Last Wednesday there was a big dustup over wolves down at our Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) state office in Denver. The issue was over which message our Wildlife Commision would send to the US Fish and Wildlife (USFWS) regarding the Mexican wolf in Colorado. The only choice was between no and hell no.
It took a very careful reading for me to even figure out the differences in the two messages. One said that the Mexican Wolf’s territory has never even come close to including any part of Colorado and forget about including us in any proposed recovery territory. The other message said, besides all that don’t even let the thought of a wolf release here cross your little minds. Exact wording up at my “no and hell no” link next paragraph up.
Splitting hairs you think? That’s what I thought too. Mexican wolves? I thought they were all down by Mexico or something. Apparently things had been going on this fall while I was attempting to fill the freezer and dig post holes before winter.
Some background as to what it’s about.
As told by the Wildlife Commission and their head biologist, this year the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) began floating the possibility of greatly expanding the Mexican Wolf Recovery areas. Below a photo of their map with some explanation.
The small darker colored square in the center of everything is the current area for Mexican Wolves, the red bordered is the current recovery area, the blue bordered a proposed recovery area, and finally the green shaded area is the wolf’s historic range. For what it’s worth 90% of the historic range of the Mexican wolf was in…. ta da.. Mexico.
Part of the problem is there’s not much for wolf scientists to do at the FWS. The very long and expensive Red Wolf program in N Carolina is about washed up due to interbreeding with coyotes, shooting by locals, and the disturbing fact that they can’t seem to find a red wolf gene that isn’t gray wolf or coyote. The Northern Rockies and Midwest populations are far past recovered and if nothing else are mostly an embarrassment of pro wolf litigation and judicial overreach. The Mexican wolf is pretty much the only thing going on. Nice weather too unlike Montana and Minnesota.
Back in Denver
All the parking lots were full and I barely found a place way down the far end of the Department of Wildlife facility back where they have the stocked fish ponds. I got back out front just as the circle of wolf folks were breaking up and heading to the conference room. I sure hope I didn’t miss some kind of group howl. At the large meeting room I was about an hour early but the room reached capacity just before I was allowed in the door.
Fortuitously the fish and game officer at the door recognised me, I’d bent her ear for a long time at another boring meeting. I ended up standing in the back with a bunch of Parks and Wildlife Officers as they are now called, there were also quite a few very serious looking state troopers in case those vegetarian animal rights folks morphed into terrorists.
I hope some of the proceedings sunk through to the wolf affectionados. There was a lot of discussion about ongoing funding for species of concern as we call them. Not endangered species but species of low enough numbers that we monitor populations and habitat such that they won’t become endangered. Boreal toads, mountain plovers, Arkansas darters, and a whole slew of other animals that we consider important and well worth conserving, animals that live here now and have lived here historically. Scientists cost money and we employ lots of them. There’s more to our Parks and Wildlife than things to hook and shoot. I wished I’d come down for the meeting early in the morning.
What happened
Not much. All of the 11 members of the Colorado Wildlife Commission were appointed by Democratic Governor Hickenlooper but wolves aren’t exactly a left right political issue in the west.
There was testimony from 5 pro wolfers and 5 anti wolfers, (if I may be so crass as to categorize the two sides as such). Defenders of Wildlife had what I think was an attorney that spoke. A commissioner from Boulder, a partisan Democrat, well versed in push polling kind of pointed out the ridiculousness in the poll Defenders did to support it’s view. Defenders was the group with all the organized attendees. Sierra Club had some lady give the same speech she’s given for long enough that she should be thinking of pensions and things.
A woman from Earth Justice claiming to be a biologist repeated the same tired outdated arguments from 1992, I’m not sure why. She also fibbed about some numbers from an 04 wolf commission in CO and one of the commissioners who just happened to have been on the commission corrected her. Got a laugh out of me.
A strident guy from the Fort, who is so far out there that no group will claim him, who was on the infamous 04 Wolf commission had to be cut off by the Director chairing the meeting who told him to cool it with the ad homs directed at the scientists. Later a commissioner suggested he stop calling ranchers names in his op ed that was in the Camera if he ever wanted to be taken seriously. Guy chose wolf management for his Doctoral dissertation sometime back in the dark ages, might be time to move on.
For the anti side a not so great 2 minute message from Big Game Forever didn’t create much comment. Utah has privatized a lot of it’s hunting and there is no love lost between Big Game Forever and many Rocky Mountain Hunters, still they get a salary to show up at these shindigs. Three ranchers also got up and said something, one of them made some mistakes with grammar not that that has anything to do with anything, but you know how it goes.
The annual Denver meeting is a good time for all the far flung Wildlife Officers to see each other once a year, plus everyone who is anyone with business concerning the CPW makes an appearance. I saw the state guy from Wildlife Services and a couple of Elk Foundation folks. The Stock Show is in town and that pulls a lot of people in.
Three of the ranchers who spoke were standing right in front of me for most of the meeting. The three of them were all well beyond six feet tall, and all were beet red from working in the snow and getting sunburnt since before Christmas keeping all their stock alive and fed. The room had a fair number of people who spend time outdoors, and some of us had dark tans even in the middle of the winter because we are out in the weather, but those three were obviously outside from sun up to can’t see, in snowy conditions.
The youngest rancher was only 30 years old maybe. When he told the crowd he loved his animals no one snickered. It might not make sense how someone can love sheep and cows then sell them off to the stockyards to be fattened up and butchered but it’s the truth. He didn’t want anything biting and tearing up and killing his animals, couldn’t stand the thought. All the ranchers didn’t want any wolves of any subspecies at all in CO.
The best from the pro side was this grandma with a NY accent. She said she has 6 grandchildren and she held a 5x7 glossy for the crowd to see, I couldn’t make them out but I believe her. Anyway she buys each of them a stuffed animal wolf toy when they become 2 and she’d just bought one for her youngest grandkid. She also went into a long thing about how we all need to compromise and stop being so partisan and stuff. After the 3 minute bell one of the commissioners said he had watched the SOU also and agreed we need to find ways to work together. His question for her was how or what sort of compromise was she willing to make to work together with those of views different than hers on this issue.
She answered by telling how when she was a little girl she’d always wanted a baby elephant and here there were all those elephants getting killed to send the ivory to China, and that lion, and when she was little she also used to really like going into Central Park which was real close. No one made the mistake of asking her more questions.
Convinced me, of what I’m still not sure.
From there the commissioners talked about procedural issues and I left before the vote. The wolf thing was scheduled to last from 4 to 5, but it started a half hour early and it was 5:30 when I left. The message they were arguing over was a follow up to a letter from the four affected governors of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. The wording was mostly symbolic as our legislature can overrule it anyway. The vote was more of a “which side of the issue do you stand on” kind of thing.
At a glance two commissioners are anti hunting if I had to guess. If you belong to an anti hunting group or were a long time member it’s a pretty good guess. Even though all the commissioners were appointed by a Democratic Governor the science of the thing was pretty much cut and dried. Plus as some of the commissioners mentioned wolves are already dispersing into the state from the north. The vote ended up with the “hell no” option being the one they went with.
Unsaid is that a slow increase in wolf population will give more time for the the Wildlife department to reduce staff via retirement and give the outfitters, hotels, restaurants etc some time to figure out a new plan. When wolves were introduced to the Northern Rockies it took them a little over two years to double, and double again, and again, and so on. Until populations reach a couple/few hundred they won’t have much effect on Colorado. After that just double whatever number you are thinking of every two years, multiply by 20 for the number of elk per wolf per year and try to figure out how many out of state licenses at more than $500 a piece that will cost. People a lot more informed than me have had years to think about it and to talk to their cohorts up in Idaho and Montana.
Any lies, misrepresentations or innuendo are entirely mine. Feel free to copy and use any of this or take portions out of context.