Colorado wildlife officers seize wolf pack accused of vandalism
FORT COLLINS, Colo. – Colorado wildlife officials have captured the state’s first pack of wolves released after extensive depredations earlier this year, sparking controversy among wildlife groups. advocacy and ranchers.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife announced Monday that it captured two large wolves and four cubs that make up the Copper Creek pack. After being caught, the older man died from injuries unrelated to the trap, according to the state wildlife agency.
The agency, which in late August announced plans to remove the pack, said in a news release that the females giving birth to the pack and all four cubs were caught without injury or incident using foot traps. No other pups were found.
All six animals from the pack were taken to a safe place for examination and testing, the news release said.
State wildlife officials have decided to remove the pack from Grand County – west of Denver – after the pack’s parents were reportedly responsible for 16 confirmed cases of foxes in cattle and sheep in the county between 2 April and 28 July.
Colorado captured 10 wolves in Oregon and released them in Grand and Summit counties in December 2023.
What’s next for the mother and cubs at Copper Creek?
Colorado law prohibits wildlife from being taken from the wild and owned by any commercial wildlife park, non-commercial wildlife park or wildlife sanctuary. Reid DeWalt, deputy director of Colorado Parks and Wildlife, said the wolves are allowed to stay temporarily at the facility while under state control because they are not held there permanently.
Center Director Jeff Davis told reporters that the four cubs will be held at an undisclosed facility and released together when they are close to adult size. He said that gives my siblings born in April a better chance to live.
It is not known whether the agency plans to release the wolf pups with the next batch of wolves released expected in late winter of this year and early winter of 2025, as some have speculated the agency may do.
Davis said there is “no evidence” of four cubs being involved in the Grand County herd distress, saying the wolves are too young to be involved in those incidents. He said they will be returned to the country to participate in the national wolf restoration project.
Davis added that the agency is not sure if the mother of the pack will be released back to Colorado or held in permanent captivity. If he is released, he said he will be “closely monitored.”
Davis said that if the father of the pack had not died, the plan was for him to be put in permanent captivity.
A news release approved the state’s wolf recovery plan saying the agency will not relocate wolves with a history of poaching in Colorado. “The plan also requires flexibility,” Davis said in the release. “And sometimes it may not account for every unique situation that our department and professionals encounter.”
The agency will have discussions with local elected officials and landowners in potential release areas before the release takes place, according to Davis.
What is the controversy about wolves?Colorado’s gray wolf reintroduction strategy.
Wolf’s advocacy group says the pack ‘deserves further commitment to non-lethal measures to reduce conflict’
Rob Edwards, president and co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, said the group was saddened to hear of the alpha male’s death but applauded Colorado Parks and Wildlife for the way this “extraordinary act” works. . The Rocky Mountain Wolf Project spearheaded the restoration of the Colorado wolf.
“The agency needs to take this opportunity to dig up the lessons learned, but they did a very difficult job with perfect discipline,” Edwards told The Coloradoan, part of the USA TODAY Network. “The Copper Creek parcel deserved more voluntary non-lethal conflict mitigation measures than they received, as evidenced by CPW’s denial letter for lethal authorization.”
Some wolf advocacy groups have called for the wolves to be released again and for a joint effort to prevent the release of more packs.
“Having Colorado’s first reintroduced pack removed from the ecosystem is a real setback for the restoration efforts that Colorado voters voted for,” Chris Smith, wildlife program director at WildEarth Guardians, said in a press release. news. “CPW staff seem to have done what they can to reduce this situation, but it seems that not everyone was invested in living together. The death of the wolf is a terrible tragedy.
Delaney Rudy, Colorado director of the Western Watersheds Project, blamed ranchers for the pack’s removal.
“The rest of the Copper Creek family should be returned to the wild as soon as possible in the deep country where the herds have a priority since they left, and the land riders are on the ground,” Rudy said in a news release. . It is not fair that these animals who get along so well with their families have been destroyed by ineffective ways of living together. “
Ranchers against the release of any pack members
Tim Ritschard, a Grand County farmer and president of the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association, said local farmers agreeing to remove the pack is the right call. He said that the damage continues even though farmers use different non-lethal methods to prevent wolves.
But Ritschard noted that breeders are against cubs or cubs being released again because of their association with the destruction of livestock. He said the ranchers have evidence of all members of the Copper Creek pack involved in the loss of livestock although the national wildlife ministry said the cubs were too young to be affected.
“We have testimony from a local veterinarian who assisted Colorado Parks and Wildlife with necropsies of sheep killed in Grand County that puppies were involved,” he told The Coloradoan. “He found bite marks on some sheep that were too big for a wolf and too small for a big wolf.”
Jackson County rancher Don Gittleson said the removal of the entire pack could have been reduced if wildlife officials had removed the large male earlier. The male was involved as the main killer of livestock.
Gittleson said placing the cubs and females in captivity where they will be fed wild animal meat by humans, which has been certified by the state wildlife agency, will make the situation worse.
“This package was already familiar to humans, and now it will be fed by humans?” he told The Coloradoan. “And now you want to release them and those cubs haven’t learned to hunt yet? Releasing them would be a bigger mistake than not killing the wolf in the first place.”
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