Another reintroduced wolf from Canada has died, Colorado Parks and Wildlife says 

Another of Colorado’s reintroduced gray wolves has died, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife. 

The agency said in a Friday news release that it received a mortality alert from a female gray wolf’s collar on Oct. 30. Parks and Wildlife said the death took place in southwest Colorado. 

The state agency said the cause of death won’t be known until an investigation, including a necropsy, is completed. The investigation is being handled by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The wolf was one of 15 that were brought from British Columbia and released on Colorado’s Western Slope at the start of this year. Six of those wolves have since died, and 11 wolves in total have died since the beginning of the state’s reintroduction program in December 2023. 

One of those was a year-old pup killed by Parks and Wildlife officials in late May after being connected to multiple livestock attacks in just over a week in Pitkin County, which met the agency’s definition of “chronic depredation,” which can warrant lethal action. 

Since reintroduction began, Colorado has relocated 25 wolves who’ve formed four packs, with more than a dozen pups born. Parks and Wildlife’s most recent wolf map, as of October, shows the animals continuing to spread across the Western Slope, with more movement into the southern region near the New Mexico border. 

Parks and Wildlife is currently in its third year of wolf reintroduction, with a plan to bring another 10 to 15 wolves to southern Colorado this winter.  That plan, however, could be upended after the federal government told Colorado last month that it can no longer import wolves from Canada, and that any new relocations must be from U.S. Rockies states.