Group seeks to reintroduce wolves to Colorado by ballot

A group is seeking to introduce a ballot initiative that would direct Colorado wildlife officials to reintroduce the gray wolf (Canis lupus) there. “If you can put a viable population of gray wolves in western Colorado, it will serve as the archstone, the final piece, connecting wolves from the high Arctic to the Mexican border,” Mike Phillips, a scientific adviser to the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, told the Christian Science Monitor. The proposal has created battle lines that have played out elsewhere in the West between advocates and opponents of wolf reintroduction. Colorado last considered a wolf reintroduction in 2016, the Monitor reports, but Colorado Parks and Wildlife rejected the plan, focusing instead on managing wolves that migrated into the state on their own.

Read more in the Christian Science Monitor.

Header Image: A group of advocates is seeking to introduce a ballot initiative to reintroduce gray wolves in Colorado.
©John and Karen Hollingsworth/USFWS