Colorado wolf report checked

DENVER • Biologists working with the owners of a western Colorado ranch are trying to determine if wolves have settled there.

Biologists consulting for the High Lonesome Ranch north of DeBeque, about 175 miles west of Denver, said they have seen signs of wolves. They have sent animal droppings for DNA tests to the University of California at Los Angeles.

Colorado Division of Wildlife spokesman Randy Hampton said Monday that state officials are talking to owners of the ranch, which offers hunting and fishing excursions, about the reports of wolves.

There have been reports for 10 years of wolves taking up residence in western Colorado, but no evidence, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Ed Bangs, head of the Northern Rockies wolf restoration program.

Bangs said state and federal wildlife officials recently checked, but couldn’t verify, reports of four or five wolves together in western Colorado.

“We take observations at face value,” Bangs said. “We’ve got a system that will figure out for sure” if wolves are in the area.

Trapping and poisoning wiped out wolves in Colorado by the 1930s.

At least two wolves from the Yellowstone National Park area have wandered hundreds of miles into Colorado since 2004. One of the wolves was found dead along Interstate 70 west of Denver. The other, which was radio-collared, died in northwest Colorado last year; federal officials are investigating.

Wendy Keefover-Ring of WildEarth Guardians said environmentalists are “cautiously celebrating” the reports.

“It’s not that unfeasible for wolves to walk down from Montana or Yellowstone,” Keefover-Ring said. “You just need two wolves to breed.”

WildEarth Guardians and other groups have pushed for restoring wolves to Colorado. They have called for the kind of program that released wolves in Yellowstone and central Idaho in the mid-1990s to restore the predator.

Environmental groups have advocated releasing wolves in Rocky Mountain National Park. The National Park Service rejected that plan as a way to reduce the elk herd that is overgrazing the park and instead is using sharpshooters to cut the number of elk.