300 jam Denver meeting on wolves
Public weighs in on animals’ fate in Colo.
By Kieran Nicholson
Denver Post Staff Writer
About 300 people crammed into a meeting room at a Denver hotel Thursday night, most eager to share their views on wolves and Colorado.
The state Division of Wildlife held the meeting to encourage and collect nominations for a “working group” that will draft a wolf-management plan to be submitted to the division’s director.
The plan is expected to be completed in August and will be followed by a public comment period. It could then be fine-tuned or changed before the division’s director decides how much of it to use in Colorado.
“He won’t do it in a vacuum,” said Pam Wagner, a policy analyst at the Division of Wildlife.
The working group will recommend policy points that could include defining the numbers of wolves and packs that will be allowed in the state; defining the degree of protection the wolves will receive; and defining what, if anything, needs to be done regarding wolf habitat.
The division has no current plans to reintroduce the gray wolf to Colorado, but wolves have been sighted along the Wyoming border, and it won’t be long before they come south, wildlife experts say.
“We are trying to prepare for this,” said Gary Skiba, a wildlife biologist with the division’s species conservation unit.
Once the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removes northern Rockies wolf populations from the endangered species list in 2005 or 2006, the state Division of Wildlife will be authorized to manage wolves north of Interstate 70. The issue of wolves south of I-70 falls under a separate wildlife boundary, though officials said there is no immediate need to deal with the possibility of wolves in southern Colorado.
Most of those attending the meeting, held at the Best Western Central hotel, came from Denver and surrounding cities, but some ranchers and farmers traveled from beyond the metro area to attend.
It was the sixth such meeting called by the division; others have been in Fort Collins, Durango, Grand Junction, Craig and Pueblo. About 1,000 people total have attended the meetings, said Kim Burgess, a policy and regulatory manager at the division.
If Thursday’s meeting is any indication, the working group will have its work cut out for it in trying to find a balance between protecting the wolf and protecting livestock.
Cindi Bush, 22, of Lakewood said she attended the meeting because she’s had a lifelong love of wolves.
But she admitted the wolf’s return to Colorado will be a “complicated” issue.
“No one should have an anti-rancher view,” Bush said. “They have to protect their livestock and make a living.”
“I would like to see both (wolves and ranchers) co-exist,” she said.
Karen Percy, 27, of Erie hails from a Wyoming ranching family.
“I’ve seen the wolves come in and the lack of government assistance” when they attack livestock, Percy said.
During the meeting, a Western Slope resident told the audience he drove to Denver because he missed the earlier meeting in Craig.
“Our land will be occupied by the wolves, and we would welcome it,” he said to applause.
A short time later, another man identified himself as a third-generation Colorado rancher and farmer. “Wolves are not welcome on our land,” he said.