The man who led Yellowstone’s wolf reintroduction has a lot to say about Colorado’s efforts
Wolf watchers in the Lamar Valley of Montana are also watching to see if Colorado’s wolf program will succeed. An architect of Yellowstone’s program says it could — and needs to.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife/Courtesy Photo
Johnnie LeFaiver took her son to the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park this summer, because the experience of watching wolves there 20 years ago seared into her memory and she wanted Micah to have the same opportunity.
One day, they watched a pack of nine gray wolves feeding on a dead bison, and on another day, two black wolves competing with a grizzly bear for a different carcass. But when they told fellow wolf watchers they were from Colorado, “it unleashed these questions about how things were going with wolf reintroduction here,” LeFavier said, “and there was so much I couldn’t answer.”
That’s because news on Colorado’s wolf front has changed so fast and furiously, she added.
Indeed it has, especially in the last several weeks.
Over Memorial Day weekend, a wolf from the state’s first confirmed pack killed livestock on three ranches in Pitkin County, resulting in Colorado Parks and Wildlife killing the offending yearling. The animal, its parents and littermates had been trapped in Grand County, moved to a sanctuary, and rereleased near the ranches with five wolves from British Columbia in January.
Read more from Tracy Ross at ColoradoSun.com.
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