Colorado Parks and Wildlife recently submitted more than 400 pages of public announcements and presentations, intergovernmental agreements, email correspondence, and reports to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in defense of its wolf management decisions amid increased federal scrutiny.
Colorado’s wolf program has faced criticism from elected officials, producers and Western Slope communities since the voter-mandated reintroduction of gray wolves began in December 2023. This has included legislative probes at the state Capitol on management decisions and costs, citizen requests to pause wolf releases and shift authority of wolves to the feds and demands for answers and action from federal lawmakers like Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert and Jeff Hurd.
In October, this pressure started to intensify at the federal level, when Brian Nesvik, three months into his appointment as director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, issued new direction about where Colorado could source wolves for the restoration, which ultimately led to a pause in wolf releases this winter.
The federal attention escalated in December, as U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum warned on X that the federal government would step in if Colorado “does not get control of the wolves immediately.”
On the same day, Nesvik sent a letter to Laura Clellan, Parks and Wildlife’s acting director, questioning Parks and Wildlife’s decision-making and threatening to take over the program should the state agency not comply with the federal request for information, including:
The letter gave Colorado until Jan. 17 to comply, threatening to take over management of Colorado’s wolves should it not submit the information. The state agency submitted its response on Jan. 16.
The Vail Daily obtained the letter and full submission — nearly 40 documents and more than 400 pages — through a public records request on Jan. 28.
In its response, Parks and Wildlife defends its management authority over gray wolves in the state — authority that was granted to the state by the Fish and Wildlife Service in a 2023 agreement and a special 10(j) rule from the federal agency that designates Colorado’s wolves as a “nonessential, experimental population.”
“(Parks and Wildlife) is well situated, staffed and equipped to continue management of gray wolves within the state as we work towards the statutorily required mandate to establish a self-sustaining population of wolves,” wrote Parks and Wildlife in a summary. “To us, success not only means establishment of self-sustaining population of wolves, but also active and meaningful engagement with partner agencies, stakeholders and individuals to address conflict and opportunities as they arise.”
In this defense, the state wildlife agency also maintains that it has collaborated with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the implementation of its gray wolf restoration plan, including through a biweekly staff call between Parks and Wildlife leadership and regional Fish and Wildlife staff that has existed since early 2024, as well as coordination on decisions to import wolves from British Columbia and to return a Colorado gray wolf from New Mexico in December.
“We believe that it is advantageous for both of our agencies for (Colorado Parks and Wildlife) to continue as the lead management agency for Colorado’s nonessential experimental population of gray wolves,” Clellan wrote in the Jan. 16 response.
To comply with Nesvik’s request for a complete report on wolf activities since December 2023, Parks and Wildlife includes its first two annual reports, which combined highlight wolf actions — including deaths, births, conflict minimization efforts and more — from April 2023 through March 2025. For the activities since April 2025, the agency includes press releases, presentations, email newsletters, fact sheets, reports and more that illustrate the same milestones as the annual reports as well as documentation of lethal removal actions taken against wolves repeatedly killing livestock.
Nesvik’s December letter to Parks and Wildlife makes two claims regarding Colorado’s capture and release of 15 gray wolves from British Columbia in January 2025.
First, it says sourcing wolves from British Columbia violates Colorado’s 10(j) agreement, which Nesvik claims allows the state to only capture animals from the Northern Rocky Mountain region of the United States. And second, it claims this was done “with no notice or warning to its citizens.”
Responding to these claims, Clellan reports a different interpretation of the rule, stating that the 10(j) cites the Northern Rocky Mountain region wolves as the “preferred” source, but not the only source. Further, she reports that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service “closely coordinated” with Colorado on the January 2025 capture and release operations and “did not raise any concern” with the source.
Included in its submission is a February 2024 email from the Fish and Wildlife Service’s branch of permits detailing the required permits and authorization required to obtain wolves from British Columbia. It states that “no federal authorizations or permits are required from this office for the import of gray wolves from Canada,” adding that it will need to declare all wildlife to the agency’s office of law enforcement and receive permits under the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora from Canada. These permits were included in the submission.
In response to the claims about sharing information about the January 2025 releases, the agency included press releases, public presentations and reports that provide information on the British Columbia operation before and after it took place.
Colorado had intended to return to British Columbia for subsequent wolf release seasons — with the state two years and 25 wolves into its plan to release 30 to 50 in three to five years. Parks and Wildlife’s response includes a signed July 2025 agreement between the Colorado and British Columbia wildlife agencies for the translocation of wolves from the province to Colorado for every capture season up until April 15, 2028.
According to Luke Perkins, a public information officer at Parks and Wildlife, while this winter’s release could have been the “third and final year of initial translocations,” the agreement was intended to lay “the regulatory groundwork for additional translocations if they were needed after this winter’s planned effort.”
This agreement predated the Fish and Wildlife Service’s direction that Colorado had to source wolves from the Northern Rockies states. Unable to do so, Parks and Wildlife announced in January that it won’t release additional wolves this year. While Parks and Wildlife canceled its agreement with the Canadian province for the 2025-26 winter, the agreement through 2028 is still valid, should the Fish and Wildlife Service reverse its guidance.
The December letter from the Fish and Wildlife Service also requests more information about Parks and Wildlife’s decision to “a wolf from a pack with a confirmed history of repeated depredation,” referring to the Dec. 11 release of a Copper Creek wolf in Grand County. The wolf was relocated after being captured in New Mexico by wildlife officials there.
This was done as part of an agreement between Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona that requires any of the other Four Corners states to capture and return any gray wolves that leave Colorado. Its intent is to protect the genetic diversity of Mexican wolves, which are part of an experimental population in southern New Mexico and Arizona.
Two officials from the Fish and Wildlife Service — which manages the southwestern population of Mexican gray wolves — also signed this agreement in September 2023. The agreement is included in Parks and Wildlife’s response, as well as a Dec. 10 email from Matt Hogan, the federal agency’s mountain prairie regional director, giving Colorado and New Mexico wildlife officials a “green light” to capture and return the Colorado wolf in New Mexico.
The wolf’s origin drew concerns from Grand County officials, as it was one of the pups born to the Copper Creek Pack when it first denned in the county in 2024. The male wolf was among those captured and relocated to a wildlife sanctuary following repeated livestock attacks, and then rereleased in Pitkin County in January 2025. After being released, the pack was again tied to livestock attacks in Pitkin County, prompting Parks and Wildlife to kill a yearling from the group of wolves.
When the wolf in question traveled to New Mexico, it had dispersed from its birth pack and was confirmed to be involved in a Nov. 22 livestock attack in Gunnison County, according to Parks and Wildlife’s response. The agency continues that because the situation did not meet its chronic depredation definition — which, simply put, is three kills in 30 days — the wolf was released per its agreement with the southwest states.
Parks and Wildlife also shared with Fish and Wildlife the letters it wrote in response to the Grand County commissioner and sheriff’s concerns about the animal’s rerelease, in which it explains the decision and reports the wolf crossed two county lines in the first 24 hours after its release.
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