Lawmakers back off plan to pause Colorado’s wolf reintroduction program

Colorado lawmakers gave initial approval Thursday to a bill to redirect a small amount of state money from gray wolf restoration efforts to a health insurance affordability fund, but stopped short of requiring Colorado Parks and Wildlife to pause the capture and release of new wolves this winter.

With the Legislature convened for a special session to cope with a billion-dollar revenue shortfall triggered by changes to the federal tax code, Senate Bill 25B-5 would withhold $264,268 from the state's general fund previously appropriated for wolf reintroduction. The money would instead be directed to the state's Health Insurance Affordability Enterprise, which helps subsidize health coverage costs and faces an estimated shortfall of around $100 million after Congress failed to extend federal tax credits for insurance premiums.

Bill sponsor Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Democrat from Frisco, told his colleagues in a committee hearing Thursday that SB-5 "proposes to save a small amount of taxpayer dollars where we can to put them to something that can immediately help Coloradans."

Amid opposition from Gov. Jared Polis, however, the bill was amended to remove language prohibiting CPW from taking "any action to acquire or reintroduce gray wolves during state fiscal year 2025-26." The agency's reintroduction plan calls for annual releases of 10 to 15 wolves in the program's first three to five years, as wildlife managers target a stable initial population of at least 50 wolves in the state.

State Sen. Matt Ball, a Denver Democrat who introduced the amendment, said that in the absence of the general fund appropriation, the governor's office and CPW would look to "other sources of funding," and the reintroductions would "proceed as planned."

After two years of releases, Colorado's wolf population currently includes 21 collared adults and an unknown number of pups born to four established packs this spring.

"I do believe it's really important to put one more round of 15 animals out," CPW director Jeff Davis told lawmakers.

Voters in 2020 narrowly approved a ballot measure requiring CPW to reintroduce gray wolves to Colorado in the name of restoring ecological balance. The state's efforts have been bitterly opposed by livestock producers, who have persistently called for CPW to delay or pause the program since the agency first began to relocate wolves in December 2023.

A series of wolf attacks on livestock in Grand County in 2024 and in Pitkin County this year have inflamed the controversy — as have the deaths of a number of wolves, through both "lethal control" measures authorized by wildlife managers and at least one apparent act of illegal poaching. Speakers on both sides of the issue sparred yet again during more than three hours of testimony Thursday before the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee.

Callie Scritchfield, a Rio Blanco County commissioner, called the prospect of another year of wolf releases "one more big threat to our agriculture community," which she said would add to the "despair" ranchers in her county are feeling from the impact of the Lee and Elk fires. Samantha Miller of the Center for Biological Diversity, meanwhile, called the bill "unsupported by science" and "contrary to what the experts at CPW state is needed."

"At this critical stage of reintroduction efforts, halting even one year would have dire consequences," Miller said.

Lawmakers on the committee voted 4-1 to approve the amended bill and advance it to the Senate Appropriations Committee.