DENVER — A federal judge has authorized the reintroduction of gray wolves in Colorado after representatives of the state's livestock industry asked in a lawsuit for a temporary delay in the predators' release.
While the lawsuit will continue, Judge Regina Rodriguez's ruling allows Colorado to move forward with its plan to find, capture and transport up to 10 wolves from Oregon starting Sunday. The deadline to put the voter-approved initiative on the floor is December 31.
The lawsuit from the Colorado Cattlemen's Association and The Gunnison County Stockgrowers' Association alleges that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to adequately assess the potential impacts of Colorado's plan to release up to 50 wolves in Colorado over the next few years.
The groups argued that the inevitable wolf attacks on livestock would impose significant costs on ranchers, the industry that helps power local economies where wolves would be released.
Lawyers for the U.S. government said environmental assessment requirements had been met and any future damage would not be irreparable, which is the standard required for the temporary ban sought by the industry.
They pointed to a state compensation program that pays owners if their livestock are killed by wolves. That compensation program — up to $15,000 per animal provided by the state for lost animals — is partly why Rodriguez sided with state and federal agencies.
Rodriguez further argued that ranchers' concerns did not outweigh the public interest in meeting the will of the people of Colorado, who voted to reintroduce wolves in a 2020 ballot initiative.
Gray wolves were exterminated from most of the US in the 1930s under government-sponsored poisoning and trapping campaigns. They gained endangered species protection in 1975, when there were about 1,000 left in northern Minnesota.
Wolves have since recovered in the Great Lakes region. They have also returned to numerous western states — Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington and, most recently, California — after an earlier reintroduction effort that brought wolves from Canada to central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s.