Nearly a third of the wolves Colorado has reintroduced in the last two years have died. They’ve lost battles with mountain lions and been struck down by a bullet from an unknown shooter.
But one wolf encountered an even more sophisticated hunter: a government agency that specializes in killing hundreds of thousands of wild animals each year, from beavers to Colorado's state bird, to protect livestock and airplane passengers.
But wolf 2505-BC’s story began far from people and livestock around the towering peaks and frozen lakes of central British Columbia.
Surviving the cull
Just five months ago, wolf 2505-BC roamed a blinding white wilderness near an island of frosted pine trees in British Columbia’s central interior.
The three-year-old rarely saw humans as he hunted moose and elk.
Occasionally he’d follow lonely roads cut through pine forests to logging camps and mines.
In the beginning of his life, wolf 2505-BC was lucky.
Conservationists say he avoided British Columbia’s controversial aerial wolf reduction program in this region.
Sharpshooters have picked off more than 2,000 of his fellow wolves in this region to protect declining caribou herds.
The cull has drawn opposition from conservationists including Ian McAllister, who co-founded the environmental group Pacific Wild in Victoria, Canada.
“They probably have witnessed their fellow pack members, their extended families, being killed by helicopters,” McAllister said of wolf 2505-BC.
McAllister said this wolf also avoided what critics call the “Judas wolves.” They’re animals the Canadian government captures, fits with tracking collars and releases back to the wild here so those sharpshooters can follow them and wipe out their entire pack.
The wolf cull started a decade ago.
“Their habitat is being systematically destroyed through oil and gas developments, logging, mining, et cetera. So these wolves are living a really quite traumatized existence,” McAllister said.
A report from the British Columbia's Ministry of Water, Land and Natural Resources said wolf 2505-BC had specifically been targeted for "predator reduction" to support caribou recovery.
But on Jan. 11, wolf 2505-BC's life suddenly changed. He was moving through this vast white wilderness. Then, an unnatural buzz pierced the silence and crunching of snow.
It must have sounded surreal to the wolf in this quiet landscape. That growing buzz. A blue dot growing bigger in the sky.
A Hughes-500 helicopter zoomed closer. It didn’t carry a sharpshooter.
Eric Odell, the species conservation manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, was aboard one of the choppers that day. He was shopping for fifteen wolves to bring back home.
Odell said someone dangling from the front of the chopper fired a net to catch the wolf.
“And then there's another person in there that will come out and actually stop the animal from moving, and using a pole to hold them down,” he said in March as he recounted the capture operation for the Parks and Wildlife Commission.
Biologists approached 2505-BC. He passed the tests.
He had no missing eyes or broken bones. He had at least four sharp teeth. He was sedated and put in a blanket with snow so he wouldn’t overheat. Then he was put into a crate with hay and an ice block. His vast world suddenly reduced to a crate just a few feet long.
This was also the day 2505 BC got his name because of the numbers on his new tracking collar.
Then he was loaded onto a plane.
“It was usually about a 12 hour experience from wheels up in British Columbia to doors open in Colorado. So quite a day for all of these animals,” Odell said.
As his flight neared the Eagle County Airport in Colorado, residents fearful of wolves and potential attacks on livestock tracked the plane and posted updates on social media.
Suddenly, the wolf had an audience and followers.
Secret release
Eventually 2505 and his fellow wolves were brought to a secret location in Pitkin or Eagle county and released into the darkness. Not everyone was excited to leave. One of the wolves stayed in their open crate for 42 minutes before venturing into this new world.
2505-BC ran through sagebrush and snow illuminated by flashlights. His Canadian companions fanned out across Colorado, but 2505 headed north to Routt or Jackson counties. Within a few weeks he crossed into Wyoming.
The wolf’s motives were the subject of speculation online and will never be known for certain.
But Rob Edward of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project has a guess.
It was mating season.
“That wolf was looking for love. That wolf was looking for somebody to pair up with,” Edward said.
Edward, whose group led to the successful ballot initiative to reintroduce wolves, celebrated 2505’s arrival.
He said the wolf “was probably following some relatively recent scent trails and postmarks left by wolves that have come down from Wyoming into Colorado.”
Maybe love set him off on his initial search, but he needed food.
The wolf kept heading north. He saw something he never saw in Canada’s interior. A flock of sheep.
The sheep are attacked. And federal agents charged with protecting livestock eyed the wolf through a rifle scope.
Wolf 2505-BC was legally shot on March 15 by agents with the U.S Department of Agriculture. He had survived the frozen lakes of British Columbia, the aerial culling operation killing thousands of its kind in Canada and the sudden capture operation that flew him 1,500 miles from home.
But Colorado’s newest wolf was just one of the thousands of animals killed each year by a government agency called Wildlife Services. It’s charged with protecting livestock and property across the nation. But it has stoked controversy.
Controversial killings
An NPR investigation last year found Wildlife Services killed approximately 11,000 wild animals on Montana properties where no wildlife was recorded as responsible for killing or injuring any livestock over a recent three year period.
In Colorado alone last year, agents killed just under 10,000 wild animals. Most of the exterminated species aren’t considered invasive.
Wendy Keefover, a wildlife advocate with Humane World for Animals, calls Wildlife Services “the most important wildlife management agency that most people don’t know exist.”
“It's just this constant killing,” she said.
Wendy Keefover said she became a carnivore advocate in the 1980s after hearing about Wildlife Services using helicopters to track and kill coyotes in Arizona.
Wildlife Services kills prairie dogs and beavers. They also regularly kill a small number of Colorado’s state bird, the Lark Bunting. The small black and white sparrow is one of several species Wildlife Services shoots, traps or poisons around Denver International Airport to protect plane engines and passengers from bird strikes.
According to a report obtained by KUNC News, Wildlife Services killed more than 6,000 wild animals around the tarmac last year, the cost of protecting one of the busiest airports in the country.
The statistics are concerning for wildlife advocates.
“We need to come back to a place where we can coexist with wildlife and and just killing them isn't the answer,” Keefover said.
Wildlife Services declined an interview with KUNC and hasn’t responded to a list of questions emailed to a spokesperson on May 13.
Keefover and other conservationists say the agency has evolved in recent years. They point to some positive projects, including work to prevent human conflicts with bears in Colorado.
Wildlife Services also has started a non-lethal initiative in recent years that has put employees on the ground in Colorado and other western states. They install electric fencing and give ranchers specialized guard dogs to deter wolves and other predators from approaching livestock.
Still, the $2.5 million dollars spent on these efforts last year represented less than one percent of the agency’s entire budget.
Carter Niemeyer worked for Wildlife Services for three decades managing wolf trapping operations in Montana. He eventually became a wolf advocate. He said last month the nation still needs Wildlife Services.
“There's probably always going to be a need for Wildlife Services field people dealing with livestock predation,” he said.
Niemeyer says more changes should be made though. He says the agency should stop large scale killings of animals like coyotes and focus more on non-lethal deterrents.
“No dead livestock, no dead wolves,” he said. “We want to keep both alive. That means you got to figure ways to be smarter than letting the wolves and livestock mingle.”
Rob Edward of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project said last month wolf 2505-BC should still be living.
“It’s an abomination," he said of it’s death. “The agency continues to operate from a kill first and ask questions later, paradigm, and that's that's just not acceptable. That's got to change.”
Meanwhile, biologists say Colorado’s wolf restoration effort is still on track despite the string of deaths.
“That said, every single one of those wolves that we've moved from Oregon or from British Columbia are extremely valuable to the program, both genetically and culturally,” Edward said.
Now, biologists say they’re monitoring 2505’s fellow wolves in Colorado for signs of pups.
