Pausing wolves could save $2.1M as state faces shortfall

According to reporting by Colorado Politics Chief Political Reporter Marianne Goodland, one of the cuts debated by the Joint Budget Committee to close a budget hole is the wolf reintroduction program. The shortfall was originally reported at $1 billion, and has since been lowered to $750 million, according to Legislative Council Staff and the Governor’s Office of State Planning and Budgeting. The issue is whether to fund the wolf reintroduction program in the 2025-26 budget year or save the $2.1 million in general fund dollars appropriated annually for the program.
In a Joint Budget Committee briefing on the wildlife department on Nov. 21, several budget writers wondered whether they could impose a timeout that would help cover the hole in the budget.
According to Goodland, Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Jeff Davis and Dan Gibbs, executive director of the Department of Natural Resources, sought to defend the appropriation in their annual budget hearing with the committee last week.
The agency, in its written response, pointed to a state law that said, “the lack of an appropriation from the general fund shall not halt reintroduction of gray wolves.”
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Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, R-Brighton, was quick to correct Davis and Gibbs and provide the line the two left out of their statement. The response left off the last half of the line from the statute, which pointed to a deadline for reintroduction of Dec. 31, 2023.
Wolves were released by that deadline as dictated by statute.
Wolves were introduced by the deadline as dictated by the statute, as well as by Proposition 114, which passed with 50.1% of the vote — almost exclusively from voters on the Front Range — in 2020. The ballot measure directed the wildlife agency to put wolves onto Western Slope lands and in counties that overwhelmingly opposed the measure.
Davis and Gibbs did not respond to Kirkmeyer’s correction.
Members of the JBC rejected suggestions of raiding the wolf depredation fund or not funding it. Compensation claims are due to CPW by the end of the year and, according to some ranchers, will likely total over $1 million.
“We have had one year of wolves. The next year of wolves will be much better, I promise,” he said. They’re getting a sense of those additional costs, he told the committee, adding, “We do have a way to compensate ranchers for those losses.”
At press time, a claim for a llama in Elbert County was paid for $1,200 in March; an April claim for one calf in Grand County has been filed and is pending; an April claim for one calf in Jackson County was paid for $1,514; a claim for a calf in Routt County in July was paid with $1,141.17. That leaves confirmed losses yet to be claimed for 13 incidents involving 23 head of livestock plus indirect losses if producers decide to claim those.