Colorado’s three-year-old, voter-approved wolf reintroduction program is facing a potential federal takeover, as the Trump administration threatens to revoke the authority of Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) over the effort.
In a letter dated Dec. 18, 2025, addressed by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesvik to CPW Acting Director Lauren Clellan, Fish and Wildlife formally requested the state address compliance issues identified in an existing memorandum of agreement between the two agencies.
With a deadline of Jan. 18, the letter requests the state submit a complete report of all gray wolf conservation and management activities from Dec. 12, 2023, when the first wave of wolves was released in the Rocky Mountains, to the present.
If the report is not received within the allotted 30-day deadline, Fish and Wildlife will pursue legal alternatives, including a management takeover of all wolves in Colorado. This could include terminating the special permit allowing the state to lead the reintroduction, a move that would allow the federal government to pursue relocation and lethal removal of wolves “as determined necessary,” the letter states.
Wolf reintroduction in Colorado has been controversial from the start.
CPW has been tasked with juggling the complex initiative along with balancing the impact of introducing a predator on the landscape with the concerns of Colorado ranchers and stockgrowers who bear the economic brunt of reintroduction.
The growing tensions have recently reached the federal level as a bill to delist wolves as an endangered species passed in the U.S. House of Representatives on Dec. 18, 2025.
“Colorado is prioritizing wolves over American ranchers,” U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum wrote in a social media post following the bill’s passage. “In January [2025], they released 15 wolves into the wild with no warning and recently re-released a wolf from a pack known to kill livestock. This is a warning: if Colorado does not get control of the wolves immediately, we will!”
The issues noted by Burgum are the core of the letter sent to CPW, with Nesvik identifying two major compliance issues within the correspondence.
The first deals with the release of 15 wolves captured in British Columbia in January 2025.
Nesvik claims the state violated existing terms by bringing wolves across the border, according to recently updated federal guidelines that wolves could only be sourced from Northern Rockies states where they are not listed as endangered.
In an October letter to CPW, Fish and Wildlife identified those areas as Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington and Utah.
Colorado had an agreement to source 15 more Canadian wolves for this year’s third wave of reintroduction, but British Columbia has since backed out in response to Nesvik’s letter. The state has since been unable to secure a source population from other states or tribal nations.
The second issue in the most recent correspondence from Nesvik states, “On Dec. 17, 2025, USFWS was informed that CPW recently released a wolf from a pack with a confirmed history of depredation.”
The wolf in question was a young male from the Copper Creek Pack, a group associated with multiple reports of livestock kills. The wolf wandered into New Mexico before a capture-and-release operation between the neighboring states returned the wolf to Grand County.
CPW acknowledged the wolf was responsible for the death of a cow on Nov. 22 in Gunnison County just weeks earlier.
Since releasing wolves with a history of killing livestock is not recommended per Colorado’s wolf management plan, Nesvik suggests Colorado could be at fault for violating its agreement with the federal government.
As the federal tensions escalate, the recently passed House bill could further muddy the management waters. While passed in the House, the bill would need to make it through the Senate to become law. If the push to remove wolves from the U.S. Endangered Species list becomes codified, management authority of wolves would be returned to the states and Colorado could continue to have control over wolf management without federal oversight.
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