US judge to decide Friday if Colorado can reintroduce wolves over cattle industry objections
DENVER — A federal judge said she would decide Friday whether to temporarily halt the upcoming reintroduction of gray wolves in Colorado under a voter-approved initiative, after representatives of the state's livestock industry went to court to try to stop the release of the predators.
If the judge sides with the industry, the decision would derail Colorado Parks and Wildlife's plans to search, trap and transport up to 10 wolves from Oregon starting Sunday.
The wolves would be released by Dec. 31, the deadline imposed under a 2020 ballot proposal that was exceeded by a narrow margin. The animals are believed to be among the first gray wolves in Colorado in decades.
The Gunnison County Stockgrowers' Association and the Colorado Cattlemen's Association filed a lawsuit Monday against Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to stop the release.
Attacks on livestock would impose “significant costs on the livestock industry and the communities that depend on it,” the groups' lawyers said. Although the arguments in court revolved around legal technicalities, they broadly allege that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has failed to adequately oversee Colorado's plan to release up to 50 wolves on state soil in the coming years – and private property.
U.S. government attorneys said further environmental investigations were not necessary and urged Judge Regina M. Rodriguez to deny the industry's request.
Any future economic harm suffered by ranchers would not be irreparable, which is the standard required for the temporary ban sought by the industry, U.S. Justice Department attorneys wrote in a court filing. They pointed to a state compensation program that pays owners whose livestock are killed by wolves.
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.
An estimated 7,500 wolves in about 1,400 packs now roam parts of the contiguous US. Their return to the central Rocky Mountains of Colorado would fulfill a long-standing dream of wildlife advocates and fill one of the last remaining major gaps in the species' historic range around the world. western US
A small number of wolves from the Yellowstone region traveled through Wyoming to Colorado in recent years. Some of those animals were shot when they returned to Wyoming, where shooting them is legal, and in Colorado they were accused of attacking sheep and cattle.
Such losses can be devastating for individual farmers, but their impact on the entire sector is negligible.
Colorado officials say they currently manage only two wolves in the state.
The plan to establish a permanent wolf population by releasing animals captured elsewhere has sharpened the divide between rural and urban residents. City and suburban residents largely voted in favor of reintroducing the apex predators to rural areas, where ranchers worry about attacks on livestock that help boost the local economy.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in September published an environmental analysis of what is called a 10(j) rule, which allows the killing of wolves in Colorado under certain scenarios — mainly to protect livestock — even though the animals are federally protected as an endangered species.
The rule is a key part of Colorado's reintroduction plan. The livestock groups argue that the rule review failed to capture the full impact of wolf reintroduction.
Colorado Assistant Attorney General Lisa Reynolds requested Thursday's hearing after the livestock groups asked Rodriguez for a temporary restraining order to stop wolf releases. Reynolds said in a court filing Wednesday that the release would not begin until Dec. 17.
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Brown reported from Billings.
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Bedayn is a staff member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.