Colorado Parks and Wildlife starts gray wolf relocation operation in British Columbia

CPW / Courtesy Photo
Colorado Parks and Wildlife began its gray wolf capture operations Friday in the Canadian province of British Columbia as part of its Wolf Restoration and Management Plan objectives for 2025.
The operation will see 15 wolves captured and relocated to Colorado under an agreement reached between the agency and the British Columbia Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship.
On Saturday, CPW announced the start of the operation. A day later, reports surfaced that a plane carrying wolves leaving Prince George, British Columbia, landed at the Eagle County Regional Airport in Gypsum.
Parks and Wildlife would neither confirm nor deny that the next wolves to be reintroduced are already in Colorado nor that the flight had anything to do with wolf restoration.
“Due to the complexity of the operation, and to ensure the safety of our staff and the animals, CPW will not be sharing wolf release details while the operation is underway,” said Bridget O’Rourke, the agency’s statewide public information officer, in a statement.
Colorado voters approved the state’s wolf restoration work in a 2020 ballot measure and CPW says it plans to release 10-15 wolves on the Western Slope each year for the three to five years as outlined in the restoration management plan.
“We are excited to be working with (British Columbia) to bring together our combined experience and expertise while ensuring the safety of animals and staff,” said CPW Wolf Conservation Program Manager Eric Odell. “This new source population of gray wolves will provide additional genetic diversity to Colorado’s wolf population.”
The wolf-capture operation in Canada “follows work to adopt a number of wolf-livestock conflict minimization measures,” the agency added in a statement.
It also follows a 10-1 vote by the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission earlier this month to deny a citizen petition asking for officials to delay the state’s gray wolf restoration efforts, which began in December 2023 with the relocation of 10 gray wolves captured in Oregon.
The calls to pause the wolf reintroduction work came after Grand County ranchers submitted claims totaling over $582,000 in livestock losses in 2024 — well above the $350,000 budgeted for the state’s wolf depredation and compensation fund.
CPW Director Jeff Davis said in a statement the agency has worked hard to prepare for the arrival of more wolves to the state in 2025 and cited, “an improved conflict minimization program, the addition of new staff to work alongside producers, strengthened partnerships and guidelines for producers as it relates to chronic depredation and lethal management considerations.”
The state wildlife agency said adding wolves from British Columbia to the state’s existing population “will increase the likelihood of pairing, breading and pack formation.”
“Established wolf packs defend territories, which will allow CPW to monitor patterns within a territory and will improve the agency’s ability to collaborate with producers on active behavior and coexistence strategies to best protect livestock,” according to the agency’s statement.
The agency has said the wolves captured in British Columbia will be released in Northwest Colorado with Eagle, Pitkin and Garfield counties considered as potential release sites.
Before they are transported to Colorado in crates aboard aircraft, CPW said the wolves will be examined and provided treatment for possible diseases and infections at the source sites in British Columbia and collars will be placed on the animals to inform the agency regarding their behavior.
Reports of the possible arrival of wolves surfaced Sunday on the Colorado Wolf Tracker Facebook page, which had been tracking possible wolf flights during the past week.
The plane that landed in Eagle County on Sunday afternoon was identified as a plane from LightHawk Conservation Flying’s fleet. LightHawk is a Grand Junction-based nonprofit that flew the transport flights during Parks and Wildlife’s last wolf translocation efforts in December 2023. According to a flight tracker, the plane flew directly from British Columbia to Gypsum.
The agency noted gray wolf populations in British Columbia, a Canadian province that is larger than every state in the U.S. except for Alaska, are widely distributed and estimated to be in the range of 5,300 to 11,600 animals
In its statement, CPW said areas where the gray wolves will be captured in British Columbia, “do not overlap with areas where livestock are present, so there are no concerns about reintroducing wolves that are from packs that are involved in situations of repeated livestock depredations.”
Steamboat Pilot & Today Regional Reporter Ali Longwell contributed to this article.
Trevor Ballantyne is the editor for the Steamboat Pilot & Today. To reach him, call 970-871-4254 or email him at tballantyne@SteamboatPilot.com.

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