Collbran resident Christina Vander Berg had a 25-year career investigating fires and built a life as a Western Slope cattle producer and rodeo judge. Over the past two years, she’s stepped into a new role that draws on her passions and experience: serving as a range rider amid Colorado’s controversial wolf reintroduction. 

It’s a role that she pursued after seeing the need in her community. The work offered a way for her to spend more time outside with her horses after her second battle with breast cancer, while blending her investigation and livestock experience to help producers ranch with wolves on the landscape.  

“Somebody needed to be the person,” Vander Berg said, adding that she came in willing to “mute out all the noise, controversy and chaos, find the facts” and “be the calm in the storm between all the different sides.” 

“I’m coming to the table with an analytical, problem-solving skill set, and as somebody who can read the landscape, read cattle behavior, read wildlife behavior — and see the impact that all of that is having on the landscape and be prepared for conflict with the right tools,” she added. 

Vander Berg is one of three range riders contracted this year by environmental nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife in Colorado. She rode for the first time last summer, supporting producers and over 2,000 head of cattle on a 50,000-acre allotment in Mesa County. 

It’s an area that hasn’t been covered by the state’s range rider program, which launched last year. 

Colorado Parks and Wildlife, partnering with the Colorado Department of Agriculture, initially contracted 11 riders in 2025. Only eight completed the five-month season and were spread across nine northwest counties that were identified as having the “greatest need.” This year, the state has 15 riders under a five-year contract, deployed in similar areas as well as in the southwest. Where they ride is based on producer requests, conflict, wolf collar data, where packs are localizing and rider availability.

While no rider was assigned to Mesa County, Vander Berg saw how it could serve producers in her county. Parks and Wildlife pointed her to Defenders of Wildlife, which had funding from grants, fueled by donors and family foundations, to put toward riders.

“We were in a county that was surrounded by all the areas that they were going to release wolves on, and (wolves) don’t know boundary lines,” Vander Berg said. “(The producers) were willing to give me an opportunity to start this whole process. They wanted to be a part of the conversation but didn’t know how to be. I saw the need and put all the puzzle pieces together and was able to tap into resources that needed to be allocated to support this.”

While she is not contracted by Parks and Wildlife, Vander Berg has built a relationship with the agency and its riders. She’s attended their training for the past two years and can reach out to Parks and Wildlife with questions or concerns. She stays in contact with the other riders to share tips and get feedback. Similarly, Vander Berg can be a resource for the agency should the need arise.

Defenders of Wildlife has had range riders in Western states since 1999, but adapted its prior work to Colorado with one rider in 2024, according to Kaitie Schneider, Defenders’ Rockies and Plains representative. This year, in addition to Vander Berg, the nonprofit funded two riders in the One Ear wolf pack’s territory, which is predominantly in Jackson and Grand counties.

“For now, funding is first-come, first-served,” Schneider said. “I can’t take on additional riders this year, but the more people show interest in my program, the greater my capacity is to fundraise for more riders in the future.” 

What it’s like being a range rider 

Generally speaking, range riders serve as an extra set of hands and eyes for producers. 

“Range riders are one of few wolf conflict mitigation approaches that actually add capacity to the ranch, rather than adding to the running list of to-dos,” Schneider said. “With each producer, I try to get at the root of what their greatest concern or need is around wolves and how a range rider could help address that. I want to know how I can help them rest more easily at night.” 

During her first summer, Vander Berg said she was contracted to ride between four to six days a week from June 1 to Oct. 31. However, she ended up riding an average of six days a week, and for around 102 days of the 153-day season. Defenders of Wildlife focuses on having range riders during the summer grazing season because this is when livestock are dispersed far away from ranches and in remote areas, according to Schneider. 

“Because range riding requires people-power, it is the most expensive way to mitigate conflict, which means we have to prioritize the rider’s time where that capacity and energy are needed most,” she added.  

Riders’ time is spent between monitoring livestock, using game cameras and observation to track wolves and other wildlife to learn patterns, providing data to producers that can inform decisions that proactively mitigate conflict and reducing stress of all the unknown for Colorado producers dealing with a new predator. During times of conflict between wolves and livestock, range riders can also deploy other non-lethal tools to deter or reduce attacks.

“While the primary focus of our program is wolves, they are not the only (or the highest) risk to livestock in the high country,” Schneider said. “When we keep a holistic outlook on the situation, much of what these riders are doing can help mitigate other causes of livestock loss, benefiting the economic viability of the ranch as a whole and keeping these folks on the landscape.”

In some ways, Vander Berg’s first season met her expectations — “being outside all the time, on horseback, was a dream come true” — but in others, it was more challenging. 

While Vander Berg said she came into the summer prepared to mediate debates about wolves, the difficult and even scary situations she faced were different, including her seasoned, 16.1-hand (or 5.5-foot-tall) horse flipping over on top of her and a disagreement that escalated over a campsite she had reserved. These situations can be exacerbated by riders being alone, in highly remote areas, for multiple days and nights at a time. 

“We’re very vulnerable and in a spot where, given the wrong set of circumstances, we could be in a bad situation,” she said. 

Being a range rider also requires a lot of gear. In addition to paying the riders, Defenders of Wildlife provides hands-on guidance and technical assistance, a Garmin InReach backcountry safety device, and trail cameras, but the riders have to supply their own horses, tack, truck, trailer, fuel and other tools, which Vanderberg said can be “cumbersome.” 

“I think the biggest disconnect is around what it costs to (be a range rider), what it costs to be qualified, what it costs to maintain it and what it costs to replace (everything needed for the job at hand),” she said. “We’re here. We’re willing to work. We’re skilled. We’re committed. We want to support our community and we have the equipment and the resources to do it. However, in order to be able to sustain and continue showing up, there needs to be some consideration taken on how that financially comes together for everybody.”

This could go beyond money, Vander Berg said, adding that, this year, producers in her community have offered to share resources like trailers, horses and other gear. 

Vander Berg is taking all that she has learned into her second year of riding. But with the extreme drought conditions, she expects there will be additional challenges that will require heightened awareness. 

“I think that the cows are going to be a little bit more stressed this year until they get up to higher country,” she said. “I have a lot more to look out for this year to prevent them from being unecessarily stressed because when they’re stressed, sick, underfed or weak because they’re not hydrated, that increases the risk for conflict.”  

All about trust, communication and collaboration 

Last year, Vander Berg said that one of the producers’ biggest complaints was that the communication and coordination with Parks and Wildlife and the state Department of Agriculture fell short of expectations. 

“The communication was bare minimum, and I really had to fight for information, because everybody was just really afraid to share anything in the beginning,” Vander Berg said. “But we were able to turn that around this year, and the communication is exponentially better across the board everywhere.” 

To Schneider, communication and collaboration are critical to the success of its range riders and the other conflict minimization work Defenders is doing. 

“I think a lot of the fear and frustration around having wolves back boils down to communication, so a big priority of mine is to establish solid communication channels with these projects,” she said. “For each project, I organize everyone involved before and after the season to narrow the scope to the task at hand and what we can actually control.” 

Schneider said the goal is to meaningfully support those living and working with wolves.

“I want to show that it’s possible — and actually pretty easy — for an NGO, a rancher, a rider and agency staff to have shared goals and agree on a path forward. I hope to build relationships with more producers and reshape the way we approach wolf-livestock conflict as a state,” she said. 

As a rider, Vander Berg serves many of these goals daily — acting as a middleman for these entities and people, which share the goal of problem solving and minimizing and addressing conflict.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it; this has not been easy to show up for,” Vander Berg said. “There’s been some not so-fun days, especially because everybody does not have the same opinion, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. It’s what we accomplish that matters — the prevention, communication, collaboration and the solutions that occur. And it’s incredible to be a part of it.” 

All of it, she added, comes down to trust, which she began building well before she was a rider by showing up and helping her community. 

“A lot of what’s happening on the ground is just misunderstood and misinformation,” she said. “On all the levels, across all the agencies, across all the public land, between all the interested parties — it is a total trust thing. It’s about having character. It’s about having integrity, doing the right thing when nobody’s looking, being a good advocate, being a sound, logical voice in all of the chaos.”