Wolf exploration continues across I-70 in northwestern Colorado as winter begins
The collared wolves continue to make expansive movements as Colorado Parks and Wildlife prepares to add up to 15 more
Colorado’s gray wolves are still making big movements almost one year into reintroduction efforts.
In November, the continued to enter watersheds throughout Lake, Summit, Grand, Routt, Jackson, Rio Blanco and Garfield counties.
This is according to the from Colorado Parks and Wildlife, which shows the carnivore’s activity from Oct. 22 to Nov. 26. The map uses Colorado’s watershed boundaries to show where wolves have been detected and does not reflect exact locations.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife receives uploads from the wolves’ GPS collars every 16 hours, which share where the wolves were located every four hours during that period.
While the map shows wolves continuing to explore similar counties as October, November is the first month they have crossed south over Interstate 70.
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Compared to the last map, which Parks and Wildlife released on Nov. 4, the wolves were pinged in more locations to the north in Jackson and Routt counties 鈥� including the watershed around Steamboat Springs, where they hadn’t been in October 鈥� as well as additional watersheds in Grand County and between Eagle and Garfield counties.
Colorado currently has nine known wolves on the landscape 鈥� six from the 10 reintroduced in December, two that were in Colorado before reintroduction and one uncollared pup from the Copper Creek pack. The pack’s other four wolf pups and adult female remain in captivity. Three of the reintroduced wolves have died 鈥� one from a mountain lion attack in April, one from a wolf attack in September, and another in September whose cause of death is still being investigated.
Without more packs established, the wolves are expected to continue to make large movements across Colorado’s landscapes.
“With those big movement patterns, what we’ve seen is they’re looking for food in these movements,” said Adam Baca, Parks and Wildlife’s statewide wolf conflict coordinator, at a conflict mitigation meeting in Glenwood Springs on Nov. 5. “They’re looking to set up shop. They’re looking for where a good home is going to be.”
Once the wolves establish packs 鈥� something the agency has indicated will take having more wolves on the landscape 鈥� they will establish more predictable movement patterns. In talking to the group of ranchers and community members in November, Baca said that in other states their movements change seasonally.
“It seems like there are three general movement patterns that wolves follow … late winter to early spring pattern, late spring to summer pattern, and late summer through fall and early winter pattern,” he said. “Once you kind of get those patterns established, you can kind of have a little bit of predictive insight onto what these animals are going to do on the ground.”
Colorado is preparing to release up to 15 more wolves this winter from British Columbia between January and March. In November, the agency met with four counties that are being considered for these releases. Following the meeting, Rio Blanco County was removed from the list, leaving Garfield, Eagle and Pitkin counties as potential. The agency is not likely to make its final decisions until right before releasing the wolves but is working with these communities to pick appropriate sites.
