Wolves get a cold shoulder in Colorado
“Colorado’s early settlers extirpated wolves from the state, and it seems pretty clear that the state has a moral duty to bring them back. They belong here; it’s really not that complicated. Without wolves, Colorado is not whole.”
Colorado has good track record of restoring cute little critters like river otters, but when it comes to predators, an old-west mentality — fearful and vicious — still rears its ugly head.
That was clear in the early 2000s, when a state plan to reintroduce native lynx drew shrieks of protest from cattle and sheep ranchers, not to mention the ski industry. Thankfully, in that era, the Division of Wildlife, as it was still called, was staffed by strong leaders who stood up for wildlife in the face of political flak.
But times have changed. Under Gov. John Hickenlooper, the agency has been all but eviscerated after a merger with Colorado State Parks, suffering staff and budget cuts, and reduced to whining about a lack of resources to manage existing programs, much less taking on anything as challenging as a wolf program.
In one recent statement, the agency even complained that no private conservation groups have stepped up to fund wolf restoration and management, a task that clearly lies within the purview of the agency’s stated purpose — to manage native animals in the best interest of the people of Colorado.
Colorado’s early settlers extirpated wolves from the state, and it seems pretty clear that the state has a moral duty to bring them back. They belong here; it’s really not that complicated. Without wolves, Colorado is not whole.
But the underlying irrational antipathy toward wolves was evident again this week in Denver, as the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission passed a contentious resolution opposing something that doesn’t even exist — namely a plan to reintroduce wolves in Colorado.
The vote elicited disappointment from wildlife conservation advocates, who say wolves have rightful place in the state. There’s plenty of room for the predators to roam, with clear ecosystem benefits, said Defenders of Wildlife program director Jonathan Proctor, speaking on behalf of thousands who would love to hear lobos howling in the wild once again.
Speaking along with a half dozen or so other wolf supporters, Proctor tried to convince the commission to back away from the proposed anti-wolf resolution, first introduced in November, when Colorado wildlife managers reacted to a federal plan to update the management plan for Mexican gray wolves.
North and South
Northern gray wolves have done well since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service brought them back to Yellowstone 20 years ago. By the most recent estimates, more than 1,500 are spread across the Northern Rockies and into Washington, Oregon and even California. A handful of them have even wandered south, into Colorado and Utah, and as far as the Grand Canyon.
But most of the wolves wandering south have met an untimely end, shot by hunters who claimed they were targeting coyotes, or killed by cars. And they still only occupy a fraction of the historic range they had before European settlers came.
And as the federal government, under pressure from Congress, turns management over to states, it seems less likely that wolves from the north will gain a foothold in Colorado anytime soon. State governments in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming have expressed their intent to allow hunting and to keep wolf populations at artificially low levels, perhaps just at the threshold of what is biologically sustainable and at the risk of limiting the genetic variation that’s very much needed by populations of large carnivores to stay healthy and resilient.
Capping wolf numbers means fewer dispersing animals moving south into Colorado, thus dimming the hope of wolf advocates that the animals will reestablish themselves without help from humans. That’s a big change from just 10 years ago, when a Colorado wolf working group concluded the opposite and developed a set of contingency guidelines for managing wolves upon their return to the state.
Mexican wolves in the U.S. are far from recovery, with only a few small and isolated population in the wilds of New Mexico and Arizona, where a tiny, but vociferous and politically connected minority is intensely opposed to anything more than a token wolf restoration.
All that is a bitter disappointment to wolf advocates, who had hoped that, by now, wolves would have spread south through the Rockies, just like they spread west into Washington and Oregon. One way or another, they are determined to see wolves return to their historic ranges, not because they want to anger rural residents of regressive states, but because they understand it’s a biological imperative — disperse or die. Wide-ranging predators like wolves need to have widely spaced yet interconnected populations to survive and maintain long term genetic health.
Wildlife tightrope
Under the pressure of a lawsuit filed by conservation groups, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is trying to step up the pace of the Mexican gray wolf recovery effort, which could include expanding the potential habitat northward to the I-40 corridor, near, but not quite to the Colorado border. But the agency is walking a delicate tightrope between fulfilling its mandate under the Endangered Species Act and feeling political heat from state governments opposed to wolves.
The idea that Mexican wolves might approach Colorado from the south is what caught the eye of Colorado wildlife officials and Governor John Hickenlooper. In 2014, several states, including Colorado, wrote a letter to the feds expressing concern about Mexican wolf recovery plans. The letter, of course, was purely political and had nothing to do with the biological reality of wolf recovery and management, but nobody believes anymore that government policy is guided purely by science.
Hickenlooper’s political appointees on the parks and wildlife commission apparently also felt the need to weigh in. Or perhaps they were asked to do so by top state officials in yet another political maneuver that would superficially give the state’s position more legitimacy. The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission, after all, is supposed to represent all Coloradans in questions of wildlife policy.
Either way, the federal Mexican wolf recovery push spurred the commission to consider a wolf resolution late last year — a move that came out of the blue, leaving the public little chance to comment, Proctor said at this week’s meeting in Denver.
This time around it was different. With plenty of advance notice, several hundred wolf supporters showed up at the meeting, peacefully demonstrating outside with placards and a chorus of howls, then crowding the meeting room to capacity, with scores more stuck outside, unable to join the proceedings in person.
And as is often the case these days in so-called public government processes, the deck was stacked against citizens wishing to speak in the public forum.
Agency officials started running out the clock right from the beginning with ponderous, long-winded and repetitive presentations, leaving less and less time for public statements as the clock ticked toward the end of the day. They broke no new ground and used questionable science about interactions between northern and Mexican gray wolves to justify the state’s position.
All that sounded like rationalization to wolf advocates, especially the dubious statements that blocking wolf restoration in Colorado would be good for wolves overall, and that Utah and Colorado should be maintained as wolf-free buffers. Farley Mowat, who was invoked by one of the wildlife commissioners, was surely turning over in his grave.
Representatives of Colorado’s cattle, sheep and farm industries sounded like a broken record in an echo chamber — after all, the commission is dominated by those very same interests. The comments reflected a long-discredited old West mythology of ranchers under siege by ferocious predators — bears, coyotes, mountain lions and the Big Bad Wolf — that are always just on the verge of snatching babies and eating little children.
And when wildlife advocate Gary Wockner tried to challenge the official story, he was quickly and aggressively cut off by outgoing Colorado Department of Resources director Mike King, who apparently preferred the fairy tale version of wolf science presented by staff and some of the commissioners, one of whom gave a somnambulant and nearly incomprehensible speech about grazing and habitat — barely mentioning wolves or the issue at hand — that took nearly as much time as all the wolf advocates were allotted together.
In the end, the commission adopted a somewhat schizophrenic resolution that opposes wolf restoration but also reiterates support for the recommendations of the state’s wolf working group, which includes allowing migrating wolves to return to Colorado and live “with no boundaries where they find habitat.”
What does it all mean? Not much, as several commission members said, acknowledging that the discussion and vote are largely symbolic. Both the northern gray wolf and the Mexican gray wolf are still protected under the Endangered Species Act, and wildlife conservation groups are ready to fight in court for the rights of wolves to reoccupy their historic territories.
But even a symbolic act has political meaning. And we live in an era when the federal government has shown greater deference to states in wildlife matters, when Congress appears more and more willing to circumvent laws like the Endangered Species Act, and when armed rebels can apparently take control of public federally managed lands and facilities without any consequences.
So an action like this week’s commission vote could, in fact, nudge federal wildlife biologists away from proposing a Mexican wolf recovery plan that includes habitat anywhere close to Colorado. It could be just the action the federal government needs to justify backing away from a biologically sound recovery plan to something that reeks of politics and special interest influence.
But that wouldn’t surprise anyone, would it?
Part II — A Challenge to Colorado: Develop a Visionary Wolf Restoration Plan
Instead of quibbling about wolf quotas and arbitrary political lines on a map, state biologists should partner with nonprofit advocacy groups to lead the way toward agreement on a sustainable regional plan to manage natural resources for the long-term
If you can get 190 countries to agree on climate change, it should be easy for a handful of Rocky Mountains states to find a way for sheep, cows, logging and energy development co-exist with sage grouse, spotted owls, bison, lynx and wolves.
But that’s not the way it has played out in the U.S. West. In recent decades, where debates about the highest and best use of public resources — water, wildlife, energy — have become more strident than ever before, intensely polarized, sometimes vicious. It’s a regional manifestation of a disturbing vibe — call it the Dark Side — that’s rippling around the Earth.
You see it in the rise of formerly fringe right-wing parties trying to exploit fear and uncertainty. Nationalist parties surged during the French regional elections in December; an Austrian populist party with murky connections to Nazis made big election gains in September, similar parties are in power in Hungary and Poland.
In the U.S., the poll-leading Republican candidate has opened huge ideological rifts in the political landscape by speaking the language of fear, ignorance and hate, drawing an equally strong response from those who see differently.
On the surface, last week’s wolf debate at the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission meeting echoed that coarse political dialogue, with speakers on both sides of the issue ready to scold. It’s not so much what people say to each other — there’s nearly room always room for reasonable debate — it’s how they say it. Outside the meeting hall, an opponent of wolf restoration mutters something about wolves being the terrorists of wildlife. Inside, verbal slings and arrows fly.
But this ritualistic theater of a public process also included a few glimmers of genuine hope. Some speakers acknowledge the national climate of divisiveness. We won’t be able to solve issues like wolf management until we find new ways to talk with each other. Until we learn ways of thinking, beyond the “if you’re not with me, you’re against me” paradigm.
The recent history of wolf management suggests they are right. What started 20 years ago as a restoration success story that was praised worldwide quickly devolved into a morass of lawsuits and accusations, delisting and relisting counter-proposals … too much time and energy spent on a political and biological treadmill. It’s almost too easy to report on it like a boxing match, trying to see who scored the most points.
It’s also easy to get caught up in the technical points of the discussion. We break down the question of whether to restore wolves to Colorado by focusing on competing wildlife studies and the tangle of complex regulations, but we lose sight of the bigger picture.
It’s not just wolves, and it’s not just Colorado. What’s really at stake is how humans relate to the natural world, and whether we can find a way to mend the rendered web of life that sustains us during our wild ride on this blue marble spinning through space.
Every meeting of the parks and wildlife commission should start with a little meditation on that topic, some yoga for the inner environment, to ensure mindful attention to the real questions at hand.
As usual, the most reasonable voices were the quietest, hard to hear above the clashing discord. But their calls to defuse the wolf discussion resonated after the room cleared, especially in the context of increasing worldwide political and social polarization.Whatever we’re talking about, we must take care not to demonize those who think differently.
As far as wolves in Colorado, there must be room for some common ground on at least a few points to start a discussion, said a Sierra Club leader, describing how much she wants her kids to be able to see or hear wolves in the wild.
After her presentation, she was questioned by a member of the wildlife commission, who set a rhetorical trap by asking what “her side” would offer in the spirit of compromise. It seems like a fair question on the surface, but really, it’s not. There are no wolves in Colorado, so “her side” has nothing to give.
The emotional and instinctive arguments for restoration are based on a solid moral foundation. Without wolves, Colorado is not whole. More than 100 years ago, humans started to hunt the species into oblivion. We now know better. We know that we have a moral obligation to bring them back. We won’t have done right by the environment until we’ve done so, and that nagging feeling fuels some of the tension in the debate.
On the biological side, the case is also pretty clear. Every discussion about wolves must begin with the fundamental understanding that ecosystems function best with the presence of keystone apex predators — sharks in the sea, wolves on land. We need to not only tolerate, but encourage, their return to the landscape if we’re serious about wanting to protect and restore our environment.
Every discussion about wolf management in Colorado should also include explicit acknowledgement of the global biodiversity crisis, caused by human encroachment on the environment.
It’s scientifically dishonest to deflect from that reality by talking about how humans have been disrupting the environment for 100 years, and by claiming that artificial manipulation through hunting and other means is an adequate replacement for a fully functioning ecosystem — there’s nothing adequate or natural about the giant exclusion fences in Rocky Mountain National Park that are needed because the elk herds have no natural predators.
You don’t need to be a scientist to understand how wolves are beneficial to the health of elk. It’s common sense. It’s genetics, or if you want it simpler, the basic laws of nature. Wolves hunt frail and diseased, old and young prey animals. They clean up the herds, making them stronger. The smartest and fastest elk survive, passing on those traits to future generations. It’s not maligning hunters to say that they target different animals, with a different outcome for the elk.
There’s an economic argument as well. There’s little doubt that well-managed ecotourism and wildlife watching can make a big contribution to local communities. That would definitely require a change not only in attitudes, but in daily and seasonal operations on the region’s vast ranches. More tightly managed and guarded herds could be run on smaller tracts, with larger areas left open for wolves, bison and — yes, it must be said — grizzlies. Wildlife watching is one of the fastest growing segments of the tourism market, and Colorado could easily position itself as a destination for people eager to see some of the world’s most impressive predators in the world.
We also know that the wolf conservation puzzle stretches across state and national boundaries, from Canada all the way to Mexico. It’s absurd for states in the region develop separate wolf plans — for what, the sake of state sovereignty? Instead of quibbling about wolf quotas and arbitrarily political lines on the map, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission should seize the opportunity to develop a visionary regional plan for wildlife that would become a global model for conservation.
Instead of parceling out wolf conservation based on artificially drawn lines, we should be thinking in regional and even global terms. As the world’s climate continues to warm, large biological reserves, spanning wide ranges of latitude and elevation, will be needed to buffer impacts like massive forest die-offs and more frequent and intense droughts. When we think about wolves, we need to understand that we’re also talking about scores of other species that will thrive in a world where we provide habitat connectivity at the continental scale.
That’s not to say Colorado shouldn’t have a role in wolf conservation. The state’s biologists have an established, decades-long track record of restoring threatened animals, including the ground-breaking lynx recovery effort. At least some of the knowledge gleaned from the lynx program could be used to benefit restoration of wolves, and other species like wolverine.
A team of biologists, economists and sociologists from around the Rocky Mountain West could certainly cook up a scientifically based regional ecosystem protection plan that would benefit the environment and the economy. Instead of throwing up roadblocks and pandering to special interests, political leaders should offer their full support.
The best way to show that is by providing the money it will take to support the vision and partnering in a long-term outreach and education effort to help people in the region understand the value and importance of healthy, functioning ecosystems.
It’s fashionable to talk about tight budgets, and there are many pressing needs in a region with a growing population. But in reality, the sums we’re talking about for wildlife programs are small change in the big budget picture.
There are biologists, both in the government and with NGOs, who support bringing back wolves sooner rather than later, especially if they’re delisted. These scientists feel that they could manage some limited population of wolves in Colorado without breaking the bank. They support it because it’s ecologically the right thing to do.
There’s hope that, with visionary political leadership, we can put together a regional collaborative movement to restore wolves and other missing species in a huge wildlife movement corridor stretching from Canada to Mexico. That would help heal some of our rendered ecosystem fabric.
