While the wolves themselves cost nothing, the planes to surveil them, the crates to transport them and the creation of the plan to manage them were not free.
Those are some of the expenses incurred by Colorado’s wolf reintroduction program, which has cost $4.8 million since voters in 2020 mandated the return of the apex predator to the state, according to a spreadsheet of spending obtained from Colorado Parks and Wildlife via a public records request.
Costs have remained under the amount appropriated to the program by state lawmakers, but are almost twice the amount estimated to the voters who elected to reintroduce the native species.
Spending on the program started years before the first capture of wolves from Oregon and their release in central Colorado in December. Before the agency could release the animals, CPW had to develop a wolf management plan, conduct public meetings and prep the materials needed for a relocation operation.
Nearly half of that spending — $2.6 million — was spent on staff salaries and benefits, the spreadsheet provided by CPW shows. The agency of more than 900 employees now pays four full-time wolf specialists. But that figure also includes time spent by biologists, district wildlife managers and communications staff not specifically allocated to the wolf program who spent time working on wolf issues, CPW spokesman Travis Duncan said.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife did not pay Oregon for the wolves captured there and released in Colorado last year.
Other large expenses over that four-year period include:
$525,276 for “contract personal services” including facilitating the creation of the agency’s wolf management plan and hosting public meetings
$752,762 for purchase services, including reimbursements to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to help it complete its assessment of the plan, $14,360 for aerial wolf surveys and aerial support when capturing wolves, crates and collar data
$161,568 in travel expenses, including lodging, meals and airfare
Payments to ranchers who lost livestock to wolves have remained minimal, primarily because no claims for reimbursement have been submitted for the majority of the depredations.
Since reintroduction, CPW has paid a total of $3,855 to three ranchers for the deaths or injuries of two calves and a llama. No claims have been submitted for the remaining depredation of 15 head of cattle and nine sheep.
Ranchers have the option of filing immediately after the incident or waiting until Dec. 31 to file a claim for reimbursement.
Above estimated costs, below budget
The costs for the first years of the program outpaced those estimated to voters ahead of the 2020 election, but remain under the amount budgeted to the agency by lawmakers.
The nonpartisan Blue Book issued in 2020 estimated Colorado’s program would cost $2.4 million in its first three years. Instead, the state spent $4.5 million in that timeframe — nearly double the original estimate.
The Blue Book estimated that preparing for wolf reintroduction would cost $300,000 in fiscal year 2022, $500,000 in fiscal year 2023 and $800,000 a year after that.
Spending has exceeded those estimates every year. Wolf costs topped $1.1 million in fiscal year 2022, $1.7 million the following year and $1.5 million the year after that. Colorado’s fiscal years begin in July, so fiscal year 2025 began in July 2024 and will end June 2025.
Lawmakers allocated a total of $5.3 million for fiscal years 2022-24, of which CPW spent $4.5 million. So far this fiscal year, the agency has spent $122,870 of its $2.1 million budget on wolf costs.
When voters narrowly approved the reintroduction, the ballot measure directed money for the plan to come from CPW’s wildlife cash fund, which is primarily funded by hunting and fishing license fees.
State lawmakers changed the funding source in 2021. Sponsors of House Bill 1243 argued that anglers and hunters should not be the only ones who bear the costs of the reintroduction. When the bill became law, it spread the reintroduction costs among the general fund, the Species Conservation Trust fund, the Colorado Nongame Conservation and Wildlife Restoration cash fund.
Money can still be appropriated from the wildlife cash fund, but not from money generated by license sales.
Estimating benefits
Tallying up the fiscal costs of the wolf program is relatively simple, but estimating the benefits of the reintroduction is trickier.
Dana Hoag, a professor of agriculture and resource economics at Colorado State University, attempted to tackle exactly that question in a study.
A survey of 400 Colorado voters found that people who voted in favor of the reintroduction were willing to pay $27 per person to sustain a population of wolves in the state and $72 per person to compensate ranchers directly or indirectly impacted by the wolves.
Hoag and his team then extrapolated those figures to find that, combined, all voters in favor of wolf reintroduction would be willing to pay up to $115 million for the existence of wolves in Colorado and to compensate ranchers — even if those voters will likely never see a wolf themselves.
“Most of the value of wolves is in existence value — it’s that warm feeling value,” Hoag said. “People just want to know that they’re there and very little of it is in the ability to see or interact with the wolves.”
One of the key challenges with Colorado’s wolf reintroduction is that the people who voted in support of reintroduction will experience few of the costs, Hoag said. Urban voters — who primarily ushered in the reintroduction — will not lose livestock or consider the impacts of coexisting with the apex predator.
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The eight reintroduced wolves that remain in the state have most recently been tracked in the north-central mountains and plains, including around Steamboat Springs, Walden and Kremmling.
The highest costs, instead, will be borne by a select few ranchers who lose livestock to wolves. Other ranchers, too, will pay to prepare for wolves and deter them from their herds whether or not wolves ever come to their ranch.
Hoag and other researchers conducted a survey of ranchers across nine Western states found that the indirect losses from wolf depredation — like reduced reproduction rates and weight loss in herds near wolves — were equally or more damaging than the impact of a wolf kill.
“It’s not a big number,” Hoag said of the ranchers being directly impacted. “But the people that are getting hurt are really feeling it.”
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