The Colorado Sun (Original) Posted December 8, 2022 by Elizabeth Miller
Colorado Parks and Wildlife is still sorting out where to source wolves from as the first draft of its plan goes public, and some say that plan should look to Mexican gray wolves
When voters passed Proposition 114 to require Colorado Parks and Wildlife to return gray wolves to the state, the ballot initiative specified when and where wolves would arrive. But it doesn’t say which kind of wolves to bring back.
Conservation groups and at least one state wildlife commissioner are reiterating that wolf reintroduction is an opportunity not just to return a keystone species to ecosystems in the state, but to aid an endangered animal in dire need: the Mexican gray wolf.
“The Mexican wolf is much more imperiled, so doing a project to reintroduce wolves would benefit the Mexican wolf to a great extent — possibly even save it from extinction,” said James Jay Tutchton, who serves on the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission and worked on wildlife cases as a lawyer for WildEarth Guardians, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Defenders of Wildlife for 27 years. He said he has made this point at several commission meetings and with Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists.
The state agency’s first draft of the plan for reintroducing wolves to Colorado will debut Friday at the commission meeting. The plan will not include Mexican gray wolves, and there are a lot of “biological and political and legal” reasons for that, said Eric Odell, the state agency’s biological lead for wolf reintroduction. But wolves released by the December 2023 deadline will be just the first in a multi-year effort, Tutchton points out, and he contends there’s still time to change that approach.