Colorado Votes On Wolves

art credit: Amy Hamilton

The last known wolf died in Colorado in 1945; its death was long and tormented, the victim of a steel-jawed trap set by federal agents bent on killing another alleged sheep killer.  Some things have changed in the last half century.  Many Coloradans now support wolf reintroduction to the state as a valued member of healthy, wild ecosystems. Recent polls are evidence of this sea change in public opinion.  Seizing the opportunity to protect the wolf, wolf advocates succeeded in collecting more than 200,000 signatures to put the issue of wolf reintroduction on the November ballot.  Initiative 107 has generated action on both sides of the wolf divide.  Legislation has been introduced in the state senate to make wolf management a subject of legislatiive control.  State wildlife officials have been reluctant to act due to the public controversy surrounding wolf recovery.

While the humans debate, the wolves have acted on their own. Colorado Parks and Wildlife reports that a pack of at least six wolves now resides in northwest Colorado.  Initiative 107 raises a fundamental question about species reintroduction.  Should science decide the issue or should the public, which has to live with the consequences of returning an apex predator to a region from which it has been absent for 70 years?  The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1995 is generally seen as a conservation success story; preliminary data showed a beneficial trophic cascade {11.5.17} as a result of wolves preying on too numerous elk browsing the landscape.  But since then the effect of wolves on the Yellowstone ecosystem is not considered so clearly beneficial by the scientific community.

Colorado is not Yellowstone.  It is steadily growing in population, especially along the Front Range, but growth is also occurring on the once rural western slope of the Rockies, driven by the shale oil boom.  There are a lot of human hunters at large too.  Whether the reintroduction of wolves in the state would be a good idea from a biological stand point is a question not easily answered. Science is not adept at answering questions of moral value, but the Endangered Species Act of 1973 does speak of intangible values--according to the act endangered species provide “esthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation.”   The people of Colorado will get a chance to decide whether the welcome mat is out for a once feared and loathed predator.  Perhaps this is as it should be in what remains of democracy in the United States. If voters give the green light, the first few wolves will be released to the San Juan Mountains in 2023.