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CPW and Keystone Policy Center launched This is a public engagement website where Coloradans can find opportunities for public engagement in the reintroduction process. Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s Collared Gray Wolf Activity Map will help inform the public, recreationists and livestock producers on where wolves have been in the past month. |
Gray Wolf (Canis lupus)
The gray wolf ranges across Eurasia and North America, from the Arctic to Mexico and coast to coast. Once distributed statewide, the gray wolf had long been extirpated from the state, with wolves deemed to be off of the landscape by about 1940. Colorado has seen lone wolves travel in and out of the state over the past few decades with a lone wolf, F1084, taking up residence in the state in July 2019. This animal was collared as part of Wyoming Game and Fish monitoring efforts. In 2020, a pack of wolves was identified in the Northwest part of the state. In 2021, a second lone wolf joined F1084; this wolf was collared by CPW and is identified as 2101. In June 2021, CPW biologists visually confirmed three pups with F1084 and 2101, marking the first known breeding pair in the state in several decades.
Appearance:
Wolves are large dogs, up to five feet long (14 inches of which is a bushy tail). Their coloring is pale gray, washed with buff, and overlain on the back and legs with black.
Habitat and Young: Wolves den in burrows in banks where the female bears six to 10 pups in March after a nine-week gestation period. The male provides food for the nursing mother. A pair may have a hunting territory of 10 square miles.
Proposals have been made to restore wolves to wilderness ecosystems of Colorado, where they could provide a natural check on populations of elk, for example. The suggestions have met with considerable opposition from some ranchers.
What is an Extirpated Species? An extirpated species is an animal that no longer exists in the wild in its historical habitat but still exists elsewhere. Wolves used to be an example of a species extirpated in Colorado, however as recently as 2019 a pack has started living in the northwest corner of the state.
The Mexican wolf is a distinct subspecies of wolf. It is listed as Endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Therefore, it is under the management authority of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The historic range of the Mexican wolf includes New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico. Wolves are capable of traveling long distances, and although solitary Mexican wolves may occasionally have explored the state, there is no evidence that populations of the subspecies ever resided in Colorado.
The USFWS has recently changed the boundaries for the experimental population area extending it from Interstate Highway 40 (the east-west highway between Albuquerque and Flagstaff) south to the Mexican border.
