Colorado's New Wolves Could Kill Animals in Other States

Five more wolves are now running free in Colorado as part of the state's reintroduction efforts, prompting a nearby state to put a plan in place to protect livestock.

Last week, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) shared a video on X, formerly Twitter, of staff releasing the wolves in Grand County, Colorado. In May, the organization passed its Final Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan, which proposed reintroducing and managing gray wolves in Colorado no later than December 31. The wolves are released on designated lands but are prone to wandering and could cross the state border to hunt in Utah.

"A historic day for Colorado and for the first time ever — we released 5 wolves, 3 males and 2 females, in Grand County today," CPW posted last Monday, accompanied by a video of the wolves running after their release. "Captured in Oregon, the wolves were evaluated by our veterinarians & biologists, fitted with GPS collars & transported to Colorado for their release."

However, the wolves could pose a challenge for livestock farmers in Utah. Many farmers see the predators as a nuisance and a threat to their herds.

"Whenever you do a reintroduction of, especially of a large animal that's prone to wandering, and young as those wolves are...there's certainly a good chance that they could wander outside of Colorado and the experimental population boundary," Kim Hersey, mammal conservation manager with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, told Salt Lake City's KSL News.

The wolves are protected, meaning Utahns can't harm them even if the wolves target their herds. Instead, state wildlife officials obtained permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to capture the wolves and return them to Colorado.

Newsweek reached out to CPW by email for comment.

A study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that less than 4 percent of cattle deaths were caused by wolves. The study examined the thousands of cattle deaths caused by predators in 2010, which represented 5.5 percent of all cattle deaths and triggered a $98.5 million loss. Wolf-caused deaths were highest in Wisconsin at the time, when wolves accounted for 48 percent of cattle losses by predators. No cases of cattle killed by wolves were documented in Colorado or Utah.

Gray wolves once thrived in Colorado, but humans eradicated the species in the 1940s. Wolves have since returned to Colorado over the past 10 years after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service worked to restore the species in Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Arizona. Some of those wolves migrated to Colorado.

The wolves are considered endangered in the state of Colorado. They will be downlisted to "state threatened" once wildlife officials document at least 50 wolves anywhere in the state for four consecutive years, the CPW said.