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Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) officials released five gray wolves on state-managed public land in Grand County on Monday, making it the first time a state, not the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has introduced an endangered species into wildland in the United States.
A majority of Coloradans voted in 2020 in favor of reintroducing wolves to the Western portion of the state by the end of 2023. Since then, the effort has faced opposition from the cattle industry. Two ranching groups sued CPW last week to block the agency from releasing wolves before the end of the year. A federal judge declined to suspend the reintroduction plan, allowing CPW to move forward with the release this week.
The five animals released on Monday came from packs in Oregon and included two juvenile females, two juvenile males and one adult male. Colorado officials anticipate releasing 30 to 50 wolves within the next five years in hopes the program starts to fill in one of the last remaining major gaps in the western U.S. for the species.
“Living alongside wolves and other wildlife is part of life in the West, and we have the tools we need to successfully restore this piece of our natural heritage,” said Kaitie Schneider of Defenders of Wildlife, one of the groups that worked on the ballot initiative that led to the reintroduction effort. “Now, we must allow these wolves to lead us toward the first self-sustaining wolf population Colorado has seen in over 80 years.”
State takes over cleanup of shuttered uranium mine—again
The company responsible for keeping uranium-tainted water out of Denver and Arvada’s drinking supply is walking away from cleaning up the shuttered Schwartzwalder mine in Jefferson County. State officials are taking a $7.3 million surety bond to continue to fund treatment. The company, Colorado Legacy Land, had previously walked away from cleanup of the Cotter Mill, an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site in Cañon City.
The Schwartzwalder mine, located about 7 miles northwest of the city of Golden, has not produced uranium since 2000. According to state regulators, water treatment at the site must go on for years to come—without proper summer water treatment, tainted mine water builds up and then overflows. Unless the treatment equipment is turned on again in spring of 2024, the pool of tainted water is expected to begin overflowing in June.
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The Lake Powell Pipeline is a paper dinosaur that needs to be shredded once and for all.”
