Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials have killed a gray wolf that was believed to be involved in a series of attacks that killed two livestock calves and injured three more calves and one cow in Pitkin County.
The series of attacks meets the agency’s criteria for “chronic depredation” that it finalized in January: three or more depredation events caused by the same wolf or wolves within a 30-day period, with “clear and convincing evidence” of at least one of the attacks.
The wolf apparently involved was gray wolf 2405, a member of the Copper Creek Pack – still the only confirmed wolf pack in Colorado since their reintroduction in 2023. The Copper Creek pack was relocated from Grand County last fall after a series of wolf attacks.
According to Friday’s news bulletin from CPW, the Pitkin County attacks happened between May 17 and May 25. Attacks on May 24 and May 25 resulted in the deaths of one calf each.
CPW "lethally removed" the wolf on Thursday.
The ranchers involved in those attacks had “implemented all reasonable non-lethal deterrence measures,” CPW said, including the use of fladry and other conflict mitigation tools and the swift removal of carcasses.
Each of the ranchers had conducted a site assessment with CPW between December 2024 and January 2025.
CPW called the need to remove a problem wolf “unfortunate and rare, but consistent with the Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan.”
“The decision to take lethal management action was very difficult,” CPW Director Jeff Davis said in Friday’s statement. “Our wildlife biologists and officers constructed a timeline of recent events that shows the depredation behavior met the conditions for chronic depredation that were defined earlier this year. We have great respect for these animals and take the removal of a wolf very seriously.”
The Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, a volunteer-drive wolf advocacy group, in a statement mourned the removal of the wolf but said it falls in line with CPW's stated wolf restoration goals.
"Losing any wolf is deeply saddening, and we share in the sorrow felt by those who care for these animals and the wild places they inhabit," the group's statement read. "We take pride in the fact that Colorado’s wolf restoration program is working as intended—balancing ecological restoration with the needs of rural communities."
Thursday’s lethal removal of gray wolf 2405 comes a little more than two months after wildlife officials in Wyoming killed a wolf that had been brought to Colorado from Canada. That wolf had been found near five sheep kills.
In total, four wolves translocated here from Canada have died since their release in January.
The Copper Creek pack is the only confirmed pack in Colorado and was caught on video last August. The pack was captured in a pair of operations last September after being involved in multiple depredations. One wolf in poor health died after the capture operation.
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