It’s been 20 months since Colorado Parks and Wildlife captured the first batch of 10 wolves to be released in Colorado, from Oregon, and let them go in Grand and Summit counties. Seven months have elapsed since 15 wolves from British Columbia were released in Eagle and Pitkin counties. And during that time, the man at the helm of voter-directed reintroduction has been mostly mum when it comes to the media.
Jeff Davis was barely eight months into his work as director of Colorado Parks and Wildlife when the wolf releases began. And he’s said the reason he hasn’t granted many interviews is because upon arriving in Colorado from Washington, where he was director of conservation for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, he joined a “big organization,” where he needed “to figure it all out,” and in no time, “wolves were rolling out of crates,” unleashing a socioeconomic cyclone over half the state.
But now the soft-spoken leader of a wildlife agency in transition has decided to break his silence. And he gave The Colorado Sun a 30-minute interview as fires raged across Rio Blanco County, where an uncollared wolf the agency was hunting because it killed multiple sheep in recent weeks is now obscured by the smoke, while Davis continues to shepherd a future in which wolves as well as ranchers, and hunters, and bird watchers and recreation lovers all have their equal places across the landscape.
The challenges of wolf-and-human coexistence
Davis has frequently acknowledged the burden wolf reintroduction has placed on ranchers. CPW lists eight confirmed livestock or working-dog deaths between April 2022 and March 2023. Another 4 occurred between April 2023 and March 2024, 33 between April 2024 and March 2025 and 14 so far this year.
But he said plenty of people have been affected on the advocate side as well.
Wolf reintroduction was set in motion by Colorado voters in 2020. The populated Front Range tilted the tight vote in favor of reintroduction, but rural western Colorado voters were largely opposed. This sign is located in Walden, Colorado. (Tennessee Watson, WyoFile)
“There are folks that clearly are sad when we have to do a lethal removal, even though many of them understand that the big picture is a sustainable population of wolves in Colorado,” he added. “And while (killing wolves) is sad, some of that is necessary in order to achieve that success.
“But those same wolf advocates are also recognizing the massive contribution that rural land owners make to wildlife conservation, writ large in Colorado, that we all benefit from,” he said.
“So, many people recognize we’re stuck in a conflict, and the conflict isn’t serving any of us. But at least in my short time in Colorado, my experience has been that Colorado has a long history of coming together in difficult situations, of working together to create durable, lasting solutions. And I think at least in my conversations more recently, people are recognizing like, OK, throwing grenades at each other isn’t fixing anything. We’ve got to sit down together and figure out some give and take to move forward together.”
Will wolf reintroduction succeed?
To Davis, success in wolf reintroduction looks like CPW resolving conflicts within the ranching community, because “we need to keep our ranchers ranching forever. All the benefits from their land stewardship contributes to CPW’s success,” he said, which in turn is the public’s success because they reap the benefits of the healthy ecosystems the ranchers steward.
“Biologically speaking, it has been a success, because that’s the easiest part of wolf restoration,” he added, nodding to pups CPW believes have been born to four packs this season. “The most challenging is the social piece. And that’s the conflict we’re all feeling a big part of. As Doug Smith said last week, wolf reintroduction is messy, and you can’t go around it. The only way is to go through it. I think we will go through it, and the test will be how early can we achieve success collectively.”
Davis says when we take “pieces” like wolves, “out of the ecosystem, we further exacerbate the imbalance of those ecosystems.”
He also acknowledges “we’re not going back to pre-settlement days” when Colorado had thousands of wolves floating around. But he believes CPW’s job as a public trust manager is to balance all of the needs, interests and expectations of the public with the end goal of creating “a restored balance that’s different than what it may have been prior to a lot of human intervention,” but includes all of the species Coloradans care about, like wolves, pronghorn, deer and elk.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife released five gray wolves onto public land in Grand County on Monday, Dec. 18, 2023. Pictured is wolf 2302-OR, a juvenile female from the Five Points pack in Oregon, weighing 68 pounds. (Jerry Neal, Colorado Parks and Wildlife)
CPW’s shifting priorities
There’s a perception in some parts of Colorado that Gov. Jared Polis is shifting the priorities of Colorado Parks and Wildlife away from an old model that prioritized hunters and anglers over “nonconsumptive” users like bird watchers and mountain bikers because of the money hunters and anglers put into CPW coffers through license fees to hunt and fish.
Davis said he doesn’t see the shift while acknowledging the massive financial contribution of hunters and anglers. But he emphasized CPW has other funding sources for managing everything from conservation, to state parks and recreation, to search and rescue and avalanche safety, through things like the Keep Colorado Wild Pass, which generated $39.7 million in revenue in 2024, about 10% of CPW’s total budget that year.
The current CPW is supported by “more of a mix of money,” Davis added. “And going back to our ecosystem concept, what I see is the governor and Dan Gibbs, executive director of the Department of Natural Resources, pushing for biodiversity. And I would argue, as a hunter and angler myself, that a more intact ecosystem that’s healthy will support game species and nongame species more effectively.”
In other words, “If you like elk hunting, then you’ve got to love a pollinator, because these things function together,” he said.
The State Wildlife Action Plan
Colorado is due to release its 2025 State Wildlife Action Plan to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service by Sept. 30. To that end, CPW is working closely with Colorado State University’s Colorado Natural Heritage Program, which “advances the conservation of Colorado’s native species and ecosystems through science, planning, and education for the benefit of current and future generations,” the program says. The plan is available for anyone to review and offer comments on.
State Wildlife Action Plans guide the conservation of a state’s most vulnerable species and the habitats they depend on. An updated plan is required every 10 years for federal funding eligibility via the State and Tribal Wildlife Grants program. These plans have eight required elements that have remained the same since the program’s inception 25 years ago.
Davis said the new plan will have “outstanding conservation” created “through a climate resiliency lens to make decisions that will keep species on the landscape, and in some cases, alter upwards their trajectory for their populations.”
The plan will also include funding for “species of greatest information need,” meaning species within the 900-plus CPW manages that the agency needs to gather more information on, “so we can see around the corner and take actions so we don’t get caught by a potential state or federal listing,” and “to make sure we’re not in a crisis mode every every day.”
But he also worries that Coloradans are loving the outdoors to death and thinks a recounting of how the state’s natural resources are used is going to be a critical part of the Colorado outdoor strategy “and that framework for balancing wildlife conservation, climate resiliency and enjoyable and sustainable outdoor recreation.”
“What do we want to see here? How do we make those balances?”
“The worst day you can have on the job”
Circling back to wolves, Davis said he feels “personally frustrated and empathetic to the producers,” as well as “personally frustrated and empathetic for the advocates and so many people that love wolves.
“And when you have to remove a wolf there’s not a worse day you can have on the job, when you got into the business to care for and manage wildlife.”
But even though there are “a whole lot of torturous, conflicting days between the people and the animals,” he still thinks wolves are “pretty magnificent creatures.”
“I know they get a bad rap, but if you hear their howl, and you’re not a producer, it’s pretty darn cool,” he said. “If you see them up close, they’re like your dog’s intelligence times 100. They’re built to survive, and they do phenomenal things. It’s so cool to see a lone female wolf from Oregon taking down a big elk all by herself. Even though other wolves are running through, she’s just like, I got this, get out of here. Or, when a female wolf goes up and over two mountain passes in four hours in the dead of winter. They’re pretty phenomenal creatures when you can get out from underneath the conflict they can create.”
Type of Story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.