The Copper Creek Pack in Pitkin County was in the spotlight during a special meeting of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) Commission on Monday afternoon, where the commission solidified its decision not to direct CPW to take any action on the wolf pack for now, saying it is outside the commission's responsibilities.
The CPW Commission held the special meeting virtually, which began around 12:30 p.m. and lasted for about two hours. Public comment was not included in the agenda, something producers who spoke with Denver7 felt was lacking from the conversation.
New CPW Commission Chair Richard Reading said the commission, public and ranchers all have an interest in learning more about this specific pack and recent depredations in Pitkin County. He added that Monday's meeting was purely "informational" and he would not support any commission vote on Monday that attempted to direct CPW to take any specific action, adding that it is "not really our role" as a commission.
"The commission's role, in my opinion, is to create policies, and the division's role is to implement them," Reading said. "The wolf plan and regulations the commission passed two years ago to implement the plan clearly indicate that the commission has tasked the division (CPW) with making removal decisions. The commission simply isn't in a position to make such decisions, because they require a complete understanding of the facts on the ground, which we usually do not have."
While no specific decision was made about the future of the Copper Creek Pack, CPW's Area Wildlife Manager Matt Yamashita and Deputy Regional Manager Garrett Watson both provided updates on that pack, which was followed by a lengthy question-and-answer session about continuing the wolf reintroduction program and protecting ranchers' livelihoods.
A brief history of the Copper Creek Pack
The Copper Creek Pack first came to be in June 2024, when CPW biologists confirmed that they had spotted a wolf pup at a den site in Grand County. The two adults had been translocated to Colorado from Oregon in December 2023. It was the first confirmed wolf pack in the state since the reintroduction in December 2023 and was made up of two adults and five pups. About two months after the pups were first spotted, a man and his son captured video of some of the pack members.
In August 2024, CPW announced that it had started an operation to capture the entire pack and relocate them, noting that the animals were behind multiple depredations in the area. This was something livestock producers had been requesting. In September, six members of the pack were captured and brought to a large, secure and undisclosed enclosure where biologists would monitor them with limited human interaction. The adult male, which was found in poor condition, died a few days later and a necropsy later confirmed it had been shot, which led to its death, prompting a federal investigation into the illegal kill. The fifth pup was never captured.
Ranchers brought a petition forward in late September with a list of demands that needed to be met before the next round of wolf releases in the state, including the re-release of the Copper Creek Pack. In December, CPW recommended that the CPW Commission deny the petition, saying all of those seven items had already been addressed. On Jan. 8, the CPW Commission voted 10-1 to deny the livestock producers' petition. About 10 days later, CPW released 15 wolves from British Columbia, as well as the five members of the Copper Creek Pack, into Pitkin and Eagle counties. All had GPS collars.
Producers in Grand County faced a number of challenges related to the Copper Creek Pack in 2024. Tim Ritschard, the president of the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association, said it makes him "sick" to think of producers in Pitkin County experiencing the same issues.
"We've been in constant contact with those guys, saying, you know, 'This is what you need to expect. This is what you need to pay attention to,'" said Ritschard. "We went through this, and so, we're trying to help them as much as we can."
At that time of the re-release, the pack was made up of an adult female, three yearling males and one yearling female, CPW said. In February, an adult male wolf that was translocated from British Columbia in January joined the pack, Yamashita said.
CPW officials shot and killed one of the yearling male wolves in the pack in May after a series of attacks on livestock in Pitkin County. The ranchers who were impacted had “implemented all reasonable non-lethal deterrence measures,” CPW said, so lethal removal of that wolf was "authorized and appropriate."
Concerns about the pack arose because ranchers said the wolves were simply captured and then re-released to become another ranchers' problem, as depredations by the pack continued. Denver7 heard from multiple livestock producers, who cited the wolf management plan, which reads: "The translocation of depredating wolves to a different part of the state will not be considered, as this is viewed as translocating the problem along with the wolves."
In a statement regarding the capture of the Copper Creek Pack, CPW Director Jeff Davis said “the plan also calls for flexibility and it may not at times account for every unique situation the agency and our experts encounter. This spring, after a pair of wolves established a den in Middle Park, the male adult wolf was involved in multiple depredations. Removing the male at that time, while he was the sole source of food and the female was denning, would likely have been fatal to the pups and counter to the restoration mandate.”
Last month, CPW said it confirmed new wolf pups as it continued to monitor four den sites, including within the Copper Creek Pack. However, the exact number of pups at any of the den sites is not yet known, Watson said.
Denver7 has been following Colorado's wolf reintroduction program, and the Copper Creek Pack, since the very beginning, and you can explore all of that reporting in the timeline below. The timeline starts with our most recent story.
CPW Commission meeting: Livestock producers are "trying to hang onto hope"
"Colorado's wolf restoration program is challenging and historic, and it takes trust and partnerships to succeed for everyone," CPW Director Jeff Davis said at the start of Monday's meeting. "We are a learning organization and continue to adapt and learn as we move forward with this program. We must continue to invest in training, resources, tools, partnership and our staff."
He said Monday's special meeting was called because a motion was announced, and then withdrawn, to capture and remove the entire Copper Creek Pack. Davis said he did not believe that was necessary as of now.
“We should not be indeterminately removing more wolves than we need to in order to address the wolf conflicts, as this runs contrary to the ESA and such repeated overuse of the removal authority could risk the continued application of the ESA 10(j) management flexibility that we currently have," he said.
- Read the full Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan here
During a Q&A portion of the meeting, commissioners initially asked about possible additional livestock depredations by the pack, even after the yearling male wolf in the pack was killed by CPW.
“Staff has investigated several reported depredation events subsequently," CPW's Yamashita said. "All the ones that staff have investigated, we have not confirmed, which… is kind of the agency standard for saying we could not confirm that a wolf was responsible for that depredation event. There was carcasses there. In some instances, there were portions of carcasses there. Based on the physical evidence that my staff was able to investigate, we weren’t able to confirm whether a wolf was the reason why that particular animal died.”
Cattle are no longer in their smaller wintering and calving areas, and are now out on summer allotments, which can span thousands of acres in dense vegetation, he continued. This is more challenging for livestock producers to find carcasses and report them to CPW.
Multiple injurious non-lethal hazing permits — which allow a person to use tools like buckshot to scare wolves away from livestock — have been issued in the northwest region of Colorado, but those less-lethal rounds are most effective at 30 to 50 yards from the animal. Yamashita explained that it is difficult for a person to get that close to a wolf without it noticing in the thick, overgrown brush.
The topic of removing — whether lethally or not — the pack was not something that any of the commissioners said they would take lightly. Commissioner Tai Jacober said in his experience as a rancher and hunter, killing any animal is "incredibly difficult."
“But it’s in an effort to protect the population that we’re trying to achieve management for," he added.
He briefly mentioned that a livestock producer's cattle were chased over cattle guards by wolves late last week, and the rancher had to stay away from his family all weekend to go collect the herd.
“It seems clear that when we have such behavior and a pack causing such harm to our time, to people’s livelihood, to the efforts. We need to make a decision to move forward beyond that," he said.
Yamashita said that most recently, range riders in that area had taken a break Friday and Saturday, but were back on Sunday.
"Our range rider was on the ground 127 days, and within that 127 days, I think they took two days off," Ritschard said. "I mean, you can't — we can't take a day off. Wolf doesn't take a day off."
CPW Director Davis had visited the impacted ranchers.
"They’re looking for some solutions," he said. "They’re trying to hang onto hope, folks, and that’s something I take very seriously. That is our pathway to success in the implementation of a sustainable population of wolves in Colorado and resolving conflicts with livestock. That’s the deal."
That could include future non-lethal and lethal actions against the wolves.
“I’m going to defend these producers all day long," Davis said. "They’re good people doing all the right things and trying to hang onto hope, but it’s getting more and more difficult for them.”
Ritschard told Denver7 he did not expect anything to come from Monday's meeting.
"It was just another due diligence, or however you want to say about it," said Ritschard.
The Middle Park Stockgrowers Association, Colorado Cattlemen's Association, and Holy Cross Cattlemen's Association issued a joint letter to the CPW Commission in early July ahead of the special meeting on Monday, urging them to remove the entire pack. The association said livestock producers are concerned the adult female in the Copper Creek Pack will teach her pups to attack livestock "and the cycle will continue."
"Us in the ag [agriculture] world have to stick together. I mean, we're pretty, pretty, feel pretty under attack right now," Ritschard said. "We've been through some storms, we've been through droughts, we've been through stuff, and we can do this. We just have got to work together and stay the course and help each other out."
Overview of wolves in Colorado
The below list outlines a breakdown of the known wolf population in Colorado:
- 7 wolves surviving from the original 10 that were released in December 2023 (one died of a likely mountain lion attack, a second died from injuries sustained prior to his capture as part of the Copper Creek Pack relocation effort, and a third wolf became sickly and died)
- Four of the five wolf pups born in the spring of 2024 (one male was killed after multiple depredations in Pitkin County)
- 10 wolves surviving from the 15 that were released in January 2025 (one was shot and killed by Wildlife Services in Wyoming earlier this month, a second died of unknown causes in Wyoming, a third died in Rocky Mountain National Park, a fourth died in northwest Colorado and the fifth also died in northwest Colorado)
- Two wolves that moved south from Wyoming several years ago
- One uncollared wolf that was last known to be in northwest Moffat County in mid-February. It is not clear if it is alive or still in the state.
- Possible, but unconfirmed, wolf in the Browns Park area as of February. It is not clear if it is alive or still in the state.
CPW tracks wolf movements across the state and releases that data once a month. Here is the most up-to-date map showing which watersheds the wolves have traveled through between May 27 and June 24, 2025.
The wolves' movements are downloaded from satellites to CPW biologists every 16 hours. The collars record locations every four hours, depending on the signal.
You can see an archive of all the maps showing the animals' movements here.
