How many more large depredation payouts to ranchers can Colorado’s embroiled wolf reintroduction program sustain? According to the Coloradan, the state’s wildlife agency nearly drained the allocated funds last week when it paid a combined $340,000 to two ranching outfits on the front lines of wolf reintroduction in Grand County.
Colorado Park & Wildlife (CPW) approved the state’s largest wolf compensation claim to date on March 5, paying out $287, 407 to Farrell Livestock and $56,000 to Branchez and Sons, the Coloradan reports. CPW Northwest Regional Director Travis Black outlined the approved claims during a meeting. He said that $178,000 went to pay for 1,470 calves with reduced birth weights. Another $90,000 of the approved payments is meant to compensate for reduced conception rates within ranchers' cow herds, and $15,000 was paid for 15 confirmed depredation events. The agency also paid $3,500 for missing sheep, according to Black.
The $340,000 total falls just $10,000 shy of the state's $350,000 annual budget for wolf depredation payouts, and there are still two outstanding claims from Grand County ranchers totaling $212,000. It's not clear where the additional funds needed to pay those claims would come from if CPW approves them this summer. The money in the existing depredation fund is drawn largely from Colorado's General Fund.
"We could get a half million dollars out of this deal and it wouldn't touch the losses we actually had to sustain [in] our operation," Grand County rancher Conway Farrell told the Coloradan after a the March 5 CPW meeting. "We need the money to stay in business. This is money we usually would have had last fall to go through another year of ranching."
CPW completed its second wolf release operation in January 2025, relocating 15 wolves from British Columbia, Canada to undisclosed areas in Eagle and Pitkin Counties. Eagle county lies slightly southwest of Grand County, and Pitkin is immediately south of Eagle.
Read Next: How Colorado Voters Could Bring an End to the State’s Controversial Wolf Reintroduction Program
Hunters and hunting-focused conservation groups have opposed Colorado's voter-mandated wolf reintroduction program from the start. Many of them say that trained wildlife biologists—rather than a popular vote—should have determined wether out-of-state wolves could be transplanted along Colorado's Western Slope. They're also quick to point out that wolves were already migrating in naturally from neighboring Wyoming when voters narrowly approved the wolf reintroduction referendum known as Prop 114 in 2020. In a recent effort to overturn the program, opponents in the hunting and ranching community are sponsoring a ballot measure that would bring wolf reintroduction to a halt no later than Dec. 31, 2026.
