Overview

• Federal Judge Regina Rodriguez has rejected a motion from ranching groups to halt the reintroduction of gray wolves in Colorado, allowing the process to move forward as early as this weekend.
• The Colorado Cattlemen’s Association and The Gunnison County Stockgrowers’ Association had filed a lawsuit alleging that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to adequately review the potential impacts of Colorado’s plan to release up to 50 wolves over the next several years.
• The ranching groups argued that the inevitable wolf attacks on livestock would come at significant cost to ranchers and the local economies where wolves would be released.
• Judge Rodriguez sided with state and federal agencies, pointing to a state compensation program that pays owners up to $15,000 per animal if their livestock are killed by wolves.
• Gray wolves were exterminated across most of the U.S. by the 1930s under government-sponsored poisoning and trapping campaigns, but have since rebounded in the Great Lakes region and returned to numerous western states.