Colorado Parks and Wildlife tracking up to four possible wolf dens

For wolves, the beginning of May signals the end of denning season. 

While Colorado Parks and Wildlife is tracking up to four pairs of wolves that could be denning, none have been confirmed, according to Eric Odell, the agency’s wolf conservation program manager.

“We are monitoring one to three to four pairs of animals that could be denning,” Odell said at the May 7 meeting for the agency’s commission. 

The agency is “sussing out” these potential dens using data from the GPS collars that the majority of Colorado’s wolves are wearing. 

“When we have followed a couple of animals that are paired, male-female pairs, and we lose contact with the female, potentially that means (she’s) underground, or she’s spent some time digging a den or something like that,” he said. “We’re relying on some of that behavior through our GPS collars to identify where we might have some dens, but again, we have not confirmed any of these.”

Any pups will likely remain underground for up to another month, he added. 

Once they emerge, Odell warned it will be unlikely the agency will know exactly how many pups there are. 

“Whether we are able to get reliable ground counts just depends on a variety of different things: access, if they’re in deep timber, or just the physical locations of where dens are,” he said. 

Brian Dreher, the assistant director of Parks and Wildlife’s terrestrial wildlife branch, confirmed the agency will be deploying some of its recently-hired range riders to these suspected denning areas later this week. Range riders are people who roam given areas, typically on horseback, in an effort to monitor wolves and protect livestock. 

Dreher said that riders sent to these potential dens will “be deployed in a defensive manner and will work mostly nights to prevent highly localized wolves from coming in contact with nearby livestock.” 

The state agency, in partnership with the Colorado Department of Agriculture, hired 11 range riders earlier this year as part of a new state program to minimize conflict between wolves and livestock. 

In April, four range riders were sent out to Eagle, Routt and Rio Blanco counties, “to assist with conflict,” Dreher said. These riders were deployed at the request of producers following wolf activity in these areas, he said. 

So far this year, Parks and Wildlife has confirmed four livestock deaths related to wolves — two in Jackson County, one in Pitkin County and one in Eagle County. 

Remaining range riders not deployed near potential dens or in these areas will be “making landowner connections and riding in areas where wolves have been historically or have the potential to be in the near future,” Dreher said. 

“They are doing this, so they can develop an understanding of the livestock, the landscape, the natural prey, and the producers themselves so they can be better prepared when wolves arrive,” he added. 

Will Colorado release more wolves next year? 

Parks and Wildlife is two years into the voter-passed effort to reintroduce gray wolves in Colorado. The agency’s wolf restoration plan recommends that the state release 30 to 50 wolves over three to five years to get to a sustainable population of the species. 

While Odell confirmed the agency will do another year of releases, no decisions around what these releases will look like have been made.

“We’ve not had any discussion, any decisions on where wolves are coming from, where wolves are going,” he said, adding that “the local communities, the legislators, the decision-makers will be kept in the loop and kept informed throughout that process once those decisions are made.”

Transparency around releases was a consistent complaint from local and state lawmakers and producers in January when Parks and Wildlife brought the last batch of wolves from British Columbia. 

The agency maintained that it provided what information it could, and any information withheld was for the safety of the wolves and its staff. 

Parks and Wildlife currently has functioning collars on 24 wolves in Colorado, representing around 95% of the total population, Odell said. 

The agency uses these collars not only to track these potential den sites, but also to determine where wolves are going and spending time. Part of this includes alerting producers when wolves are “normalizing in an area and spending any significant amount of time there,” he said. 

Since January, one female wolf has traveled nearly 1,700 miles in Colorado, the same distance between Denver and Washington D.C., he said, adding that this was an anomaly among the state’s wolves. 

In the last few months, the agency has confirmed three deaths of wolves from British Columbia — two in Wyoming and one in Rocky Mountain National Park. However, this is not cause for concern, according to Odell.  

“These mortalities are unfortunate in our sense of trying to establish a self-sustaining population of wolves, but it does not in any way indicate a failure of the program,” he said. 

Looking ahead, as more pups are born and more wolves are released, the agency will not keep a running list of the number of wolves in Colorado but rather will provide an annual population estimate. This estimate will be part of the annual report that the agency is statutorily required to produce at the end of the biological year (March 31) for wolves. 

According to Odell, the second annual report is expected to be released in the coming weeks and will provide information on population, management, monitoring and more.