{"id":2454878,"date":"2020-02-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-22T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=321354"},"modified":"2020-02-22T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-22T07:00:00","slug":"hunting-groups-join-opposition-to-wolf-reintroduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/hunting-groups-join-opposition-to-wolf-reintroduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunting groups join opposition to wolf reintroduction"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Wolf reintroduction is on the ballot in Colorado this November, and a prominent hunting group is joining agricultural interests in opposing the measure.<\/p>\n

Hunting and outdoor advocacy group Safari Club International recently announced that it raised $140,000 to fight the wolf proposal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWolves are here, they are going to naturally reproduce. They are federally protected, so we just don\u2019t need to add more to the mix,\u201d said Scott Axton, president of the Colorado chapter of the Safari Club.<\/p>\n

The funds will be used for advertising and education as part of the Rethink Wolves campaign, Axton said.<\/p>\n

The opposition\u2019s fundraising so far is dwarfed by the $1.3 million Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund spent in 2019 getting the wolf reintroduction proposal on the ballot.<\/p>\n

The bulk of the wolf action fund\u2019s money went to Landslide Political to collect the needed signatures for the ballot initiative. The group ended the year $91,000 in the red, according to a Jan. 15 state campaign finance disclosure.<\/p>\n

The Safari Club will be working with Coloradans Protecting Wildlife, which raised just over $10,000 in 2019, with the biggest donations coming from the Colorado Wool Growers Association and the Colorado Farm Bureau.<\/p>\n

The major contributors to the wolf action fund in 2019 were the Tides Center ($333,649), Defenders of Wildlife ($230,600), entrepreneur and author Timothy Ferriss ($122,500), and Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which gathered donations from zoos across the country to match $50,000 from Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we\u2019re working to be better stewards of our land, we\u2019re recognizing the need for that natural apex predator on the landscape with us,\u201d said John Murtaugh, a representative of Defenders of Wildlife.<\/p>\n

Murtaugh discounted the idea that wolves are already coming to the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes more than just a single pack to establish a population,\u201d Murtaugh said, adding that since reintroduction efforts began in Yellowstone and elsewhere in 1995, wolves have gone as far west as Washington and Oregon.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they haven\u2019t made it the couple hundred miles south to Colorado,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Murtaugh and Axton disagree about whether wolves lead to elk population decline. Even when elk populations declined 50% in Yellowstone between 2000 and 2004, park biologists were hesitant to place all the blame on wolves.<\/p>\n

Beyond Yellowstone and southern Idaho, \u201cI\u2019m not aware of anywhere wolves had led to a decline in elk population,\u201d Murtaugh said.<\/p>\n

Elk populations in the Roaring Fork and Eagle River valleys are already in decline, and herds have decreased 50% since 2000. Wildlife activists attribute the decline to human population increases and encroachment into winter and summer elk ranges.<\/p>\n

But for Axton, the risk that wolves will deplete elk \u2014 and even moose and wild horses \u2014 is too high.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Wolves) are going to wipe out the moose population in Colorado, something we\u2019ve worked hard, spending million of dollars to establish. Now, you\u2019re going to potentially bring in a predator that will indiscriminately kill moose,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Fewer hunting tags also could mean lower revenue for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Axton pointed out.<\/p>\n

Wolves actually improve the health of elk herds, according to Sierra Club\u2019s Colorado wildlife chair Delia Malone.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my mind, if I were a hunter, wolves would be my best friends because they are improving the health of the elk herds,\u201d Malone said.<\/p>\n

Wolves hunt weaker, older or diseased elk, while humans hunt adult cows and bulls that are still of reproductive age, Malone said.<\/p>\n

Plus, wolves disperse elk and deer herds, which helps reduce the spread of chronic wasting disease, Malone added.<\/p>\n

Along with the Safari Club, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation strongly opposes wolf reintroduction, and a resolution proposed in the Utah state house Thursday states that wolf introduction could \u201chave a significant negative economic impact to the state\u201d and disrupt wildlife management.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also unwise to use the voting process to force management decisions on wildlife officials, Axton said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s make sure that we\u2019re not managing wildlife by the ballot box, and let\u2019s focus on educating people about the wolves, and what the economic and ecological impact that these animals are going to have on wildlife and livestock,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wolf reintroduction is on the ballot in Colorado this November, and a prominent hunting group is joining agricultural interests in opposing the measure. Hunting and outdoor advocacy group Safari Club International recently announced that it raised $140,000 to fight the wolf proposal. \u201cWolves are here, they are going to naturally reproduce. They are federally protected, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2454878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 14:15:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2454878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2454878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2454878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2454878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}