Mesa County Commissioners talk wolf reintroduction

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KJCT) - A lot of public debate since the news broke of wolf reintroduction in Colorado, but there’s a new twist to plans to reintroduce wolves on the Western Slope.

Wolves are protected under the endangered species act. “Which means you can’t really do anything to it, but a special designation would allow us to manage that population,” said Mesa County Commissioner Cody Davis.

Mesa County fired off a letter asking the state to designate wolves as an experimental population. “It’s an endangered species; you can’t touch them. I mean, you look at them, and you’re going to be in jail. So what we want is that special designation so that we can manage them properly,” said Davis.

Commissioners want an active and adaptive management of wolves, but Colorado Parks and Wildlife cut all references to future public hunts from the plan. “At this point, there’s there’s going to be no lethal forms of management in terms of hunting the gray wolf, which we think is an issue,” said Davis.

Commissioners say if the wolves aren’t classified as experimental, they want reintroduction put on hold. “If the if the population of wolves gets out of control, the best and most effective way is to give out private private hunting tags to hunters to manage that population,” said Davis.