In some of their first meetings with the general public since wolves were released in December, CPW got pelted with questions from ranchers and recreationalists wanting to dig deeper into the nuances of living with wolves after the groups had time to digest their arrival.
At meetings that unfolded from Feb. 26 to March 3 in Silverthorne, Steamboat Springs, Winter Park and Florence, attendees asked questions about everything from how to recreate around wolves to what happens if wolves attack cows in pooled herds.
“The meetings were well-received by both the general public and the agricultural community,” said Travis Duncan, CPW spokesperson. “Attendees have been engaged and stayed well after the meetings to ask more questions specific to them.”
The gatherings come two months after state Sen. Dylan Roberts, at a Joint Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources hearing, accused CPW of intentionally withholding information about the wolves’ release from impacted communities and asking director Jeff Davis if he agreed a “loss of trust” resulted in those communities. Davis agreed, saying, “We have a lot of work to do to work with stakeholders to repair relationships.”
These meetings appear to support that effort.
Attendees had different concerns in different regions.
At presentations in Silverthorne on Feb. 26 and Winter Park on March 3, audience questions focused on the biology of wolves and diving deeper into best practices when recreating with them, Duncan said.
Local staff reminded attendees that they have a far greater chance of encountering a moose while recreating in Summit and Grand counties than they do a wolf, and that most of the same principles apply when recreating around them, he added.
CPW’s Living with Wolves brochure calls wolves “generally calm” and “elusive habitat generalists” that favor deer and elk. It says wolves are “unlikely to approach people or homes.”
Jeanette McQuade, a Fraser resident, said CPW gave the Winter Park audience additional directives, including “leave space between you and them, warn them you’re out there by talking and carry a whistle, leash your dogs when recreating, and if you do encounter a wolf, face it and slowly back away, haze it if you can and fight back if needed.”
McQuade said interactions during the question-and-answer session following the presentation “didn’t get contentious, and when they headed that direction, audience members reminded the crowd to not villainize CPW because they are following state statute.”
In Silverthorne, questions also veered to the agriculture community, according to a March 4 story by CBS News.
Eric Odell, CPW’s wolf conservation program manager, said the wolves, captured in Oregon, had a history of depredation, but had not killed livestock for six months prior to capture.
Odell said wolves are opportunistic eaters and that the Colorado wolves, “have plenty of resources to feed on.” CPW says there have been no reports of depredations on livestock since their arrival. The topic of depredation has been front and center for ranchers since two wolves migrated into Colorado from out of state and began preying on rancher Don Gittleson’s animals in 2021.
In December, after more attacks, Gittleson asked CPW if “20 mauled or dead animals qualified the wolves as chronically depredating” and requested help dispatching them.
CPW denied his request, telling him to continue using nonlethal mitigation tools. This prompted Sen. Roberts, D-Avon, to admonish the agency for “causing unnecessary hardship for livestock producers.”
Shortly thereafter, Duncan told The Colorado Sun that CPW had entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Colorado Department of Agriculture on expanding assistance to farmers and ranchers to avoid wolf predation.
On Wednesday, he said, “CPW staff is working on a definition of chronic. It will be going through our regulatory process and will most likely be scheduled to be heard by our commission at the May meeting.”
On Feb. 28, at a meeting titled “Wolves are Here, What’s Next?” CPW joined the Routt County-Colorado State University extension office to address questions from area ranchers.
Todd Hagenbuch, agriculture and natural resources specialist for the office, said around 85 ranchers attended.
Among their main concerns was compensation for cattle lost to attacking wolves.
“We had, I would call it, a conversation, and the ranchers brought up some excellent questions,” Hagenbuch said. “CPW was very honest about explaining how they are ‘redlining’ some of the rules related to compensation.”
Current rules state that if a rancher loses cattle to a confirmed wolf attack, they qualify for additional compensation for cows from the same herd that go missing. But the ranchers wanted to know if cows that are commingled with a herd that has an attack also qualify for compensation.
Duncan said CPW plans “to work towards revising current rules pertaining to cattle pools,” and that the meeting was “well-received by the agriculture community.”
Compensation rules for ranchers may be up in the air, however, after Rep. Tammy Story, a Democrat from Evergreen, introduced a bill in the legislature Wednesday that would require ranchers use nonlethal wolf deterrence measures to be eligible for state compensation if their livestock is killed by predators.
In emails to The Sun, Duncan mentioned one more meeting CPW held, with the Fremont County Cattlemen’s Association, on March 2.
Erin Spaur, executive vice president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, said the Fremont group “has a lot of anxiety about what’s coming.”
“There’s a concern because of what Fremont County encompasses – other high-mountain towns and high-mountain counties,” she added. “So, if there are future releases in Gunnison, it’s only two-and-a-half hours away” from Florence through the Gunnison National Forest.
Spaur said around 50 people attended the event where the discussion focused on the “wolf process” and livestock practices with wolves present.
CPW shared its most recent wolf map, which details where wolves have traveled since their release “to show members how communications are taking place,” she added.
But “there really are no formal communications” in agriculture communities that she’s heard of to date, she said. “It’s, really, if a local CPW officer sees a wolf in a local area, they’re calling the producer there or the president of the local cattlemen’s association. And then it’s up to the president to have a calling tree to get the word out. So we’re trying to get that set up to notify people.”
Spaur said area ranchers are also nervous about “nonlethal deterrents to the whole range of lethal deterrents, knowing what is available. So it was really (ranchers asking) those general questions about what will happen. And what we’re getting back is a lot of ‘We’ll see. We’ll wait and see what happens.’”
But attendees “were pretty agreeable and understood, I think because they don’t have the impending pressure of wolves,” she said.
Still, the Fremont members are asking for more communication, Spaur said. “I think wolves are now on the ground and producers are pretty anxious for CPW to be saying although they’re here, we don’t have a plan. Or to be told to wait and see. What we keep preaching to CPW is ‘communicate. Over-communicate.’ It will do wonders in the end.”
Duncan said CPW will hold additional meetings.
