Wolf Reintroduction

Wolf reintroduction to Colorado – which already has a small population in the northwest portion of the state – is another case of naive urban voters approving an issue that’s detrimental to rural residents who appropriately voted ‘No’ on wolf reintroduction.

When residents of Summit County learned of the plan to release wolves in Summit County, many said they had voted ‘yes’ but would have voted ‘no’ had they realized wolves would be released in their county – they thought wolves were to be released only further west.

Wolf reintroduction is favored by “not in my backyard” largely urban voters outnumbering rural residents who will be adversely impacted and are opposed to the reintroduction.

In Canada, a family sleeping in a tent was attacked by a lone wolf, and the father survived because a neighboring camper helped fight off the wolf, which was later found and killed by authorities. You want to be out in the middle of a field mending fence and be attacked by a pack of wolves? What on earth were the ‘yes’ voters thinking? Wolves had been eradicated from most of the US for a reason. For several reasons, actually, involving safety of humans, pets, and livestock.

Descendants of wolves released in the west and mountains will work their way across the Rockies to the Front Range and eastern plains of Colorado, at some point.

Out of $1.5 million spent on a pro-wolf campaign, at least $1 million was out-of-state money from out-of-state organizations pushing wolf reintroduction throughout the west. The largest donations were from an organization based in Arizona, and another based in California. The Arizona fellow is on the board of the organization that pushed the wolf reintroduction in the first place. Why are they allowed to initiate and fund an issue for a state in which they’re not located? (Continue reading the draft petition, below, for specifics.)

Propose releasing wolves in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo, and take another state vote and see how that goes. People only want wolves where someone else lives; they don’t want them where they live. I used to camp (in a tent) in the Collegiate Peaks every weekend with my children. In the winter, we went cross country skiing out of St. Elmo. When I lived in Clark, I went snowshoeing solo in backcountry powder snow that was more than 8 feet deep. I wouldn’t feel safe to do any of those if there were wolves in the vicinity. This whole idea should be rethought and re-addressed. It simply is not safe.

Colorado Does Not Need Additional Wolves – Petition (draft)

Regarding and in opposition to Colorado Proposition 114, Gray Wolf Reintroduction Initiative

We are concerned about the safety of residents, campers, hikers, tourists, ranchers, livestock, and pets with the proposed wolf reintroduction program in Colorado. The following topics are of concern:

• A 50.4% vote in favor of wolf reintroduction is highly weighted by residents of municipalities, who will not be directly and routinely affected by wolf populations.
• Some state residents who in favor of reintroducing wolves did so in the belief that wolves would reside in areas far from their own location. Residents of Park County who voted in favor of wolf reintroduction now say they would have voted ‘No’ if they had realized wolves would be released in Park County.

The wolf reintroduction measure was passed by a low margin. A 50.4% vote fails to represent the views of the state’s residents who will be directly affected by new wolf populations. In Colorado, a statewide vote is heavily representative of metropolitan residents and their opinions. Wolf reintroduction does not directly affect metropolitan residents. Urbanites’ views on wolves likely are naïve. Wolves had been eradicated from much of the United States for a reason. They’re already spreading into Colorado from other reintroduction states, and it’s highly unlikely that the ranchers and residents who do have personal experience with wolves would vote in favor of adding more.

Wolf reintroduction directly affects rural residents, whose population is far lower than the population of metropolitan areas in the state, yet it is the rural residents who will be directly and adversely affected by wolf populations. It is unjust for city-dwellers to vote in favor of introducing a dangerous and potentially deadly predator into an environment that those voters rarely, if ever, visit; residents of metropolitan areas will not be routinely affected by those predators on a daily basis. Hikers, campers, and tourists from outside the state who come to Colorado for mountain recreation also may be directly impacted by wolf populations, and those visitors are entirely not represented by the vote.

In 2010, 86.2% of Colorado’s population resided in urban areas. According to the https://leg.colorado.gov article “The State of Health in Rural Colorado” (2016 edition), 73% of the state’s landmass is rural, with 13% of the population, or 697,748 people, residing in rural counties. These figures clearly represent the severe skewing of population toward urban areas, and consequent under-representation of rural views in a statewide vote, particularly in matters pertinent only to rural residents and visitors.

According to Wikipedia’s “Front Range urban corridor” article edited November 14, 2022  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_Range_urban_corridor ), the Front Range urban corridor alone had a population of 5,055,344 at the 2020 census, an increase of +16.65% since the 2010 census.” The Colorado state population was reported at 5,773,714 on April 1, 2010 based on census figures for that year; and at 5,773,714 on April 1, 2020 based on that year’s census. The population estimate in 2022 for the state was 5.84 million.

A CBS New Colorado article, “Locals in Summit County questioning wolf reintroduction after plan made public” by Spencer Wilson, reports that Park County residents who voted in favor of proposition 114 would have voted ‘No’ if they had realized that wolves would be released in Park County. This is a “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) situation that is represented in the 50.4% margin in favor of reintroduction. One proposed wolf release area includes Vail, Breckenridge, Gunnison, Montrose, Glenwood Springs, and Frisco. Frisco resident Tammy Rienstra, who voted in favor of proposition 114, is now concerned about having wolves in the area. She says the dog she was walking at the time she was interviewed would make a nice wolf snack. “I thought they would be further out,” she says. Yet, even released further west, spread of wolves throughout the state is inevitable.

According to the article:

The proposed plan also takes time to showcase who voted for Proposition 114, stating the majority of the people voting yes were not the people who were living in the areas that were under consideration for the reintroduction. 

“It doesn’t (feel fair),” [Frisco local resident Orion] Viertel said. “I feel like when you go out hiking, it’s frightening enough to come upon a moose or bear, let alone a pack of wolves. And it does happen, you do run into moose and bear. So you do run into the wildlife that is present up here, it is only a matter of time before hikers and pets run into these as well.”

(“Locals in Summit County questioning wolf reintroduction after plan made public”, Spencer Wilson, updated December 19, 2022, CBSNEWS.COM, https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/locals-summit-county-questioning-wolf-reintroduction-after-plan-made-public/ )

As reported by Today, the Risoli family was sleeping in their tent in Banff National Park (in Canada) when a lone wolf attacked them inside their tent. They survived with the intervention of a neighboring camper; the father was injured. Backcountry campers lacking neighboring campers, or anyone facing a wolf pack could have been killed. For years, my family and I camped in the Collegiate Peaks, primarily up Chalk Creek several miles outside the ghost town of Hancock. With wolves released in Park County and spreading through the mountains, I would no longer risk camping in a tent with my children. The Today video regarding the Risoli family’s wolf attack is here: Family Says Wolf Attack Was Like Scene From ‘A Horror Movie’ | TODAY – YouTube

With 30 or more wolves to be released in Colorado, and wolf populations already reintroduced in neighboring states of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Arizona, and New Mexico and those populations spreading to Colorado, it is inevitable that wolf populations will spread throughout the state. It is naïve to believe that wolf populations released on the western slope will remain on the western slope; they certainly will not. They will spread in all directions, including to the Front Range and beyond.

It is quite clear that the people who squeaked this proposition through with 50.4% of the vote most likely are not the people who will be directly – and adversely – affected by populations of wolves. At least 0.4% of that slight majority are likely naïve regarding wolves in the wild, or ill-informed.

Any proposition that directly affects rural residents and not urban residents should be voted upon only by rural residents.

The Colorado Farm Bureau is opposed to reintroduction of gray wolves. As reported by Ballotpedia (https://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_Proposition_114,_Gray_Wolf_Reintroduction_Initiative_(2020) ):

The Colorado Farm Bureau’s Vice President of Advocacy, Shawn Martini, said, “We remain skeptical that you can introduce wolves into Colorado and not create significant problems. Not only to our way of life here in the state which is based on outdoor recreations but also on livestock production in the western part of the state and to the ecosystem. Colorado is home to a number of endangered species that could be potentially be preyed upon by an apex predator like the Canadian gray wolf. So we’re skeptical that these kinds of decisions should be put in the hands of voters through a ballot initiative.”

In the same article, Ballotpedia reports the initiators/proponents and the opponents of the proposition, and their donations:

The Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund (RMWAF), associated with the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, is leading the support campaign for the initiative. The campaign raised $2.4 million. The largest donors were Richard Pritzlaff and the Tides Center that gave $583,775 and $402,756, respectively. RMWAF said that the reintroduction of wolves would restore natural balance to ecosystems. RMWAF President Rob Edward said, “Gray wolves are the ecological engines of the northern hemisphere.” Edward said, “Since the 1940s, when Colorado’s last wolf was killed, our ecosystem has suffered, knocked out of balance. Without wolves keeping them alert and moving around, elk and deer strip away vital streamside vegetation, leading to erosion and the disruption of habitat, threatening beavers, songbirds, and even native trout.”

Coloradans Protecting Wildlife and Stop the Wolf PAC are leading the campaign in opposition to the initiative. Together, the campaigns had raised $1.06 million. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Colorado Farm Bureau were the top two donors. The Colorado Farm Bureau’s Vice President of Advocacy, Shawn Martini, said, “We remain skeptical that you can introduce wolves into Colorado and not create significant problems. Not only to our way of life here in the state which is based on outdoor recreations but also on livestock production in the western part of the state and to the ecosystem. Colorado is home to a number of endangered species that could be potentially be preyed upon by an apex predator like the Canadian gray wolf. So we’re skeptical that these kinds of decisions should be put in the hands of voters through a ballot initiative.”

Note that the vote counts reported by Ballotpedia differ slightly from those reported by CBS News, with 50.91% voting ‘Yes’ (1,590,299) and 49.09% (1,533,313) voting ‘No’.

According to his bio on the Borderlands Restoration Network website (https://borderlandsrestoration.org/dr-richard-pritzlaff.html ), Richard Pritzlaff is a native of Arizona and current board member of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund (RMWAF), and also of the Wildlands Network.

Tides Center is based in San Francisco, with information about them appearing to be quite vague, “Partnering with doers and donors to advance social justice”. Further information on the Tides Center, Tides Foundation, and the Tides Nexus is available here: https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/tides-center/

Why are the largest donations supporting a Colorado state issue coming from outside the state (Arizona and California)?