One of Colorado’s reintroduced wolves — the patriarch of the state’s newest pack — died of natural causes four days after being recaptured by state wildlife officials following a series of livestock killings.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists captured the wolf on Aug. 30 and it died on Sept. 3, the agency announced Monday. Biologists had found the wolf, identified as 2309-OR, in poor condition, with several injuries to a hind leg and severely underweight, according to CPW.
“CPW staff believes that it was unlikely the wolf would have survived for very long in the wild,” the agency said in a news release.
State wildlife officials decided in August to capture the Copper Creek pack after the male wolf killed and maimed multiple cattle and sheep in the Middle Park area. The removal of the wolves from the wild was a setback for the voter-mandated effort to reintroduce the apex predator to the state’s landscape, beginning with the release of 10 wolves in the state in December.
Another of the reintroduced wolves died this spring. The state’s known wolf population now stands at 14: eight survivors among the reintroduced adults, plus the four pups from the Copper Creek pack and two adult wolves remaining from a pack established earlier by wolves that migrated from Wyoming.
The decision to recapture the pack came with risk and uncertainty, CPW Director Jeff Davis said in an interview. Wildlife officials did not want to remove the male wolf while the pups and the female wolf relied on his hunting for survival.
“We’re trying to balance the fact that we have so few animals on the landscape, and (we have) our mandate to restore a sustainable population of wolves while avoiding and minimizing impacts to the ranching industry,” he said. “There was an opportunity to remove the animals from the area of conflict, kind of reassess what the next steps are.”
An outside agency will investigate the cause of death of the male wolf and release a report, Davis said. He expected the investigation to take between 45 and 60 days.
The rest of the recaptured Copper Creek pack — a female wolf and four pups, one more than previously known — were captured and will be held in a facility for eventual rerelease.
The pups were underweight but otherwise healthy and taken with their mother to a “large, secure enclosure with limited human interaction,” according to CPW.
Citing a concern for the safety of the wolves, Davis declined to provide more details about the facility — including whether the facility is public or private and whether it is in Colorado.
Rerelease planned later in fall
The agency plans to release the remaining pack together between mid-November and December, once the pups have reached adult size, Davis said. Biologists will collar the pups before release, he said.
The pack will be released within the same broad area where the wolves were set loose in December, Davis said. The zone stretches north to south between Kremmling and Aspen, and east to west between Loveland Pass and Rifle.
CPW officials will speak with local elected officials and landowners in possible release areas before it occurs, according to the agency.
Davis and other CPW officials began discussing the possibility of removing and relocating the Copper Creek pack in early August, he said. The agency announced its decision to capture the pack five days after the operation was underway.
CPW began attempts to capture the pack on Aug. 22. Its biologists captured the wolves using leg-hold traps over the next two weeks, in this order:
- Aug. 24: adult female, 2312-OR
- Aug. 30: adult male, 2309-OR
- Tuesday: male pup, 2401
- Wednesday: male pups, 2403 and 2405
- Thursday: female pup, 2402
Wildlife officials continued to work in the area until Sunday to ensure all pups were captured.
“After three more days of operations, CPW felt confident there were no additional pups on the landscape,” according to the agency’s news release.
CPW veterinarians do not believe the leg-hold trap caused the injury to the now-deceased male wolf’s leg, Davis said.
The leg had puncture wounds high on the inside of the back right leg, which a leg-hold trap could not inflict on an adult wolf, Davis said. That leg was atrophied and the hair on the paw had grown long, indicating that the foot had not been used regularly for a long time, Davis said. Veterinarians administered antibiotics to the captured wolf to treat infection from the wound.
State deviated from its own plan
CPW’s wolf management plan states that relocating wolves to halt depredations “has little technical merit,” since the wolves could return to their previous territory or simply start killing livestock in their new area.
Davis acknowledged that the relocation decision strayed from the plan, but he said it was a necessary choice when trying to balance the mandate to restore wolves and also “take a little bit of steam or temperature out of the ranching community by removing the conflict.”
The majority of the 24 cattle and sheep killed and maimed by wolves since reintroduction were attacked by the paired wolves that formed the Copper Creek pack, CPW officials previously said.
“This isn’t necessarily exactly what our plan says, but this is a little bit of a perfect storm event, so it requires some flexibility and unique solutions going forward,” Davis said.
The four pups had not been involved with the livestock but were approaching the age when they would begin hunting with the adults, Davis said. It’s unclear whether the female wolf has killed or injured any cattle or sheep, he said.
Had the male wolf survived, he would have been held in captivity permanently, CPW officials said at news conference Monday afternoon.
While it is difficult to digest the death of the male wolf, the relocation was the best option for CPW at the time, said Rob Edward, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, which supported reintroduction. Now that the pack has been relocated, CPW can pivot to focusing more on preventing depredation by coordinating earlier with ranches that have a wolf presence nearby.
CPW also can make sure ranchers have easy access to nonlethal deterrents, he said.
“Now we can turn our attention to why CPW had to relocate these wolves — and what they can do better as they implement the will of the voters,” Edward said.
Despite the death of two of the 10 animals released in December, CPW officials remain optimistic that the reintroduction program will succeed.
“I’m not concerned about the overall success of the program,” Eric Odell, CPW’s wolf conservation program manager, said during the news conference.
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