Colorado Parks and Wildlife confirmed four wolf attacks on livestock in nine days in Pitkin County in May, prompting the agency to lethally remove a member of the Copper Creek pack.
The following week, the state wildlife agency ruled there was “inconclusive” evidence in three investigations of dead livestock on those same ranches.
Pitkin County rancher Tom Harrington said the different conclusions don’t mean the Copper Creek pack abruptly stopped killing livestock after a yearling pup was killed by Colorado Parks and Wildlife on May 29. But if there’s another confirmed depredation from the pack, Harrington said, it could force the state wildlife agency to lethally remove another of its members.
The confirmed depredation spree May 17-25 took place on three Pitkin County ranches approximately 14 miles apart, including on a ranch Harrington said he was told houses a wolf den with a new litter of pups. One of Harrington’s calves was killed May 23 and was among the confirmed wolf kills.
Ranchers claim the parents of the litter are the breeding female of the Copper Creek pack and a male from British Columbia.
Harrington told the Coloradoan he asked the state wildlife agency’s district wildlife manager for the area what would happen if the Copper Creek pack has another confirmed kill in the weeks that followed and was told the agency would lethally remove another of the pack’s yearling pups.
“I asked flat out how would they know which wolf to take out, and he told me they would not kill the breeding pair or the new pups,” Harrington said.
The Coloradoan sent multiple email requests the weeks of June 2 and June 9 to interview Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Jeff Davis as well as questions regarding:
The Copper Creek pack depredations May 17-25.
The lethal removal of a pack member.
The depredation investigations that were found inconclusive.
Agency spokesperson Travis Duncan denied interview requests the week of June 2, citing the director’s travel. Agency spokesperson Rachael Gonzales responded to another Coloradoan request to interview Davis in an email June 9 stating the director “does not currently have availability for an interview.”
Colorado Parks and Wildlife sent a news release May 30 regarding the lethal removal of the wolf and the string of recent wolf depredations in Pitkin County. Duncan said the agency is compiling a report on the Pitkin County depredations that will be released on its website.
That report could be discussed as early as the June 11-12 Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission meeting in Glenwood Springs.
The Coloradoan also filed two open records requests June 6 regarding Pitkin County’s confirmed wolf depredations and the lethal removal of a Copper Creek pack member. The agency responded it received the requests with a possible reply date of June 11.
In the past, the agency said information on confirmed depredations will be reported on its wolf depredation page when investigations are complete, which in some cases has taken a month or more.
The last report of a confirmed wolf depredation on that page is from May 6 in Gunnison County.
The Copper Creek pack was established by two wolves captured in Oregon. They produced five pups in Grand County in the spring of 2024. The pack was removed by Colorado Parks and Wildlife in the fall of 2024 after confirmed repeated depredations and all but one of its members were taken to a temporary holding facility. The state wildlife agency was unable to capture one of the pack’s five pups, which is believed to still be alive.
The pack’s breeding male died. The breeding female and four of her now-yearlings were rereleased in Pitkin County in January against the state’s wolf recovery plan that states known depredating wolves should not be rereleased.
Tim Ritschard, Grand County rancher and president of the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association, told the Coloradoan that Grand County ranchers had a similar experience last year as Pitkin County is experiencing this year.
He said Colorado Parks and Wildlife did not confirm wolf depredations that he claimed met the “preponderance” of evidence because the county was in the midst of 18 depredations between early April and early September that were largely attributed to the Copper Creek pack, according to the wildlife agency.
“You can’t take depredating wolves from one area and move them to another area,” Ritschard said. “Now, we have Copper Creek 2.0. When is enough, enough?”
Why the recent Pitkin County livestock loss investigations were found ‘inconclusive’
Colorado Parks and Wildlife did not respond directly to the Coloradoan’s request for information on how the agency’s investigation came to an “inconclusive” determination on June 2 and 3 livestock losses on the McCabe Ranch or a June 9 livestock loss on the nearby Lost Marbles Ranch.
Those ranches are 12 miles east of Carbondale and about 20 miles northwest of Aspen, the county seat of Pitkin County, which voted 61% in favor of reintroducing wolves in 2020.
Harrington, president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association who has for 17 years been ranch manger on the Crystal River Ranch near Carbondale owned by Sue Rodgers, said some of the calves that died in June were consumed to the point the investigator could not make a determination of what killed them.
Harrington said he is unsure how long it took state wildlife investigators to respond to the kill site on the June 2 depredation. He said investigators responded to the June 3 depredation site within an hour after being contacted but it took them more than 15 hours to respond to the June 9 attack.
Gonzales wrote that “wildlife officers have responded promptly to calls asking us to investigate.”
Harrington said kill sites had wolf, bear and coyote tracks that “contaminated” the site.
Harrington said the Lost Marbles ranch manager witnessed three wolves chasing his cows at 7 a.m. June 8 in the same area as prior confirmed and unconfirmed depredations and was able to move the wolves away from his herd, resulting in no known injuries.
Harrington questioned if Colorado Parks and Wildlife used GPS collar tracking capability when investigating the recent livestock losses. The agency said in a news release that it used collar tracking to identify and eventually remove the Copper Creek pack member under its “chronic depredation” definition of three depredation events by a wolf or wolves in a 30-day period.
Harrington pointed out there only needs to be a “preponderance” of evidence, meaning 51% evidence indicating a wolf killed the livestock for a confirmed depredation, under the state’s definition.
“In my 45 years doing this, I’ve never had a coyote or bear kill a healthy 180-pound calf; it’s illogical to not say the wolves killed them all,” Harrington said. “They have the collar data, know where they live and the den is less than a mile away and they are watching them like a hawk. I think it’s coming from higher up that there are no more confirmed kills because they will have to remove another wolf.”
Gonzales wrote in a June 9 email to the Coloradoan in response to some questions that wolf depredation investigators can use collar data, DNA evidence, bite marks, hemorrhaging, tracks, scat and other signs to determine if the animal was killed by a predator or if the animal died from natural causes and was scavenged on by another animal.
Agency personnel are well-trained, some with decades of experience identifying and investigating livestock depredations, Gonzales wrote, adding all district wildlife officers go through depredation investigation training during their first year with the agency.
No other agencies have assisted in recent depredation investigations, Gonzales wrote. Ranchers have been calling for the agency to have a third party present during investigations to assure a proper investigation is conducted.
Rob Edward, president and co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project that spearheaded the successful passage of the ballot initiative to reintroduce wolves, told the Coloradoan there are a lot of carnivores on the Colorado landscape that kill livestock and wolves shouldn’t be unnecessarily singled out when a depredation occurs.
“They (ranchers) want a pretext to have more wolves killed,” Edward said. “They want to blame the wolves and are clawing at anything they can grasp to kill the program. That’s understandable from their perspective, but that’s not going to fly.”
Edward said even if there is another depredation in Pitkin County, a thoughtful and forensic-based process must be used by Colorado Parks and Wildlife with help from ranchers to address the situation.
“Just to say ‘if we have another depredation we take out the pack’ is not how it’s going to work,” Edward said. “I don’t want to see further wolves removed. There needs to be very solid evidence before any control actions should be taken.”
Carter Niemeyer spent three decades trapping, killing and conducting necropsies on wolves for the federal government, including in Idaho and Montana. Niemeyer, who is retired and lives in Idaho, advocates for nonlethal strategies to mitigate wolf conflicts with lethal removal as a last resort.
Niemeyer said it’s not likely but also not impossible for a coyote to kill that size calf.
He said if the investigator arrives on the kill site in a timely manner, it’s a “no-brainer” to determine if a wolf killed livestock. He said the investigator usually looks for telltale hemorrhaging and bruising spots indicative of a wolf kill but it’s difficult to determine what killed the calf if not enough of the carcass is left.
Niemeyer said GPS collars would greatly help in determining if wolves were to blame for the kills.
“If wolves killed these calves, you can almost count on another attack not too long in the same vicinity,” Niemeyer told the Coloradoan. “Once the pattern starts, it continues to happen, especially if you have a den site nearby. It’s a matter of can you find the next kill before scavengers get to it or catching one in the act.”
Niemeyer said it will take hard evidence for Colorado Parks and Wildlife to confirm another wolf depredation if it means removing another wolf.
“They will be more under the gun to decide if they have to kill another wolf, so I could see them hesitant if there are doubts what did it,” Niemeyer said. “In my experience, the breeders were guilty as hell a lot of time but I would tell ranchers that in early stages of reintroduction, you just don’t weigh in and kill the breeders because that’s not conducive to recovery, but sometimes you have to.”
Colorado Parks and Wildlife said in its May 30 news release that it will monitor the Copper Creek pack to determine whether the lethal removal changes the pack’s behavior.
Studies are mixed on the effectiveness of lethal removal of wolves, with some suggesting it can be effective if targeted to the correct animals but usually is effective only on a short-term basis and may eventually increase conflicts.
‘It’s been an absolute failure’
Davis has touted the agency being more prepared for wolf-livestock conflict this year. And the agency said it would concentrate its resources on hot spots, including den sites.
To that end, the agency used $500,000 of the $950,000 in revenue from the Rocky Mountain Wolf Projects’s Born to Be Wild license plate to hire 11 range riders, has hired 10 wildlife damage specialists to help reduce conflicts, conducted around 150 wolf site assessments on ranches and provided nonlethal tools such as electrified fencing, called turbo fladry.
There have been 11 confirmed wolf depredations, which include both kills and injuries, on livestock this year as of June 9 compared to 12 at this time last year.
“What they should be doing, if they haven’t already, is be putting all hands on deck in places like Pitkin County and think outside the box to ensure wolves are not thinking about livestock and focusing more attention on native wild prey,” Edward said.
Harrington gave credit to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, saying the agency supplied a range rider to assist ranchers who were already riding their property as well as turbo fladry and other tools to help the Pitkin County ranchers.
But he said the agency has failed to put adequate resources to hot spots in Pitkin County and the range rider assigned to his area was not equipped with vital information to help ranchers, including on the ranch he manages.
He also said there has been no coordinated rapid response team that Davis promised ranchers and that a lack of consistent communication between Colorado Parks and Wildlife leadership and field staff with whereabouts of wolves has unnecessarily hindered the state’s wolf reintroduction program.
“It’s all a house of cards, smoke and mirrors,” Harrington said. “It’s why we asked for the petition to pause the reintroduction. It’s been an absolute failure.”
Pitkin County depredation timeline
Dates of confirmed depredations reflect the time of the depredation, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, which did not identify individual ranches. Those ranches were identified by the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association.
Mid-January: Former Copper Creek pack and some British Columbia wolves released. Ranchers say the release site was near the Capital Creek/Old Snowmass area, which is unconfirmed by Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
March 3: Pitkin County experienced first Colorado Parks and Wildlife-confirmed wolf depredation, a yearling heifer on the Lost Marbles Ranch, approximately 12 miles east of Carbondale.
May 17: A calf is injured, with Colorado Parks and Wildlife ultimately confirming the injury to have been caused by Copper Creek wolves from collar data on McCabe Ranch, approximately 12 miles east of Carbondale.
May 23: A calf is killed, with Colorado Parks and Wildlife ultimately finding “clear and convincing evidence” the depredation through collar data was caused by a Copper Creek pack wolf on the Crystal River Ranch, 2 miles west of Carbondale.
May 24: One calf is killed and one calf is injured, with Colorado Parks and Wildlife ultimately finding “clear and convincing” evidence through collar data that the depredation was caused by a Copper Creek pack wolf on the McCabe Ranch.
May 25: One cow and one calf are injured, with Colorado Parks and Wildlife ultimately finding “clear and convincing” evidence the depredation through collar data was caused by a Copper Creek pack wolf on the Lost Marbles Ranch.
May 29: Colorado Parks and Wildlife lethally removes wolf 2405, a male yearling from the Copper Creek pack.
June 2-3: Two calves on consecutive days are found dead on the McCabe Ranch, with the Colorado Parks and Wildlife investigation ultimately finding “inconclusive” evidence the kills were by wolves, according to Tom Harrington, Pitkin County rancher and president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. Colorado Parks and Wildlife has not verified the results of the investigation with the Coloradoan.
June 9: Dead calf discovered on the Lost Marbles Ranch, according to Harrington. Colorado Parks and Wildlife has not verified the results of the investigation with the Coloradoan.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Ranchers say Colorado wolves kept killing after May lethal removal