The director of Colorado Parks and Wildlife, who ushered in the state’s wolf reintroduction program amid widespread scrutiny over many of his decisions, is stepping down.
Jeff Davis announced Tuesday he will move to the Colorado Department of Natural Resources executive director’s office as a senior policy adviser for strategic priorities.
Replacing him as interim director is retired Maj. Gen. Laura Clellan, formerly the executive director of the Colorado Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. She will start Dec. 1.
A statement from Gov. Jared Polis on Tuesday said Clellan comes to CPW “with extensive management, organization and military experience.”
In her civilian life, Clellan was chief for leadership and employee development in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Lakewood and worked for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. For the state, she served as adjutant general and executive director of the Colorado Department of Military and Veterans Affairs before retiring from that role in October.
Clellan has more than three decades of decorated military service and multiple overseas deployments. According to reports, she was the first openly LGBTQ woman to hold the role of adjutant general of the Colorado National Guard.
Polis thanked Davis for his leadership and said he is “grateful” to have Clellan step in as acting director while the state works with the CPW commission to find a new director.
Dan Gibbs, executive director at Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources, said Davis came to CPW “during a period of uncertainty and change with a number of significant wildlife and recreation issues landing at his feet almost immediately.”
Chief among them was Colorado’s voter-mandated wolf reintroduction, which began in 2020 with an existing divide between wolf advocates, who wanted wolves restored in Colorado, and ranchers, who didn’t.
CPW captured 10 wolves in Oregon in December 2023 and released them between Grand and Summit counties that month. Not long after, a wolf from each of those releases found each other in Grand County, mated and, in June 2024, CPW reported they had pups.
After repeated attacks on livestock by the male wolf and possibly the female on a ranch outside of Kremmling, Davis ordered CPW to capture the family group that had been named the Copper Creek Pack and transfer them to a holding facility.
That action incited anger from advocate groups, who admonished Davis for human interference with the wolves, and from ranchers, who wanted the wolves killed. The saga continued when Davis ordered the Copper Creek wolves re-released in Pitkin County in January, when the agency released 15 wolves from British Columbia between Pitkin and Eagle counties.
Davis and CPW’s latest struggle came in October, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said they could no longer import wolves from British Columbia, citing permit violations the agency has denied they made. Then, on Nov. 18, the state of Washington denied CPW’s request to source wolves from there, citing its declining gray wolf population.
Prior to coming to CPW, Davis had a nearly 23-year career with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, serving as a biologist, a forest and fish manager, deputy assistant director and the assistant director of the agency’s habitat program.
Gibbs said Davis leaves “a Division which is in a much better place internally as well as a notable record of achievement and progress in areas of building a stronger culture, wildlife management, and stakeholder involvement and engagement.”
Rob Edward, president of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, said “Director Davis has served with honor and great dignity during what’s shaped up to be a historic period in the long arc of wildlife conservation. His stewardship of the agency, and specifically Colorado’s wolf restoration program, was admirable. He’s proven himself to be a thoughtful public servant and a history-making steward of Colorado’s wildlife and wild places.”
