One of Colorado’s reintroduced wolves wandered into Rocky Mountain National Park this month, marking the first time a wolf has explored the park’s mountain terrain since its creation more than a century ago.
A collared wolf “spent some time” inside the park in August, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s monthly update on wolf locations Wednesday.
The map released Wednesday shows a wolf traveled in watersheds near U.S. 34 in the northwestern corner of the national park. The highway — called Trail Ridge Road inside the park — spans the park from east to west and crosses the high alpine terrain of the Continental Divide.
The wolf’s movements are the first confirmed wolf presence in Rocky Mountain National Park since its establishment in 1915, park spokeswoman Kyle Patterson said in an email. Rocky Mountain National Park officials expected reintroduced wolves would eventually move into the park, the land for which had been their native territory prior to the animal being wiped out.
Settlers traveling west in the late 1800s decimated elk and deer herds, reducing the amount of food available to wolves. In the early 1900s, people began hunting and poisoning wolves to protect their livestock, leading to the extirpation of the apex predator by the 1940s. A majority of Colorado voters in 2020 elected to return the species to state.
At least one wolf also traveled in a watershed along Colorado 14 in the Poudre Canyon south of Red Feather Lakes. All of the state’s known wolves remain north of Interstate 70, CPW officials said.
Eleven adult wolves are known to live in Colorado: nine released in December as part of the state’s voter-mandated reintroduction program and two remaining from a pack that formed after wolves naturally migrated from Wyoming. The state released 10 wolves in December, but one died this spring, likely killed by a mountain lion.
Two of the reintroduced wolves bred and this spring produced at least three pups, but state wildlife officials on Tuesday announced they would capture and relocate the pack following a string of livestock depredations.
It’s unclear where the pack — called the Copper Creek pack — will be moved and whether those wolves will be released into the wild or kept at a sanctuary.
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