With wolves on the Aspen doorstep, CPW hosts informational session
Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times
Wolves may soon become reality for residents of Pitkin County, and learning how to live with them is a task Colorado Parks and Wildlife wants to address.
Led by area wildlife manager Matt Yamashita, CPW held an informational presentation and discussion on Tuesday evening inside the Pitkin County Library. The meeting comes on the doorstep of the state possibly adding as many as 15 new wolves in the upcoming winter release window, with Pitkin County — along with Eagle and Garfield counties — among the areas where the animals could be set free.
The Aspen Center for Environmental Studies and Pitkin County Open Space and Trails co-hosted the free event, which saw the Dunaway Community Meeting Room crowd nearing capacity.
“Managing wolves is a new thing for our agency,” Yamashita admitted. “We are learning wolves, too. If you ask me a question about bears, I don’t need any fact sheet or anything else. I’ll give you more information than you’ll ever want to know about bears, and lions, and moose.”
Colorado is about a year into its reintroduction efforts surrounding the gray wolf, with 10 having been released in December 2023 in an area north of Interstate 70 in Grand and Summit counties. Other than a few animals that naturally migrated across state borders in recent years, wolves haven’t been established in Colorado since the 1940s.
Of those 10 released last year, it’s believed seven are still alive. At least one has been recorded — through a GPS collar — traveling south of the interstate, although the road has proven to be a natural barrier for the wolves and has presumably helped keep them away from the Aspen area to date.
Even if wolves are released in the area, Yamashita said Pitkin County is only on the fringe of being suitable terrain for the animals, with its high elevation making sustaining a significant wolf population near Aspen challenging.
“Trying to find some of these ideal places to put a wolf is difficult,” he said. “We are surrounded by high-elevation mountains. We don’t have a lot of deer and elk here this time of year. All of our prey species, they move down in elevation. So, when it comes to ecological suitability, it makes it tough. We are really pretty limited where we can go.”
The state’s plan is to release 10-15 wolves per year over the first 3-5 years to establish a permanent, breeding population of 35-50 wolves. The animals must be released on either state or private land.
The wolves that could be relocated to Colorado in the coming weeks would come from British Columbia, Canada. The first 10 released in 2023 came from Oregon.
Among the topics discussed during Tuesday’s meeting were basic wolf biology, especially when compared to the much smaller coyote, and what people should do if they encounter a wolf in the wild (similar to with bears, making loud noises and even using bear spray on wolves are good options).
“It doesn’t matter where we release these animals in the state — they are gonna move,” Yamashita said. “We are not trying to scare you guys or anything. Mainly, we want to re-enforce that you guys in the back of your head already know what to do and how to do it. It’s just refreshing your memory and making sure you are paying attention to what you already know and dusting that off.”
Among the goals Yamashita has with the wolves, should they come to Pitkin County, is to keep them wild. This is unlike a large portion of the local black bear population, which has been in close contact with humans from birth.
“Right now, our backs are against the wall in terms of managing bears. We have a lot of bears that have spent their entire life being assimilated to dealing with people. They are accustomed to people. They don’t see people as a threat,” he said. “Hopefully that’s our goal as a community, is to make sure wolves stay wild and that we are not affording them the opportunity to start habituating and getting comfortable living in town.”
Mountain retreat near Ruedi Reservoir accused of permit misuse
Pitkin County Commissioner Patti Clapper said that Tuesday’s Board of County Commissioners regular meeting will address the COVID ordinance and subsequent sunset date, but that the permitting process that Beyul is currently going through cannot be discussed until the permit application is complete.
