Colorado’s next group of 15 gray wolves will be sourced from British Columbia, Canada. Colorado Parks and Wildlife said it will be working with the British Columbia Ministry of Water, Lands, and Resource Stewardship to capture and transfer the animals for reintroduction between December 2024 and March 2025. 

This will be the second release in what will become an annual release for the next few years. The Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan calls for the release of 10 to 15 gray wolves on the Western Slope every year for the next three to five years. 

The first set of 10 wolves reintroduced in Colorado were sourced from Oregon and were released in Grand County in December 2023. 

“We learned a great deal from last year’s successful capture and transport efforts and will apply those lessons this year as we work to establish a self-sustaining wolf population in Colorado,” said Eric Odell, CPW wolf conservation program manager .

Three of the intial 10 wolves have since died, including the male member of the Copper Creek pack. The pack welcomed four pups and had established themselves in Grand County. 

Adult members of the pack were responsible for a number of livestock killings, so CPW and federal agencies captured the pack and relocated it to an unidentified facility. The male of the pack was found in poor condition with deep puncture wounds in its hind leg. It was administered antibiotics to treat infections, but died four days after being transported. 

Each of the captured pups and the female are said to be in healthy condition. They will have limited human contact during their time in captivity and will be fed a diet of animal carcasses and “carnivore logs.” The pups will have to wait until they are adult size to be released back into the wild. 

CPW will begin its Canadian capture operation this winter. The British Columbian agency will provide planning assistance as well as actually carrying out the capture.

“We are grateful to the B.C. Ministry of Water, Lands and Resource Stewardship for working with our agency on this critical next step in reintroducing gray wolves in the state,” said CPW Director Jeff Davis. “Their willingness and ability to work with another jurisdiction to support our conservation priorities, as they have in past translocation efforts, demonstrates their long-shared commitment to seeing this species succeed.” 

Laying out some logistics of how the operations would be handled in Canada, CPW said it will incur all the operation costs in Canada as it did in Oregon. B.C. Ministry of Water, Lands and Resources Stewardship biologists will work alongside CPW to ensure safe captures and perform examinations on each animal. 

The wolves will have to be tested and treated for disease at the source sites to ensure they meet the requirements for reintroduction. 

Animal selection will follow the guidance in the management plan. Wolves with major injuries like several broken canine teeth, missing eyes, fractured or missing limbs, or mange and lice infections will not be selected. Wolves from packs that have a history or are currently involved in livestock killings also will not be chosen. 

The local Canadian agencies will help to ensure the captured wolves are healthy and as unproblematic as possible. 

Chosen wolves will then be fit with GPS collars. These collars will allow CPW to monitor the relative health and specific location of each wolf. The same collars were placed on the original group. 

By airplane and by truck the wolves will be transported back to Colorado in “sturdy aluminum crates” and will be released at the pre-selected release sites pretty much as soon as they arrive. 

“We are looking forward to working with B.C. and bringing together our combined experience and expertise in an effort that’s a win for both agencies,” said Odell. “Gray wolves from the Canadian Rockies were used for reintroduction in Idaho and Yellowstone. There are no biological differences between wolves in British Columbia and the wolves released in Colorado last year, and the new source population will provide additional genetic diversity to our state’s small but growing wolf population.”