A Colorado gray wolf, wolf 2516, that is traveling thousands of miles through Colorado stopped in the San Luis Valley and spent the first couple of days of 2026 on the Valley floor. Now she’s “significantly north of the Valley,” Colorado Parks and Wildlife Area Manager Rick Basagoita said.
Basagoita confirmed to Alamosa Citizen that the traveling female was in the San Luis Valley Jan. 2 and 3. She moved through the area, didn’t spend any significant time in any particular place and then moved on.
“She’s alone and on the move,” Basagoita said.
Loren Buss, who owns land near Monte Vista, got a call early in the week from a local CPW wildlife manager alerting him of a wolf “in our area.” Then two days later the warden called back and said the wolf’s collar was pinging north of the Valley and was no longer a problem.
There aren’t any livestock on the ranch right now, but Buss said he appreciated the call from the game warden so he could alert the livestock owner who uses the land.
Basagoita told the Citizen that CPW tries to notify landowners and livestock producers in the relative vicinity as wolves move through areas.
A wolf had briefly entered the San Luis Valley’s watershed in late 2025 and in the summer of 2025, and a wolf spent a good amount of time in the northern part of Saguache County. But wolf 2516 is the first wolf to traverse the Valley’s lower elevations.
In December, Wolf 2403, the lone male from the Copper Creek Pack was captured 40 miles south of the Colorado border near Tres Piedres and Tierra Amarilla and traveled through the Valley on his trek south, but Basagoita said he mainly stuck to the western edge of the Valley.
By April, wolf 2516 had traveled 1,200 miles and even crossed 30 miles into Utah before reentering Colorado the same day.
“This single wolf’s movement traveled nearly the entire southern line of watersheds on our map,” said CPW Wolf Monitoring and Data Coordinator Brenna Cassidy in April.
During the July CPW Commission meeting in Grand Junction, Wolf Conservation Program Manager Eric Odell said, “She started out in Eagle County then went west, down toward where we are here in Grand Junction, circled back, went up toward Steamboat, down through Middle Park and South Park, through Gunnison and Montrose, back to Grand Junction, back up and cycled around several times through all of Western Colorado and really has not stopped moving.”
The female wolf has traveled upward of 2,500 miles since she was introduced from British Columbia to Colorado in January 2025.
This wolf, Basagoita said, “is continually on the move.”
