The grey wolf in the metal crate tenses as the door unexpectedly opens. Through the bright threshold, he sees a field of winter grasses laced with snow and a line of juniper trees. After a moment, he bolts for the trees, disappearing into their shadows. And he keeps running.

Only after his captors are far behind does the wolf come to a stop. Panting with exhaustion, his heart pounding, he sniffs at the breeze and looks about. His pack—his family—is nowhere to be seen.

He throws back his head and unleashes a plaintive howl. The tone rises and falls and rolls across the landscape. Its meaning could not be clearer: “I am here. Where are you?” But there is no answer.

The wolf explores, nose to the ground. He ignores a scolding raven. Of far greater fascination is the discovery of an elk bedding area. Pawing at the flattened grasses, he notes they were there just this morning. This is good to know.

Always alert, he climbs a ridge above a broad tree-lined meadow. He knows he must find his pack, but he has no idea how to start searching when there is no wolf scent.

The short winter day is ending. Now the wolf feels the full weight of fatigue after his sleepless three-day ordeal. He finds a shallow depression next to a fallen tree. He circles, lies down.

And the wolf dreams. He dreams he is running through a forest. Up ahead, he can just see the bounding prey he is chasing but he cannot gain any ground. He yips in frustration and abruptly wakes to a pink sky dawning in the east.

A meadow below is shrouded in fresh snow and stillness. Then—a movement that electrifies his attention. A small herd of female elk is browsing among the trees.

He rises into a crouch and silently descends the ridge on an intercepting path. The elk pause upon reaching the meadow, then begin to cross the open space. One of them has a hitch in her walk and lags behind.

The wolf immediately explodes into a run. Simultaneously, the elk launch into a panicked flight.

The wolf races through the snow-covered grass. As the paths of prey and predator converge, he leaps and seizes the laggard’s rear leg. She kicks and he lets go. He falls back and is startled to see her stop and turn to face him. The ailing elk is already spent. He leaps again, his jaws clamping down on her throat. She stands for only moments before collapsing. In minutes she is dead.

The meadow is quiet again. The wolf is suddenly overwhelmed with hunger as he tears into the elk’s belly, powerful jaws ripping open the hide.

As his own belly fills, the wolf feels the fear of these last days falling away, and in that moment he sees, among the pinyons and junipers, a pair of eyes watching him. It is another captured wolf that had been released, a coal-black female.

She emerges from the shadows, head and tail down, but walking without hesitation. She comes before him and raises her muzzle to lick the blood off his. He does not object.

He turns back to the kill. She comes closer, then pauses to weigh his reaction. There is none, and the black wolf eagerly feeds.

In the weeks to follow, the grey wolf and the black wolf explore their new home. When they hear the howl of another wolf, they reply: “We are here. You stay there.”

They find a location for a den and learn to hunt well together. In time, their prey will learn things, too, and both they and the landscape itself will be better for it.

As winter turns to spring, the black wolf shows signs that a new pack is being created. A family in a tradition as old as the ancient hills themselves—is being born.

Clint McKnight is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a former national park ranger and natural history illustrator.

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Winning this vote won’t be easy. The prejudice that drove America’s extirpation of wolves during the last century remains alive today. To counter the myths perpetuated by the oppressors of wolves, we must turn to science.

To help us separate fact from fiction, the Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence compiled data and scientific papers on wolves from around the world, showing that ranching and big-game hunting face minimal risk from wolves. Let’s explore some of the science and data underpinning their work.

First, no wolf advocate worth their salt would tell you that wolves don’t occasionally take livestock. As the abstract from a 2009 study in Ecological Economics shows, wolf depredation on cattle and sheep in the Northwest accounts for less than 1% of the annual gross income from livestock operations. As the research team makes clear, though wolf depredation is a small economic cost to the industry, it may be a significant cost to affected producers. With that in mind, Colorado’s ballot proposal mandates that ranchers will be paid fair market value for their losses. That is reasonable recompense.

Many Colorado ranchers are already compensated, annually and in advance, for potential depredation by wild carnivores. A quick glance at a map of land ownership in Western Colorado makes clear that the majority

of the region is managed by the Federal agencies. On these public allotments, ranchers graze cows and sheep at a considerable discount compared with private land. This discount acknowledges the possibility of losses to wild carnivores. No question, the occasional depredation can sting livestock operations, but Colorado’s ranchers are well placed to learn to co-exist with a rekindled wolf population.

As with livestock, wolves are unlikely to deplete elk numbers. Data from state game management agencies show that elk and deer are currently at or above management objectives in Wyoming and Montana. Further, there are more deer in those states now than when wolves were reintroduced in the 1990s Moreover, a March, 2020 report published in the Journal of Animal Ecology that wolves help keep big game herds and their habitat more resilient and robust, likely helping elk herds tolerate a more unstable climate.

Despite the upsides and minimal downsides, some folks claim that wolf reintroduction is too costly and might deplete the Colorado Parks and Wildlife department’s limited budget. In reality, Colorado’s wolf restoration program is unlikely to significantly impact the state’s budget or hunting license-derived funding. According to Dan Ashe, former director of the USFWS, the Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Grant program could cover approximately 75% of the reintroduction expense, because wolves are an endangered species (Dan Ashe, personal communication). Grants from Great Outdoors Colorado, funded by lottery proceeds, could further offset costs, according to Gary Skiba, a former Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologist (Gary Skiba, personal communication).

Finally, although opponents argue that the appearance of one pack of six wolves in far northwestern Colorado means reintroduction is not needed, there is no certainty that such a small number would result in a sustainable population. It took the reintroduction of 31 wolves for Yellowstone to jumpstart recovery there, according to the Yellowstone Wolf Project.

Colorado’s upcoming vote on wolf restoration is much more than a struggle between an outmoded way of thinking about nature and a more enlightened one. Voting to restore wolves is an audacious act of hope.

We can’t put a quick end to coronavirus. We can’t snap our fingers and resolve climate change. But we can efficiently and affordably undo our ancestors’ shortsighted decision to erase wolves from America’s wild places.

Of course, Colorado’s decision will affect the future of America’s shared public lands. How resilient will those wild places be to climate change? Over millennia, wolves helped shape these wild places, and that is why Colorado needs wolves roaming her wide open spaces once again.

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It threatens ranchers like me as well as people’s quality of life in this half of the state. The small iconic ranches of western Colorado are endangered themselves and Colorado risks losing them with the reintroduction of wolves.

Wolves once lived all over Colorado, not to mention New York City, and everywhere in between. But the 1800s are long gone. Colorado is riddled with highways and trails, and our private and public lands intermingle like spaghetti. Wolf proponents see western Colorado as an empty wilderness, not acknowledging the combustion engine, Interstate-70, or that our population is 10 times greater than Wyoming’s.

My family has been ranching south of Carbondale in western Colorado for 96 years. I grew up on the Mount Sopris Hereford Ranch in the 1950s. The ranch has evolved from a potato farm to a registered cattle operation raising breeding stock, to a naturally raised herd marketed to Whole Foods.

Wolves and the rapid urbanization and exploding population of Colorado could test all of us to our limits. Ranchers already deal with a more crowded world on a daily basis, moving cattle on public roads and sharing trails with bikers and hikers. Nothing will hold back the tide of people moving to the Western Slope or the recreationalists escaping the Front Range.

Adding wolves to this crowded landscape could harm elk and deer populations. Mule deer have been declining since the 1970’s. There have been serious declines in the elk cow/calf ratio in Southwestern Colorado, concerning Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Wolves prey on elk. As such, wolf reintroduction should not take place until studies, specific to western Colorado, can assess if deer and elk can survive the combined threats of wolves and humans, prior to a vote on reintroduction.

We have learned to coexist with bears, mountain lions, and coyotes, but even with coexistence strategies, wolves will be more challenging. Over time, wolves may colonize the entire state affecting many ranchers. Wolves could push us to the breaking point. As ranchers sell out,

songbirds, raptors, and small mammals lose their homes. There is less local agriculture and important wildlife corridors are lost, further stressing elk and deer.

Fortunately, our local community has supported the conservation of ranch lands because people see that these lands provide local food, food security, and wildlife habitat. Increasing development pressure in our valley led us to place a conservation easement on our ranch to ensure it remains undeveloped forever.

Development, though, seems inexorable. Houses have replaced winter elk habitat, and Colorado’s intense recreation industry may be affecting elks’ ability to thrive. Maroon Bells had about 320,000 visitors in 2018. There are another 23 trailheads providing access. Yet the National Park Service reports backpackers in Yellowstone see only 2.3 groups a day on the trail. This is unimaginable in Maroon Bells with an often endless stream of hikers. The surrounding BLM and national forests are also heavily used. It’s difficult to call this beautiful place wild.

Colorado is now facing a $3.3 billion shortfall and reintroduction of wolves will require tax dollars. In his 2017 article in the Spokane Spokesman Review, reporter Rich Landers reported that Washington State budgeted $2.9 million for management in 2017. Idaho budgeted $800,000 for 2016 and Montana $600,000. And that excludes funds budgeted for livestock depredation. Compensation gets tricky when cattle graze large forest permits. Washington’s Wallowa County Chieftain reports only some kills are found and fewer are confirmed and paid for because most of the remains had been eaten by scavengers, making a positive determination impossible. Wolves, like all wildlife, require management to maintain an ecological balance. Tools include hunting seasons and lethal management for problem wolves.

Because Yellowstone is more than 80% Lodgepole pine, elk have limited areas to forage. Over-grazing was a problem prior to wolves. Western Colorado has millions of acres of aspen and scrub oak hillsides and overgrazing by elk is not an issue. Wolf proponents tout “restoring the balance,” but there is not a description of what this will look like.

The outcome of wolf reintroduction may be very different than the happy vision promoted by advocates of wolves. Wolves are intelligent; they hunt in packs, and seek to dominate the landscape. The problem is that people already inhabit that role, and there is no sign of Colorado’s 5.8 million people leaving.

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