Almost two years after the Southern Ute Indian Tribe called on Colorado Parks and Wildlife to fully recognize its tribal sovereignty with respect to wolf management, the two entities announced Monday an agreement on the matter.
The memorandum of understanding, completed and signed Nov. 25, comes six months after a tribe in Washington rescinded an offer of wolves to Colorado citing insufficient collaboration with the SUIT.
It also codifies a government-to-government relationship that tribal officials had sought to enshrine before CPW commissioners approved the final wolf reintroduction plan on May 3, 2023.
The final plan outlines how CPW will reintroduce and manage gray wolves in Colorado, as voters in 2020 directed the agency to do. It says wolves will not be released within 60 miles of borders with other states or tribal nations. However, it makes no formal mention of the Brunot Treaty Area, some 3.7 million acres in the southwest corner of the state where the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes retain sovereign hunting and fishing rights.
“The Tribe is concerned that the Plan limits tribal deference only to tribal lands,” SUIT Melvin Baker wrote in a Feb. 21, 2023, letter to the wildlife commission. “The Tribe requests that CPW adopt a broader recognition of tribal sovereignty by acknowledging the development of a Tribal Management Plan or MOU that will govern the management of gray wolves on the Southern Ute Indian reservation and within the Brunot Area.”
Notes from CPW’s stakeholder advisory group that weighed in on the wolf plan contain a singular reference to a likely need “to develop new intergovernmental agreements or memoranda of understanding with Tribes to address sovereignty and jurisdiction-related issues.”
The matter was not otherwise formalized in the plan.
“During the Stakeholder Advisory Group (SAG) process, it was determined that trying to buffer 60 miles from the Brunot Area would have eliminated the southern release zone in the draft Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan,” CPW spokesman Travis Duncan said in an email to The Durango Herald.
Duncan declined two interview requests and said the agency would answer questions by email.
In June, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Nation, which had previously agreed to let CPW capture up to 15 wolves from its land in Washington for release in Colorado, rescinded the offer, saying that “necessary and meaningful consultation was not completed with potentially impacted tribes.”
Formal negotiations for the MOU began in October 2023, Duncan said.
The MOU released Monday contains several key provisions.
It ensures, among other thing, that the tribe has the right to manage wolves on tribal lands in accordance with federal law (which protects gray wolves as an endangered species), but does not have to follow state regulations.
“We look forward to working constructively with the State to ensure that the reintroduction of the gray wolf is conducted in a manner that respects Tribal sovereignty, upholds our cultural values, and minimizes potential impacts on our Tribal Members, their livelihoods, and our traditional ways of life,” Baker said in a news release.
He was not immediately available for comment Monday.
The Brunot area is a near-perfect rectangle anchored by Cortez in the southwest corner and Pagosa Springs in the southeast corner; its northern border passes through Ridgway.
Although there is slight overlap between the Brunot area and the southern wolf release zone identified by CPW, the state agreed not to release wolves within the Brunot area. It also agreed to “make reasonable efforts to maximize the distance between wolf release sites and the boundaries of the Brunot Area.”
State officials are obligated to inform the tribe of the locations where they plan to release wolves each season, and tribal officials will have the opportunity to object to those plans. CPW will have to “take the Tribe’s objections into serious consideration,” if received before capture operations begin.
The MOU also ensures that tribal livestock owners are eligible to participate in the state’s compensation program in the event of a depredation loss.
“The Colorado Department of Natural Resources and its Division, Colorado Parks and Wildlife greatly appreciate our relationship with the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and are committed through this MOU to promote continued cooperation and communication between the Tribe and the State in our efforts to restore the gray wolf to Colorado,” CPW Director Jeff Davis said in a news release Monday.
Since CPW first released wolves back into Colorado in December 2023, the agency has come under fire for a lack of transparency. Davis apologized to the wildlife commission for CPW’s poor communication less than a month after the first release.
In light of the Colville Tribe’s decision not to allow CPW to capture wolves on the reservation, the state announced in September an agreement to source wolves from British Columbia, Canada. It has not released any animals in 2024.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
