining of noise from other Crestone drilling operations on Lowry Ranch. In a presentation that the opposition group ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, the group claimed that more than 40 noise complaints were filed with the agency last month alone.

That, Willard said, will only increase once drilling starts at Sunlight/Long in the coming months.

The utility — which serves 1.5 million people across the Denver metro — on Monday announced its plans to drain the Park County reservoir, located on the Middle Fork of the South Platte River south of Fairplay. Recreation at the reservoir will close through the end of the year, including camping.

Denver Water officials did not give an exact date when the draining would begin or when recreational access would close.

The water in Antero Reservoir will be moved downstream to Cheesman Reservoir, southwest of Deckers. The move will save 5,000 acre-feet of water from evaporating from the surface of Antero Reservoir, which has the highest evaporative rate of Denver Water’s reservoirs.

An acre-foot of water equals the approximate annual water use of three to four households, according to the utility. When full, Antero Reservoir can hold more than 20,000 acre-feet. It was 88% full on Monday.

“Antero is a drought reservoir, designed to provide water to our customers during a severe drought,” Nathan Elder, the manager of water supply for Denver Water, said in a news release. “Consolidating this water into Cheesman will help us make the most of the water we have.”

Water managers will work with Colorado Parks and Wildlife to minimize fish deaths in the reservoir, according to the news release. Antero is popular with anglers year-round.

Denver Water officials will decide when to refill the reservoir based on drought conditions.

The reservoir was last drained in response to drought in 2002. Denver Water also emptied the reservoir in 2015 for dam rehabilitation.

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.

“It¶¶Òőap 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 that¶¶Òőap 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 it¶¶Òőap 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.”