A Colorado resident recently captured video that shows three pups born to Colorado’s first batch of reintroduced wolves — playing in their new habitat.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials confirmed the footage shows pups from the Copper Creek Pack living in Grand County near Kremmling. In a post on social media on Monday, state officials said the young animals appeared healthy and weighed between 40 and 50 pounds each.
The footage comes from Mike Usalavage, a local outdoorsman and custom home builder, who posted two videos to Instagram on August 17. In the first video, the trio of wolves splash and wrestle in a puddle along a dirt road at an undisclosed location. The second video shows an adult wolf monitoring the pups from a nearby patch of grass.
In both pieces of footage, two Jack Russell terriers watch the scene through a windshield, barking and whining at the sight of their evolutionary ancestors. Usalavage did not immediately return a request for comment from CPR News.
“Playing not only allows a wolf pup to practice hunting behaviors but also teaches them how to communicate effectively with other wolves, which is a skill they will use throughout their lives as social creatures living in packs,” Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials noted in their post on Instagram.
It’s been more than four years since Colorado voters narrowly approved a ballot initiative requiring the state to reintroduce wolves. Despite fierce objections from local ranchers and sportsmen, Colorado Parks and Wildlife followed through with the mandate last December by reintroducing 10 wolves captured in Oregon.
In June, state biologists announced GPS collar data indicated a female wolf had established a den in Grand County. Colorado Parks and Wildlife spotted a pup at the site a few days later, confirming Colorado’s first batch of reintroduced wolves had managed to reproduce. State officials dubbed the new family group the Copper Creek Pack.
One mystery around the pack was the total number of pups born in the new litter. In its initial announcement, Colorado Parks and Wildlife confirmed the presence of a single pup, but the agency noted wolves tend to give birth to four to six pups at a time. The new video shows at least three offspring have survived in adolescence — and provides the first widely available images of Colorado’s new lupine residents.
But the confirmation of new pups is also a scenario local ranchers have feared for months.
Since the reintroductions last December, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has confirmed wolves have killed 15 cows and calves along with nine sheep. Seven of those calves were killed at a ranch operated by Conway Farrell, who had told CPR News he suspects wolves from the Copper Creek Pack are responsible for the incidents. Colorado has also confirmed wolves killed eight sheep at a neighboring ranch at the end of July. Farmers and ranchers can apply for up to $15,000 in reimbursement for livestock or guard and herding animals killed or injured by wolves.
Farrell has joined other ranchers to call on the state to remove the wolves or allow ranchers to shoot the animals themselves. That’s particularly due to concerns the predators could pass the habit of preying on livestock onto their offspring, leading to more dead sheep and cattle.
Colorado wildlife officials have so far declined each of those requests, saying it could lead to the death of the only known pups resulting from the state’s reintroduction effort.
