Posted on 07/05/2025 6:36:34 AM PDT by george76
The Blue Book, the voter information booklet sent to voters prior to the narrow passage of Proposition 114, which began the release of gray wolves into western Colorado, indicated the wolf program would cost taxpayers $800,000 annually. Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Jeff Davis told legislators the cost of the program in FY 2024 is over $3 million, about $2.2 million over budget.
In a hearing of the joint Water Resources and Agriculture Review Committee this week, Sen. Dylan Roberts, D–Frisco, who represents the areas most impacted by wolf releases, said he understands much of that figure represents prevention and compensation paid to livestock producers.
“We’re over $3 million now, $2.2 million over budget, $2.2 million over what the voters of Colorado were told this was going to cost,” Roberts said. “And look, I understand a lot of this money is going to ranchers and producers to help to compensate them, to get them mitigation tools. That’s money, hopefully being well spent, but that’s also money in the state of Colorado right now, in the budget situation we’re in that is not going to fixing potholes in roads. It’s not going to classrooms across the state. It’s not going to people who are losing their health care and many who are about to lose their health care.”
Roberts said it seems to him and many of his constituents that the state is prioritizing wolves over roads and classrooms, something he said is gravely concerning.
“This seems out of control, and that’s just with 10 wolves reintroduced the first year, and 15 reintroduced, and with allusions so that we’re going to go up to Canada and get 15 more wolves, and they’re all going to have pups,” he said. “And this is going to continue. So, $3 million is going to be $10 million in a couple years. It seems completely out of control, budgetarily. And its money that, because it is state statute, because it was passed by the voters, that we have to spend, which means we’re cutting from other things. I’m very concerned about that.”
CANADA WOLVES
Deputy Director Reid DeWalt said CPW is currently in negotiations with British Columbia officials to secure additional wolves for a December release. DeWalt said the working group tasked with standardizing livestock records necessary for compensation calculations was successful. He said Colorado Department of Agriculture staff was in attendance as well as livestock experts from Colorado State University, producers, and wolf advocates.
He said they were able to develop standard record requirements that are reasonable for producers to make available during compensation claims, which was a suggestion from livestock producers.
Speaker Julie McCluskie, D-Dillon, asked Davis about the November petition brought forward by 26 different groups requesting a pause on new releases. She said she acknowledges progress made toward meeting the seven requests made by the groups.
McCluskie said the idea of pausing future releases until programs are in place makes sense to her if it creates more time for more robust implementation and completion of those seven items and perhaps others.
“I understand the argument against a stop and wait, let’s fully get our plan where it needs to be, but I think the entire reintroduction/restoration is at risk when we can’t get our legs underneath us and be in a position to do this the way we need to,” McCluskie said.
Davis indicated a pause would be against the wolf plan.
“I don’t have the right answer as to if a pause is the right thing to do or get the last 15 out and move on to the management piece,” Davis said. “I do feel like every time we release more animals, it’s more emotional and difficult for us to pull off that operation and I think it’s also challenging for the producers at the same time.”
The next meeting of the CPW Commission is a special meeting on July 7 to discuss the removal of the depredating Copper Creek wolf pack.
Colorado Ping ( Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from the list.)
What the hell do they need wolves for? They’ve got Tren de Aragua “lone wolves” terrorizing Coloradoans all over the place.
“ Proposition 114, which began the release of gray wolves into western Colorado”
It’s the LAW! We MUST follow the law!
So say Democrats when it pleases them and harms those white colonizer ranchers.
That’s money that could be spent on lawfare to keep Republican candidates off election ballots.
I’m from the government I’m here to help.
The governor, his husband, and the urban elite ( Denver, Boudler .. ) hate rural working families .. of the state’s 64 counties, just 13 supported wolves dumped only on lands west of the Continental Divide..
Polis and this elite pals have tried repeatedly to politically kill TABOR = rebates that help middle class workers = Now trying to kill TABOR financially thru crazy government spending - train to Craig, etc.
More than TRIPLE the promised cost! How much went to executive "team building" trips to the beach during the winter and lavish dinners complete with hoochie-coochie shows?
Wolves will drive ranchers out of business. That means range quality will be degraded. They will drive their prey into cities, and eventually follow, constituting a public menace. With the lack of herbivory, fire hazards will therefore increase.
Colorado apparently learned NOTHING from the lack of lion management. Wolves will be much worse.
More wolves? Are the known wolves not enough?
Intentional malice.
War on the middle class family / food producers and more.
The left hates family farmers / kulaks who grow food.. Stalin starved ~ six million, sent to death camps in Siberia... ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn..
Yup. Yet the environmental damage goes under-emphasized while the supposed benefits of returning predators to the landscape are totally bogus.
There is NOTHING a wild predator can do that hunters cannot do more humanely, with less risk of contagion and the spread of pestilence, and with better control insofar as managing herbivory is concerned. THAT is the message with which ranchers and land stewards should be promoting. Who the hell is going to risk their lives doing weed control with wolves around?
There is absolutely no good reason to reintroduce the predators our ancestors found it necessary to eliminate.
They could pay a lot of wolf bounties with that money.
The left wants rural cleansing of farmers and .. using imported Canadian, not native wolves and other predators.
Why not just pay a bounty per hide and let the hunting public take care of it?
The democrat goals are prioritizing wolves over classrooms... prioritizing wolves over roads .. by design...
The wolf management plan is a political agenda not a biological objective.
https://www.skyhinews.com/news/colorado-wolves-parks-wildlife-cost-escalates/
A rifle bullet is less than $2. Way cheaper than state funding.
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