{"id":42842,"date":"2022-01-07T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-07T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/powerhouse-science-center-features-living-with-wolves\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:09:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:09:46","slug":"powerhouse-science-center-features-living-with-wolves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/powerhouse-science-center-features-living-with-wolves\/","title":{"rendered":"Powerhouse Science Center features \u2018Living With Wolves\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"\u201cLiving
\u201cLiving With Wolves\u201d at the Powerhouse Science Center features 20 large-format photographs with educational caption boards and 14 vertical information panels. The exhibit was created by filmmakers Jim and Jaimie Dutcher, who spent seven years with the Sawtooth Pack of wolves in Idaho. (Christian Burney\/Durango Herald)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cLiving With Wolves,\u201d an educational photography exhibit at the Powerhouse Science Center, features the artwork of photographers and filmmakers Jim and Jaimie Dutcher, who lived among and documented the Idaho Sawtooth Pack of wolves over seven years.<\/p>\n

The filmmakers donated their photo exhibit to the Colorado Sierra Club, created a film for National Geographic<\/a> titled \u201cRunning With Wolves: Our Story of Life With the Sawtooth Pack\u201d and published a book, \u201cThe Hidden Life of Wolves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado Sierra Club volunteer wildlife chair and ecologist Delia Malone said the message of the exhibit is that there are \u201ctremendous\u201d benefits to having wolves be a part of the Colorado landscape and that humans and wolves can coexist without adverse effects to livestock populations.<\/p>\n

The photo exhibit consists of 20 large-format photographs with caption boards and 14 vertical information panels.<\/p>\n

Guest speakers will appear in January through March, as well as the artists Jim and Jaimie Dutcher.<\/p>\n

Matt Barnes, a range scientist and owner of Shining Horizons Land Management, is scheduled to give a talk on Jan. 28 called \u201cRanching With Wolves: Lessons from the Northern Rockies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Malone said Barnes\u2019 presentation will focus on conflict avoidance and livestock-carnivore conflict avoidance strategies.<\/p>\n

In February, Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist and Western Watersheds Project executive director, will give a presentation about \u201cthe dysfunctional approaches of industries and agencies to wolf \u2018management.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Jim and Jaimie Dutcher are scheduled to appear March 11 to discuss their backgrounds and work.<\/p>\n

Then, on March 25, Center for Biological Diversity Senior Conservation Advocate Michael J. Robinson is scheduled to talk. Robinson is the author of \u201cPredatory Bureaucracy: The Extermination of Wolves and the Transformation of the West.\u201d<\/p>\n

Malone said stories about gray wolf reintroduction, a topic that gained recent ground starting in 2020 with Colorado Proposition 114\u2019s<\/a> Gray Wolf Reintroduction Initiative, often focus on the conflict between ranchers and wolves.<\/p>\n

But the focus on conflict has the potential to focus on the benefits that wolves can bring to ecosystems, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith elk and deer, they (wolves) can be hugely beneficial to improving the health of the herd,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She referenced chronic wasting disease and its presence in mule deer herds in Southwest Colorado. She said wolves, like many carnivores, prioritize sick and weak prey over strong and healthy prey.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe evidence to support that is overwhelming \u2013 decades and decades,\u201d Malone said. \u201cHunters aren\u2019t going to kill a sick deer, that\u2019s not what they\u2019re looking for. They\u2019re not going to kill a sick elk, that\u2019s not what they\u2019re looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wolves will kill a sick deer or elk because that\u2019s exactly what they are looking for, an easy meal, she said.<\/p>\n

To coexist peacefully with wolves, Colorado ranchers must make some changes to how they manage their livestock, she said. But those adaptations come with their own environmental and livestock benefits, as well.<\/p>\n

Malone said those changes include herding cattle across a range, which allows for more cattle to be kept by the ranchers and also allows rangeland to improve faster.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just that you don\u2019t lose your livestock to grizzly bears and wolves, but also, you get a healthier rangeland,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Malone hopes wolf supporters and enthusiasts are not the only ones to check out the \u201cLiving With Wolves\u201d exhibit at the Powerhouse Science Center. She encourages people skeptical about the possibility of coexisting with wolves to visit the exhibit and attend some of the featured presentations. She said she would love to meet and hear from them.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiving With Wolves\u201d premiered Dec. 18 and is open through March 27.<\/p>\n

cburney@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artists\u2019 exhibit seeks to educate public about benefits wolves bring to Colorado landscapes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,822,603],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-42842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-photography","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85475,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42842\/revisions\/85475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42842"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=42842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}