Colorado wildlife officials plan to capture between 30 to 50 gray wolves from other states in the northern Rocky Mountain region over the next three to five years and release them into the state’s Western Slope forests, according to a draft plan published over the weekend.
Those wolves are meant to act as a seed that will hopefully grow into a self-sustaining population, restoring the species to at least a fraction of its former glory after it was hunted to extinction in Colorado a century ago.
The reintroduction effort is mandated by Proposition 114, which voters approved in 2020, and has pitted rural Western Slope communities against the urban Front Range.
