WASHINGTON – A bill to remove gray wolves from the Endangered Species List, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, has passed the House.
The bill, titled “Trust the Science,” would reissue a 2020 final rule from the Trump administration that would remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list across the lower forty-eight. The bill passed with a narrow vote of 209 to 205, largely along party lines.
The rule makes exceptions for the Mexican wolf, a subspecies of the gray wolf. The bill would also prohibit the rule from being subject to judicial review. That would ostensibly block the courts from reissuing protections for the gray wolves as in 2022, when U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White ruled that the Trump-era regulation relied too heavily on population data from specific states as grounds to delist the wolves.
A February news release from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services said gray wolves are no longer “at risk of extinction in the Western United States now or in the foreseeable future.” However, recovery for the wolves in their natural territory is uneven, including in Colorado, where wolves have yet to reach population levels that would signal full recovery.
Wolves are a keystone species, meaning they play an instrumental role in their ecosystems. As an apex predator, they help manage elk, deer and moose populations and are believed to be instrumental in preventing the spread of chronic wasting disease. Wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone National Park has been credited with revitalizing the ecosystem by reducing the elk population and increasing the flora and fauna biodiversity, according to the California Wolf Center.
There is little evidence that the introduction of the wolves severely negatively impacts the cattle industry as a whole, according to information published by Colorado State University. However, those who are most likely to feel the impact of wolf introduction are individual ranchers.
The debate about the reintroduction of wolves into states has become a flashpoint across the country and a clear demonstration, at least rhetorically, of the division between urban and rural America.
“Out-of-touch Denver and Boulder leftists voted to reintroduce wolves in Colorado,” Beobert said in a news release last week. “... Rather than celebrating the gray wolf recovery success story, leftists want to cower to radical environmentalists and keep them on the Endangered Species Act list forever.”
A 2020 ballot measure, Proposition 114, mandated that wolves be reintroduced to the state over the next few years. Only five Western Slope counties, including La Plata County, voted in favor of the measure, according to previous reporting by The Durango Herald.
Ten wolves were released into Grand County at the end of 2023, one of the first voter-driven initiatives to reintroduce wolves into the wild. The Colorado reintroduction plan adds another 30 to 50 wolves over the next three to five years and has garnered a lot of attention from conservation groups and livestock handlers across the state.
The Colorado plan provided several provisions to protect Colorado ranchers. One designates the wolves as an “experimental population,” meaning it is permissible for ranchers and livestock producers to kill or harass wolves that are causing problems for their animals. Under the guidelines, the state government also will award ranchers 100% of the market value of animals lost to wolf predation, up to $15,000.
But ranchers are still wary about the reintroduction of wolves to the state, especially as farms are beginning to report the first wolf-related livestock deaths in 80 years.
“A lot of people don’t know how devastating wolf introduction will be to ranchers,” said J. Paul Brown, a local sheep and cattle rancher and former state legislative representative.
He said that while the state may pay for individual animal deaths, it doesn’t make up for the potential loss of breeding cattle or other plans ranchers may have for their livestock. A death of one of the cows when he first started would have been devastating, he said.
The exact number of livestock killed by wolves is unknown, but it is estimated to be less than 1% of livestock deaths a year, according to information published by Colorado State University. That number, however, does not account for animals that go missing or unaccounted for and often assumed by ranchers to be the victims of wolves.
Boebert’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Eliza DuBose, a senior at American University, is an intern for The Durango Herald and The Journal in Cortez. She can be reached at the edubose@durangoherald.com.
