[Colorado] CPW staff and commissioners facing serious threats amid rash of recent controversies

From GJSentinel.com:

Colorado Parks and Wildlife has been on the defensive over its handling of wildlife, from the rollout of wolf reintroduction to hunting regulations to mountain lions. Now staff and commissioners are facing a recurring challenge: threats against their safety and personal freedoms.

“Staff are charged with doing things that really can’t make everybody happy,” Commissioner Dallas May said last Wednesday during opening remarks at the state Parks and Wildlife Commission’s first monthly meeting of 2026 in Denver. Among the topics they addressed were the killing of two mountain lions in Larimer County after Fort Collins resident Kristen Marie Kovatch was found dead on New Year’s Day near Drake, a lion near her body.

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Cost of California Wolf Pack-Livestock Conflict

From MorninAGClips.com:

DAVIS, Calif. — Nearly a decade after the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) confirmed the state’s first wolf pack, the rural community in Sierra Valley, California, faced unprecedented challenges when the Beyem Seyo wolf pack began to regularly attack and kill domestic livestock.

Despite extensive efforts at non-lethal deterrence, the pack became so dependent on cattle as a food source that several members of the pack were ultimately euthanized in October 2025. A new study out of UC Davis analyzed the costs associated with these wolf attacks and found that, when combining the costs of livestock losses and interventions aimed at deterring further depredations (the injuring or killing of livestock by wolves), the economic toll over seven months reached at least $2.6 million.

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$10,000 Reward for Information in Illegal Killing of Gray Wolf in Southern Oregon

From FWS.gov:

PORTLAND, Oregon – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking information regarding the illegal killing of a federally listed endangered gray wolf in Lake County, near the Klamath County border in the Yamsay Mountain area of Oregon. Lake County is located west of Highway 395, where gray wolves are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The Service is offering up to a $10,000 reward for any information that leads to an arrest, a criminal conviction, or civil penalty assessment.

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Female gray wolf dies in northwest Colorado, the first mortality in 2026

From SummitDaily.com:

A female gray wolf died in northwest Colorado on Friday, Jan. 16, marking the 12th death since Colorado Parks and Wildlife began its wolf reintroduction in December 2023.

It is the seventh wolf to die from the 15 wolves that Parks and Wildlife released from British Columbia in January 2025.

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Gray wolf is latest victim of Trump’s retaliation campaign, Colorado says

From The-Independent.com:

Gray wolves appear to be the latest victim of Donald Trump’s campaign of political retaliation against Colorado after the administration threatened to take control over state efforts to reintroduce the species, according to officials.

Last fall, as Colorado prepared to import 15 wolves from Canada as part of an ongoing species rehabilitation program, a “cease and desist” letter arrived from White House lawyers, according to The Washington Post.

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Podcast: USFWS Director Brian Nesvik on the Future of Refuges and Wildlife Conservation

From OutdoorLife.com:

Under Director Brian Nesvik the USFWS is deferring to states, prioritizing hunting and fishing access, assessing its refuges, leveraging technology, and enabling the energy-first agenda of the Trump administration.

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Clellan provides update on wolves at [Colorado] CPW Commission meeting

From TheMountainMail.com:

Colorado Parks and Wildlife will fully comply with a request from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to provide further information about the state’s voter-approved gray wolf reintroduction program, in response to threats of a federal takeover of the three-year project to establish a resident wolf population in the state.

CPW Acting Director Lauren Clellan confirmed the move during the Jan. 14 CPW Commission meeting, providing updates on recent developments that have complicated an already tense third round of gray wolf releases.

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I spent 7 years tracking an elusive wolf pack through the snowy wilds of Canada. My encounters were mind-blowing

From DiscoverWildlife.com:

Meet the Opoyastin pack, the charismatic wild wolves who inhabit the icy wilderness of Canada’s Kaska Coast.

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Wolf From Yellowstone’s Famous Junction Butte Pack May Have Been Poached

From CowboyStateDaily.com:

Another female member of Yellowstone National Park’s popular Junction Butte Pack has been killed. This time, Montana game wardens are investigating it as a poaching.

Wolf 1478F is thought to have been killed on or around Christmas Day in Montana’s Wolf Hunt Area 313, north of Yellowstone.

The killing is being investigated as illegal, because by then, hunters had already legally filled the three-wolf quota for that area, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Game Warden Kameron Rauser told Cowboy State Daily.

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Red wolves return to North Carolina, take down coyotes and raccoons, change the game in the forests, protect nests on the ground, hold deer in line, make saplings grow, and show why a superpredator could rebuild the entire Southeast by 2026.

From ClickPetroeoEGas.com:

On the Albemarle Peninsula in northeastern North Carolina, reintroduced red wolves are once again putting pressure on mesopredators and rebalancing the forest. The recovery area covers approximately 6.000 km² between refuges and private properties. By 2026, orange GPS collars and coyote management will support expansion beyond official boundaries.

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