If you needed another reminder that wildlife policy is not a feelings-based group project, here you go. The Denver Gazette reports Colorado just logged wolf death number 14 since reintroduction.
This one happened in northwest Colorado during a collaring operation. Colorado Parks and Wildlife says wolf #2305 died Jan. 28 in Routt County, and they are waiting on necropsy results to see if anything else was going on.
The Bullet Point Brief
- CPW says the 14th wolf death since reintroduction occurred during a collaring operation in northwest Colorado.
- The wolf, identified as #2305 from the original Oregon group, died Jan. 28 in Routt County.
- CPW says it was the male of the breeding pair that produced the King Mountain pack last year.
- CPW says necropsy results are pending, and the agency has permission from U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to conduct it.
- CPW says it does not intend to bring in more wolves this winter season, and Colorado currently does not have a source for the next group.
My Bottom Line
I want to stop talking about the wolves. I have received emails telling me to shut up, already about the wolves. Fair. But the state keeps turning the crank on this thing, and reality keeps cashing the checks.
Here’s what I want, and it’s not complicated: a per head cost on this Boulder-based nature experiment. Show me the numbers. How much has it cost us? How much has it cost Colorado ranchers? Who pays? Who profits? Who gets blamed? Spoiler: it’s never the people in the Denver/Boulder bubble who voted for it.
Rural Colorado did not want this, but got it anyway, and now we are all footing the bill for a program that still cannot even line up a source for the next round of wolves.
Another dead wolf during a state operation should be a flashing red light, not a press release with soothing words. If Mother Nature (read GOD) wanted this, the government wouldn’t need a mandate.
For the love of Colorado Beef, just make it stop. If CPW is going to keep running this program, then at minimum we measure it like adults: total program cost, cost per wolf, verified impacts to producers, and what conflict minimization actually accomplishes in the real world, not in the Denver/Boulder Bubble where gravity is optional.
Source: The Denver Gazette
