Rocky Mountain Wild and Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance/Courtesy Photo
It has been nearly 11 months since Colorado brought 10 wolves from Oregon and released them in the state’s northwestern region.
Since then, according to the agency’s monthly watershed maps, most of the wolf activity has been centered around Routt, Jackson, and Grand counties.
While the wolves have explored outside of these counties — including a consistent presence in watersheds within Summit and Eagle counties and one venturing into Rocky Mountain National Park in July — their movements have fluctuated less in recent months.
Outside of these maps, Colorado Parks and Wildlife hired Brenna Cassidy to track the wolves’ movements and behaviors — including where they’re traveling, if they’re traveling alone, where packs are forming and more.
Cassidy joined the agency in October 2023 as its wolf monitoring and data coordinator following nearly 15 years working with the species across the West including in Yellowstone National Park.
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Where will the wolves go?
Wolves are known as habitat generalists. According to Cassidy, this means they are “highly adaptable” and can survive in a variety of places from prairies, tundras, deserts and mountains.
Still, three things ultimately drive where wolves settle and where they will thrive.
“The availability of food, connectivity and space from humans or tolerance from humans,” Cassidy said. “If they have those things, they can adapt to a lot of other things.”
Since December, “the wolves that were translocated are just discovering what habitat is out there in Colorado,” she added.
With the same areas showing up month after month, Cassidy added that the wolves are taking similar travel routes through these regions as well.
“This just goes to show to me that wolves really key in on similar things, they see the landscape so similarly to each other,” she said.
Why haven’t the wolves moved south of I-70?
So far, the wolves have yet to explore south of Interstate 70, something that Cassidy said is bound to happen at some point. The reason they haven’t yet plays into the connectivity piece of what makes a good wolf habitat.
“They need big natural areas that are connected to each other,” Cassidy said. “For wildlife in general, those interstates are really big barriers.”
So far, at least one wolf was spotted near I-70 along East Vail Pass in June. The wolf was spotted on cameras from the Colorado Corridors Project, a volunteer-driven initiative between Rocky Mountain Wild and the Denver Zoo created to track wildlife movements near proposed wildlife crossings on the pass.
“It’s just a matter of a wolf being in the right place at the right time,” Cassidy said, adding that eventually, they’ll locate a safe passage across or under the interstate at times when there’s not significant traffic.
Why are they drawn to certain areas like Grand County?
While they’ve explored elsewhere, wolves have been drawn to Middle Park in Grand County.
To Cassidy, it’s because it’s an area that fits all three habitat needs.
“There are tons elk and deer in those areas, there are not tons of people out there and therefore, there are these big wide open areas where there’s a lot of connection between big wilderness areas,” she said. “And some of these areas have nice overpasses or underpasses under busier highways and some of the highways just aren’t super busy, so it’s not as much of an issue getting across them.”
In addition to coming up on each month’s watershed map, all but one of the 17 confirmed wolf depredation events have occurred in Grand, Jackson and Routt counties since last December.
The Copper Creek pack was reportedly responsible for the majority of these livestock killings in Grand County. However, following the pack’s relocation to a sanctuary, another adult male was found dead in the area in September, the same day that a depredation event was investigated and confirmed in the county. The cause of his death is still being investigated.
What does it look like when wolves settle in?
So far, the wolves in Colorado have been covering a lot of ground, something that is likely to change.
“At this point, you know we have most of these wolves that are traveling alone, and they are checking out these areas, they are probably looking for other wolves likely of the opposite sex,” Cassidy said. “Once they pair with another wolf and then maybe breed and have a den, that will create packs.”
So far Colorado has only had one confirmed pack, the Copper Creek Pack, an adult pairing in the spring that led to five wolf pups.
Wolves are a “social territorial species,” meaning that as they create packs, they will settle in and defend that area against other wolves, Cassidy said.
Defense is not just physically chasing out other wolves but also activities like howling and scent marking their area, she added.
Typically, wolves will remain in an area as long as it has adequate resources for them.
“If they’re in an area and something happens where there’s no longer a connection to another area or food gets really scarce, they might go exploring a little bit and push their territory a little bit over this way where maybe there’s a little bit better food,” Cassidy said.
The connectivity piece of habitat will become more critical as more packs form because as pups grow up and prepare to leave, they need other available habitats “to have that genetic exchange of starting new packs and getting the whole population of wolves in the state able to meet each other,” Cassidy said.
How will behavior and movement change with more wolves in Colorado?
More packs will emerge as the state adds more wolves to the landscape.
“I’m incredibly interested in seeing where those packs pop up and how they start to fit in with each other,” Cassidy said. “It’ll be very interesting you know what happens in the next couple of months and when they start to meet other wolves out there.”
Part of this includes whether wolves from other locations than Oregon will take to similar habitats and paths, Cassidy added.
“I have to predict that they will be very interested in some of the same routes that the other wolves have taken,” she said.
The state’s next wolves are expected to hit the ground in the same northern release zone this winter after British Columbia agreed to supply up to 15 to Parks and Wildlife.
While both wildlife advocates and producers have requested the agency delay the reintroduction until further rulemaking occurs, it has not made any decisions as to whether it will pause or not.
These requests included a petition from a group of 26 livestock and stockgrower associations and organizations asking for a delay until more proactive measures are taken to prevent livestock-wolf conflict.
At its October meeting, Parks and Wildlife’s commission also heard calls from animal advocates to not introduce more wolves until requirements were put on ranchers to use nonlethal methods for preventing conflicts.
Previously, amid the relocation of the Copper Creek Pack, Parks and Wildlife officials indicated that having more wolves would lend itself to more management flexibility.
“As we get packs established, that’s a lot easier to manage than individuals roaming around on the landscape because those packs will protect territories,” said Jeff Davis, the director of Colorado Parks and Wildlife, during a Sept. 9 press conference. “We’ll know which animals are more directly involved in any sort of wolf-livestock conflict and they’ll be able to more effectively take down natural prey.”
“If we’re literally going down in numbers of wolves, it makes the situation more difficult,” he added.
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