Judge denies cattle industry’s request to temporarily halt wolf reintroduction in Colorado

DENVER– A federal judge has allowed the reintroduction of gray wolves in Colorado to move forward after representatives of the state’s livestock industry asked in a lawsuit for a temporary stay on the release of the predators.

While the lawsuit will continue, the judge’s ruling allows Colorado to continue with its plan to find, capture and transport up to 10 wolves from Oregon starting Sunday. The deadline to get to work under the voter-approved initiative is December 31.

The lawsuit by the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association and the Gunnison County Cattlemen’s Association alleges that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to adequately review the potential impacts of Colorado’s plan to release up to 50 wolves in Colorado during the next years.

The groups argued that inevitable wolf attacks on livestock would come at a significant cost to ranchers, the industry that helps boost local economies where wolves would be released.

Lawyers for the U.S. government said the requirements for environmental reviews had been met and that any future damage would not be irreparable, which is the standard required for the temporary order sought by the industry.

They pointed to a state compensation program that pays landowners if wolves kill their livestock. That compensation program — up to $15,000 per animal provided by the state for lost animals — is partly why the judge sided with state and federal agencies.

The judge further argued that ranchers’ concerns did not outweigh the public interest in carrying out the will of the people of Colorado, who voted to reintroduce the wolf in a 2020 ballot initiative.

Gray wolves were exterminated in most of the United States in the 1930s through government-sponsored poisoning and trapping campaigns. They received endangered species protection in 1975, when there were about 1,000 left in northern Minnesota.

Wolves have since recovered in the Great Lakes region. They have also returned to numerous western states (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington and, most recently, California) following an earlier reintroduction effort that brought wolves from Canada to central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s. .