Report should fuel wolf debate
Study says Colorado has the habitat to support animals
By Gary Gerhardt, Rocky Mountain News
April 2, 2003
Attention in Colorado is turning to El Lobo.
The status for wolves in the northern Rockies recently improved from endangered to threatened, so the spotlight has turned to the Southwest, including Colorado, once home to both the timber wolf and the Mexican wolf.
The state is a “transitional zone” between the two subspecies.
A newly published scientific paper, Impacts of Landscape Change on Wolf Restoration Success: Planning a Reintroduction Program Using Static and Dynamic Spatial Models, states there is sufficient habitat from central Wyoming through the length of the mountains in Colorado to northern New Mexico to support more than 1,000 wolves.
The actual reintroduction area would be the area between Interstate 70 in Colorado and Utah south to Mexico, but the wolves would likely migrate north on their own.
“This paper doesn’t take a stand on whether wolves should be reintroduced, but is meant to be an objective model used as a basis for debates that will follow on whether the idea of reintroducing wolves in this area is politically, socially and economically sound,” said paper co-author Mike Phillips of the Turner Endangered Species Fund. The paper was published in Conservation Biology.
Southwest wolves are smaller than those found to the north. Gray wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in 1995-96. They’ve expanded their territory and now include 664 wolves in 44 packs.
“The Mexican wolf definitely is a subspecies of the gray wolf, and the animals that we’ve restored so far came from seven animals found in Mexico and captivity in the late 1970s,” said Brian Kelly, Mexican wolf recovery coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Albuquerque.
“Through a number of zoos, we have maintained a breeding program and now have eight breeding pairs and 40 individual animals have been released in a 6 million-acre area in New Mexico and Arizona.”
He said there are about 250 other Mexican wolves in captivity in the breeding program.
“Our recovery team will have to make a number of decisions soon about how many animals to release and where,” Kelly said. “We haven’t studied yet how well they would do in places like Colorado.”
Reintroducing wolves in Colorado will hit numerous snags, including opposition by the state Division of Wildlife.
“As I’ve said in the past, we are restricted from taking part in a reintroduction by a state Wildlife Commission resolution prohibiting our participation in any reintroduction of wolves or grizzlies in the state,” said wildlife division director Russ George.
“Also, a bill passed by the General Assembly says it would have final say before any such action could be taken.”
Vernon Sharpe and Tom Compton, past presidents of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, wrote they oppose any reintroduction because it’s built on a false premise – that it’s necessary for a healthy ecosystem – when there are other large carnivores to take the place of wolves.
Also, they are concerned about conflicts between wolves and livestock.
All debates, however, will be played out over the next decade before any decision of bringing wolves back to Colorado is made.