Roaring Fork Valley ranching advocate talks wolf reintroduction

Increase in stolen livestock, difficulty hiring ranch hands, existing predators depredating cattle, wildfires, commercial and residential development … 

Challenges were already vast for Roaring Fork Valley ranchers well before wolves were reintroduced to Colorado, according to an agriculture and beef advocate.

“The introduction of wolves just adds another layer,” Ginny Harrington said during a presentation called “Ranchers Facing the Challenges of Wolf Reintroduction” at the Carbondale Branch Library on Thursday.

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Harrington is chair and event coordinator for Holy Cross Cattlemen’s Association, a regional cattlemen’s group with about 105 ranching families and 33 agriculture associated businesses/supporters participating.

Harrington, who to this day still cooks for ranchers and helps them herd cattle, continues to visit Western Slope towns to discuss the 2023 reintroduction of wolves by the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) and what it means for the area from the perspective of the ranching industry. 

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She said Colorado needs to understand ranchers the impacts wolf reintroduction has on individuals and groups.

“Sometimes there are folks that can come to the middle and work together,” she said. “And there are folks that never will.”

What ranchers want

Ranchers want to continue to raise livestock, feed families and pass their legacy on to future generations, Harrington said. They also want to see other wildlife, like elk, deer, and moose, healthy and thriving since they already face challenges from loss of habitat, disease, and other predators.

CPW is trusted to manage and protect the wildlife for the best outcomes, she said. That includes managing predators like wolves, as allowed by established laws, the 10j rule, and the agency’s wolf management program.

“We know there is a chance — not everybody will lose livestock to wolves — but we know there’s a chance that some of us will,” she said. “And we want to receive a fair value — both for direct and indirect impacts. Direct impacts are depredation losses and livestock injury; indirect impacts include loss of weight, when livestock do not conceive, loss of fetuses due to stresses and harassment by wolves.”

State Sen. Perry Will, R-New Castle, later told The Aspen Times once wolves get established in Colorado, “They will keep livestock out of certain grazing areas.”

“There was a guy the other day who had a wolf issue, and when he was trying to take care of preventative issues, he lost a cow during calving that he should have been there for,” Will said. “So, these indirect measures do have an impact.”

Will also spoke of ranchers using nonlethal measures to prevent predation.

“This time of year is calving season,” he said. “Ranchers are busy night and day, so you really do not have time to deal with preventative measures.”

Harrington last week also pointed out that ranchers want to help with mitigation methods and their associated costs, outlined in CPW’s wolf management plan, that deter wolves from hanging around livestock. Some mitigation methods include flag fencing, electrified fladry, fox lights, carcass removal and disposal, as well as range riders.

“Those are the things we’re asked to do first,” she said.

While being compensated for the loss of livestock from wolves is ideal, it is not the reality, Harrington said.

“It’s not going to be made whole — that would be a wish that everything could be a perfect setting that we’d be made whole,” she said.

She spoke of a number of factors that could not adequately be compensated, including livestock genetics to develop animals for high altitude.

“You can’t just go somewhere and buy any replacement for the animal you’ve lost,” she said, adding that a rancher loses out on raising more calves when a cow is lost to depredation.  

Lack of information

Although the CPW releases maps showing wolf activity in Colorado, there’s still a lack of information that prevents better use of mitigation methods and preparedness, Harrington said.

“There’s just some information that’s not coming down,” she said. “Some things that are not allowed to be told to us.”

She did point out that as long as CPW isn’t overtaxed, site visits by the agency can be done ahead of time; they can come and look and determine what methods would work best.

“The agency is trying,” Will said. “They are having range riders out, and the agency is learning right along with ranchers and livestock. There is some frustration, obviously, and I think that is to be expected.” 

For CPW, alerts have been set up for wildlife officials, but none of that information goes out to the public to inform them, CPW District Wildlife Manager Kurtis Tesch told The Aspen Times.

“Reason being that, by the time we get a notification from the wolf collars, it’s delayed,” he said. “By the time we get a notification that wolves are in an area, it’s already delayed by four hours. We would be giving reactive information to these folks, potentially inciting fear where there is no reason to.” 

Harrington noted that she and other ranchers ride up on the mountain 3-4 days a week, but she wonders whether the agency needs them up there 24/7.

“Sheep always have somebody with them; they always have their herders with them and have their camp right there,” she said. “(Cattle) haven’t needed to do that in the past, and there basically is a shortage of any kind of ranch hands, just like other businesses in the valley.”

Making reintroduction successful 

In 2004, the Colorado Department of Wildlife (now CPW) held a series of public meetings around the state and created the Colorado Wolf Management Working Group, which was composed of livestock producers, environmentalists/wildlife advocates, sportsmen, local government entities, and wildlife biologists.

Harrington said the group worked on a wolf management plan because it expected wolves would come into the state on their own. The plan was developed on how to handle that eventuality.

“We’re not against wolves,” she said. “It makes a hardship, but we worked on that plan on how to address that and what we would do.”

While parts of this 2004 plan were incorporated into the state’s current wolf management plan, the change from managing wolves as they naturally appeared in the state versus managing them from reintroduction still rankled.

“We didn’t feel it was the right thing to reintroduce them in that way,” she said. “We felt it was better to allow them to come in on their own.”

Harrington said when wolves arrive naturally, not as many are going to come in all at once; it’s a slower process.

She also said last year’s ballot initiative — Proposition 114 — passed narrowly, and that most Western Slope counties voted against it for fears of the potential negative impacts on the local economy and the region’s way of life.

“They were going to find their way in,” she said of wolves. “It was just allowing that natural process to work out, which maybe wasn’t perfect either, but it just seems like it made a lot of heartbreak and a lot of consternation to have this pushed on us.

“When the ballot initiative came out, we felt like if we had a little bit longer time, we could have worked harder on that process.”