<\/p>\n
The fight to return wolves to Colorado\u2019s West Slope begins now.<\/p>\n
Backers of a ballot initiative delivered thousands of voter signatures Tuesday to the secretary of state\u2019s office in hopes of getting their proposal on the 2020 ballot.<\/p>\n
Officials have 30 days to determine if enough signatures are valid to qualify the initiative.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is our last opportunity to do it right and to restore the balance,\u201d said Rob Edward, whose Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund has been collecting signatures since June for a 2020 ballot measure \u2013 now called Initiative 107 \u2013 that directs the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission to craft a plan to restore and manage gray wolves in Colorado by the end of 2023.<\/p>\n
The group needs about 124,000 valid signatures to qualify for the 2020 ballot. The deadline to collect them is Friday.<\/p>\n
As the group transitions from harvesting signatures to swaying voters, opponents of wolf reintroduction are girding for battle. And it\u2019s a new type of battle for opponents of wolf reintroduction, who in other states across the West and Great Lakes region have lobbied wildlife commissioners \u2013 not voters \u2013 to oppose reintroduction. The Colorado Stop the Wolf Coalition is strategizing a first-ever public campaign, seeking to educate voters on potential negative impacts of introducing the wolf to the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of people who don\u2019t want wolves brought into Colorado. We just can\u2019t sustain another predator in this state,\u201d said Denny Behrens, co-chair of the Stop the Wolf Coalition.<\/p>\n
The coalition has gathered resolutions from 10 counties opposing reintroduction of wolves in the state. It has found high-profile supporters like Greg Walcher, the former head of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources.<\/p>\n
In a statement announcing his support for the coalition and its fight against Initiative 107, Walcher said seeded wolves in Colorado could \u201cdecimate other important wildlife, and their impact on rural areas could be devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n
Colorado is the last battleground for restoring wolf populations after more than 40 years of federal and state efforts to introduce wolves in the Southwest, Northern Rockies and Great Lakes regions.<\/p>\n
In Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona and around the Great Lakes, wolf reintroduction was directed by wildlife officials following the federal Endangered Species Act that has protected gray wolves since 1983. A ballot measure in Colorado \u2013 the missing link connecting wolf populations between Mexico and Canada \u2013 would mark the first time that voters, not federal laws, directed state wildlife officials to restore wolves.<\/p>\n
\u201cConservationists and biologists have been working with the Fish and Wildlife Service and different agencies for years, trying to convince them to do this in Colorado, and we keep running up against a brick wall,\u201d said Edward of the direct-to-voters appeal for wolves.<\/p>\n
There are about 5,500 wolves spread across nine U.S. states right now, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Department of the Interior in March proposed removing the gray wolf from protection, citing its growing population.<\/p>\n
The proposal has drawn the ire of wolf advocates who fear delisting could lead to more wolf hunting and trapping in some areas. Advocates submitted more than a million comments opposing the suggested removal of endangered species protection for wolves.<\/p>\n
Wolves last roamed Colorado in the 1940s, but they have wandered into Colorado from neighboring states, even as recently as last July.<\/p>\n
Opponents don\u2019t care about wandering wolves. They do not like the wolf advocates\u2019 plan to introduce at least 20 to 30 predators to Colorado, which could grow to a population of 250 or more wolves over the course of a decade. Behrens said the idea that wolves would remain on the West Slope \u201cis pretty absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will travel great distances. You will have wolves in Woodland Park and Estes Park. You are going to have wolves all over the place in a matter of years,\u201d he said. \u201cWhy would you take a wolf from Canada where it roams free and bring it down to Colorado and turn it loose with almost six million people and think there\u2019s not going to be any conflict? There will be conflict from day one, and it\u2019s not fair to the wolf to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edward, with the wolf fund, points to growing wolf populations in places like Yellowstone National Park, where millions of annual visitors have not had conflicts with wolves since reintroduction there in the 1990s.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is just not an issue. Western Colorado is 70% public land, so it\u2019s not going to be developed and full of people,\u201d Edward said.<\/p>\n
Opponents of the wolf reintroduction plan say the flow of out-of-state money into the wolf reintroduction effort shows \u201cthis is not a Colorado campaign,\u201d Behrens said.<\/p>\n
California\u2019s Tides Center \u2013 which supports progressive causes \u2013 has given the wolf campaign about $264,000. The Colorado Sierra Club gave more than $10,000, according to reports the campaign filed with the Colorado Secretary of State. Between July and October this year the Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund reported $625,000 in contributions and about $653,000 in expenses, most of that going toward Landslide Political, a Utah-based signature-gathering firm.<\/p>\n
\u201cLess than 1% of the money they\u2019ve raised has come from Coloradans. That\u2019s pretty telling,\u201d Behrens said.<\/p>\n
Edward said since most of western Colorado is federal land, it\u2019s not surprising that people from all over the country support efforts to restore wolf populations on public lands.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is perfectly appropriate for people from across the country to donate to this campaign,\u201d said Edward, who served on a wolf advisory group in 2005 that ultimately recommended that the state\u2019s wildlife commission oppose reintroducing wolves.<\/p>\n
Colorado Parks and Wildlife has not voiced support or opposition to the ballot proposal, but in 2016, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission adopted a resolution affirming the wolf advisory group\u2019s recommendation opposing the intentional release of any wolves in Colorado.<\/p>\n
A legislative analysis of Initiative 107 shows the state would spend about $811,000 in the first two years of the reintroduction effort.<\/p>\n
A fiscal note from Colorado Parks and Wildlife \u2013 obtained via an open records request by the Stop the Wolf Coalition \u2013 shows that after planning costs, implementation of the wolf reintroduction plan would cost $4.1 million, including new wildlife biologists and payments to ranchers who lose livestock to wolves. The cost for the first eight years of the reintroduction effort, which CPW estimated would involve 45 released wolves over a five-year span, would be $5.7 million.<\/p>\n
With what could be the country\u2019s final battle over wolves now shifting toward Colorado voters, both sides say they have the support to win. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAs far back as 1993 and 1994, we have polling showing that people on the Western Slope support recovery by a majority margin,\u201d Edward said.<\/p>\n Once \u201ca full-blown education campaign\u201d reaches voters, Behrens said, \u201cwe will see a huge input of funding from Coloradans who don\u2019t want this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Supporters say they have the signatures for 2020 ballot; opponents prepare education campaign<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,13,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-65437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65437","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=65437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65437"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=65437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}