A rancher who received $287,408 in compensation for livestock killed by wolves in 2024 was granted an additional $100,046 on Thursday, after the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission narrowly approved his latest claim.
The vote on the table was for the commission to adopt CPW staff’s recommendation to deny rancher Conway Farrell’s claim for direct losses of 89 calves during the time wolves were known to be attacking his sheep and cattle in 2024.
The commission voted 6-5 to reject the guidance, effectively granting Farrell’s request.
Commissioners Gabriel Otero, Eden Vardy, Frances Silva Blaney, Tai Jacober, Murphy Robinson, and former commission chair Dallas May voted “no,” while commissioners Jay Tuchton, Jessica Beaulieu and Jack Murphy, as well as newly appointed commissioner John Emerick and new commission chair Rich Reading voted “yes.”
A second producer requesting $38,060 in compensation for direct losses was granted the money by a similar vote, with the commission rejecting CPW’s recommendation they deny the claim by the same 6-5 split.
The vote followed a heated debate in which lawyers for Farrell and CPW labored over wording in state statute that says a rancher can only be paid for certain direct losses above their “baseline losses” and that those direct losses can only include a certain number of missing calves.
Farrell had multiple confirmed cattle losses on his Grand County ranch last year. Wolves who killed them bred, and after the female had puppies, they were named the Copper Creek Pack. CPW in April trapped the adults and four of five puppies and moved them to an animal sanctuary in an undisclosed location. The male died after arrival, from complications related to a gunshot wound. The death is still being investigated.
Farrell’s lawyer argued that current regulations provide for compensation when the number of a producer’s missing calves exceeds their baseline death loss, and that the regulation defines baseline death loss to include missing and dead calves. So, because the regulation does not define “missing,” when read in context, it means “missing and dead,” she said, and therefore the regulation requires the state to compensate ranchers for missing calves.
But CPW’s lawyer argued that the livestock interpretation Farrell’s side presented asked the commission “to add words to the regulation … and the law says you cannot do that. It’s crystal clear.”
The commissioners’ debate that followed centered not only on wording or technicality, however, but also on what several commissioners along with rancher Lenny Klinglesmith, who helped write the wolf plan on the Stakeholder Advisory Group, and Jeff Davis, CPW director, all indicated was a divide that could put the entire wolf reintroduction program in danger.
“The bottom line” in the situation at hand was “a producer suffered loss, substantial loss, and that loss should be compensated,” Klinglesmith said. “And to try to deny that claim based on legal interpretation of language that goes against the intent is a bad idea.”
But Tuchton, Beaulieu and, initially, Robinson, argued that what was important was to follow the law.
May pushed back, saying the will of the Colorado voters was that the state “enact a successful wolf reintroduction plan and make that for the best of the wolves, and also not drive producers out of business.”
To do so “we compensate them fairly for losses, and I thought the wording of Prop. 114 did all that,” he said, referring to the ballot measure voters passed in 2020 instructing the Colorado Division of Wildlife to restore gray wolves west of the Continental Divide. “I just don’t understand the conflict we continue to have.”
Robinson later brought up an option Farrell’s camp wanted – for the commission to amend wording in the regulations to reflect their wishes, which Farrell’s lawyer said they should do because they will find themselves in the same situation again and again.
But instead of agreeing to compensate Farrell for the whole $100,000, Tuchton went back to a study Farrell’s lawyer cited that said for every cow killed by wolves it can be assumed seven calves will be affected. And he suggested offering Farrell, who lost six cows to wolf attacks, compensation for 42 calves.
“So that’s the part of the statute that I focused on: fair compensation,” Tuchton said. “And I understand the arguments, but (the depredations) were also caused by wolves. I go back to the (Copper Creek) wolves. When we captured them, they were all seriously underweight. So when I look at the ‘caused by wolves’ part, I don’t see how the starving wolves ate the missing cattle. So I could see if you (wanted compensation for) 42 missing calves, but I don’t see the 89.”
Before a motion was made for the commission to vote on Farrell’s claim, May said wolf reintroduction “is not, as it’s often framed, a wolf-versus-rancher situation. It’s not rancher versus CPW.
“It’s not any of that,” he continued, adding, “I think at some point … we have to get to where we are cooperating. I mean, we have to have ranchers on the landscape caring for the habitat and … economically viable. And by statute we have to have wolves on the landscape.”
As discussion came to a close, Davis, the CPW director, weighed in, saying the conversation at hand was another barrier in a series of barriers he didn’t anticipate when wolf reintroduction started. And although he didn’t want to “speak to the legalities” of the situation, he said would “maybe build on Commissioner May’s comment.”
At the start of the meeting, Davis had said “there’s been a lot of grenade throwing.”
But referring to ranchers impacted by wolves, as he did in a special meeting CPW held on July 7, he said, “I feel like we have people that are losing hope.
“And when people lose hope, in my experience, they get desperate, and desperate things start to happen,” he added. “So what I need is, whatever decision you guys have to make here … I need to make sure that we’re delivering stuff that keeps people at the table, or we all will lose in this deal.”
Difficult matters addressed, the commission meeting segued into an update by CPW’s wolf reintroduction team who revealed video of pups from the King Mountain pack in Routt County, one of three new packs established this year. The others are the One Ear in Jackson County and the Three Creeks in Rio Blanco County. The Copper Creek pack, moved to Pitkin County in January, also has new pups.
Eric Odell, wolf conservation manager, told the commissioners biologists are monitoring all of the dens and trying to count pups, “but it’s just inherently difficult to monitor at this time of year.”
That said, the video showed three tan and gray pups from the King Mountain pack chewing each other’s fur and one seeming to eye suspiciously the game camera that was capturing them in a sliver of sunlight in the forest. A day later, a trail camera caught a solo King Mountain pup walking through a grassy clearing.
“They’re small,” Odell said. “They’re up until now tied very closely to the den in deep cover. So we don’t have pup counts at all of those den sites, but we do have cameras deployed at a lot of those and we’ve captured some.”
CPW thinks the pups were born in mid-April, so they were around 10 to 12 weeks at the time the video was taken on June 21, and probably weaned, Odell reported. “So they’re no longer nursing, but they’re tied very tightly to a rendezvous site and aren’t at the point where they can travel with a pack.”
Odell said CPW is in negotiations with states to acquire more wolves for a release in January. He also showed a graphic detailing the movement of three female wolves with wildly different travel patterns.
Brian Dreher, assistant director of CPW’s terrestrial wildlife branch, wrapped up the presentation with an update on conflict minimization, which appears to be working well in much of the state, thanks in no small part to the funding from the Born to be Wild license plate that has raised $900,000 to help ranchers deal with wolves on the landscape.
But Pitkin County, where ranchers are dealing with attacks on cattle by the Copper Creek pack, is the exception, Dreher said.
“Livestock in this area continue to move, and the landscape where they’re located is challenging, with thick oak brush and broken terrain, including down timber,” he said. “So staff have used various tools to detect where wolves are and are working to create distance between livestock and wolves to the best of their ability.”
A CPW damage specialist, Colorado Department of Agriculture staff, and two state-contracted range riders are on-site “as needed,” Dreher added, as well as “trained individuals from around the state,” who’ve “provided an additional hand to provide additional needed rest … The human effort in this situation has been incredibly intensive.”
The relative quiet so far outside of Pitkin County “may be attributed to multiple factors, not the least of which is the participation and coordination with ranchers in these areas and CPW staff, (Colorado Department of Agriculture) staff and range riders,” Dreher said. Yet officials “fully recognize that situation could change anytime, and we can’t just rest on that. We need to stay vigilant to whatever gets thrown our direction,” he added.
