Each year, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) staff involved with the restoration and management of gray wolves collaborate on a comprehensive report of the previous wolf biological year.
2025-2026 Colorado Gray Wolf Annual Report
On May 7, 2026, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) issued its Gray Wolf Annual Report for biological year 2025-2026 from April 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026. This report satisfies multiple reporting requirements and provides updates on the status of gray wolf restoration in Colorado.
CPW News Release: May 7, 2026 — CPW Releases Gray Wolf Annual Report for Biological Year 2025-2026
Mandated through the Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan, state statute, and the 10(j) rule, this report provides a detailed snapshot into the dedicated efforts of CPW staff involved in the wolf restoration program.
To help Coloradans better understand this year’s Colorado Gray Wolf Annual Report, I sat down with the CPW experts who are involved in the day-to-day management of wolves and asked them questions about the content of the annual report and what occurred over the previous wolf year.
Below are a series of Q/A’s with CPW experts who work on different aspects of wolf management in Colorado.
Laura Clellan, Director of CPW
Question: What are the key takeaways from the Colorado Gray Wolf Annual Report for biological year 2025-2026?
Answer:
“This year’s annual report highlights CPW’s continued efforts to refine and improve our wolf program on all levels, ranging from monitoring to conflict minimization and compensation, and public engagement. While there is still important work to be done, the report presents a comprehensive picture of the expertise, continued dedication, and expanding capacity of our staff as we work with all stakeholders to manage wolf restoration in Colorado.”
Eric Odell, Wolf Conservation Program Manager
Question: One of the frequent questions we get is how many wolves are there in Colorado? What does the new annual report tell us about the wolf population?
Answer:
“It‘s incredibly challenging to give a day to day accounting of our wolf population in Colorado. There are just too many variables you have to account for. Has a wolf from Wyoming come across the border? Did a wolf from Colorado go into a neighboring state? Are there pups we didn’t detect in early summer counts that have now been recruited into the population?
Because of this we provide a minimum population count during the winter months which is when packs are generally traveling together, and even then there is still the possibility that there are young wolves we missed or uncollared members of the population that have immigrated from neighboring states.
Having said that, this year CPW biologists have identified a minimum population count of 32 gray wolves. An interesting aspect of this is that of the 32 wolves identified in Colorado, 24 are members of four established packs (10 adults and 14 pups) with the remaining eight representing dispersing adult wolves.
This shows both a very high pup recruitment into the wolf population as well as a trend of the majority of our wolves being members of established packs.
We do not know what the future will hold, but this positive trend in our wolf population size is an encouraging sign of wolves’ ability to find one another, pair, reproduce, and make a go of it in Colorado.”
Question: How have the mortalities in the previous year impacted the overall population and does CPW need to evaluate its capture and release process?
Answer:
“We knew from the early stages of planning wolf restoration that there would be mortalities and that has proven to be true. During the last biological year, there were 10 mortalities experienced amongst adult gray wolves in Colorado, three of which are still under investigation by USFWS or CPW.
Of these mortalities, a high proportion were human-caused including two legal takes outside of Colorado, one from secondary trauma experienced following entrapment by a legally set foothold trap, one from a vehicular strike, a single lethal removal in response to chronic depredation, and the unfortunate mortality of 2305 from capture-related complications.
When we factor in these mortalities, we find an estimated survival rate of 61% among adult wolves present in Colorado during the 2025-2026 biological year.
This is a number CPW is watching closely but we are seeing population growth.
In terms of our release protocols the Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan states that if we see a survival rate of less than 70% in the first six months after release was observed, then a review would be initiated.
That six month time frame is very important as this is a way for us to gauge how wolves are responding to the hard release process we are following here in Colorado. We landed on this benchmark based on our experience releasing Canada Lynx in the 1990s and 2000s.
When we did observe lower than 70% survival rate among the wolves translocated from British Columbia last summer we initiated a review and found that no wolf mortalities were due to any of the capture, transport and release protocols and concluded changes were not warranted.”
Dr. Brenna Cassidy, Wolf Monitoring and Data Coordinator
Question: How does CPW monitor wolf activity and what makes our efforts unique?
Answer:
“CPW uses a combination of methods for monitoring the activity of Colorado’s wolf population. This ranges from ground and aerial observations, public sightings, genetic analysis of biological samples gathered in the field, remote camera footage, and tracking GPS collars.
Due to our translocation protocol calling for each translocated wolf to be equipped with a GPS collar, we find ourselves uniquely positioned to understand how wolves interact with a landscape while establishing a population.
Other wolf restoration programs, like Yellowstone and Idaho, did not have GPS technology available during the early stages so in comparison we have a much higher level of data compared to previous restoration efforts at this early stage.
As packs are established and territories developed we are able to gain and share more insight into Colorado’s gray wolf population. There will always be wolves who are not part of packs, and in the future they are likely to be uncollared wolves. As the population expands CPW will aim to maintain two GPS collars in each established pack to help track pack activity and territory as outlined in the Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan.”
Question: What new information was CPW able to gather and share in the annual because of the high proportion of collars and increased pack formation?
Answer:
“This year we’ve been able to use data from GPS collars to identify the minimum convex polygons (MCPs) of pack territories. These MCPs illustrate areas where GPS locations were identified for a pack. While these represent the majority of a pack’s territory, wolves travel beyond MCP boundaries and their movements are not always identified due to the rates of GPS data collection from collars.
We’ve also been able to provide detailed information about pack composition for each of the four established packs in Colorado including minimum winter adult and pup counts and collared wolf ID numbers.
Looking to the current biological year, we are continuing to monitor wolves in Colorado for the formation of additional packs and any indication of additional denning events.”
Ray Aberle, Deputy Assistant Director of CPW’s Lands Unit
Question: What did CPW and partnering organizations do in wolf biological year 2025-2026 to improve conflict minimization efforts?
Answer:
”In the last year CPW has expanded its conflict minimization program and continued developing protocols to investigate and address conflict both proactively and retroactively so we can better assist producers and minimize wolf-livestock conflict.
This included the continued onboarding of ten Wildlife Damage Specialists — whose primary job duties are depredation investigation, site assessments, deployment of nonlethal tools — across CPW’s four regions and hiring of Wolf Damage and Conflict Minimization Manager, Rae Nickerson.
Last conflict season our Wildlife Damage Specialists worked closely with Adam Baca, CPW’s Wolf Conflict Coordinator — as well as the agency’s dedicated field staff, and partnering organizations such as the Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA) — to provide viable, reasonable, and effective options for conflict minimization.
To help our team be as effective as possible, and make sure we were providing producers with information, we hosted multiple trainings as well as participated in over 20 outreach events across the State.
Some highlights of those training were:
- A multi-day depredation investigation training in Oct. 2025 hosted in collaboration with Tribal partners, CDA, Wildlife Services-Colorado, and trainers from other States as well as a panel of livestock producers who have experienced depredations
- A comprehensive range rider training in April 2025 that featured panelists and instructors from Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Montana which was held in partnership with CDA, Western Landowners Alliance, and Tracker Certification North America.
- Local meetings with community members and livestock producers in partnership with CSU Extension, Wildlife Services Colorado and Colorado Department of Agriculture.
We have also continued to expand our stockpile of conflict minimization ‘hard tools’ such as fladry, scare devices, and remote game cameras. Going into the upcoming conflict season CPW has an inventory of approximately 45 miles of fladry, and more than 500 scare devices. In the coming years we will continue to accumulate additional conflict minimization resources to make sure we are able to provide viable, reasonable, and effective support to producers.”
Question: What are the accomplishments of the conflict minimization program from the last year?
Answer:
“Our conflict minimization program has grown significantly over the early stages of wolf restoration. There is no one-size fits all solution to wolf-livestock conflict. Through the expertise of our staff, ongoing training, and expanding hard tool resources, CPW continues to provide timely investigations and strategic response to depredations and wolf localization near working lands.
In the last year our team conducted 78 additional site assessments (bringing the total site assessments conducted in Colorado to over 280), conducted 12 different night watch events and deployed 61 scare devices and more than 13 miles of fladry across 15 locations.
An estimated average of 200 pairs of cattle were protected in each of the fladry locations, and no livestock were lost to wolf depredations within any of these deployments.
We also partnered with the Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA) to stand up the Colorado Range Rider program in 2025. During last year’s conflict season, contracted range riders provided human presence, monitored livestock health and activity, documented wildlife activity, and assisted in reducing negative interactions between livestock and predators.
In total these riders rode more than 4,300 hours and covered nearly 15,000 miles of range while assisting 34 different producers across Jackson, Grand, Routt, Eagle, Garfield, Pitkin, Summit, Rio Blanco, and Moffat counties.
Beyond the conflict minimization resources and funding CPW our partners at CDA have provided, there were significant contributions from other sources, including:
- The Born to Be Wild License Plate Program, which surpassed an annual contribution of $1 million last year
- Direct materials contributions from Non-Government Organizations as well as funding for nonlethal efforts such as range riding, permanent fencing, and remote game cameras
- Significant investments by individual livestock producers and associations to replace and support our investments
- $2.5 million made available to Colorado producers through the NRCS Regional Conservation Partnership Program “Stewarding the Working Wild” award.”
CPW is fortunate to collaborate with many partners and, of special note, the livestock community who continues to work with CPW towards reducing conflicts and navigating the resulting impacts to their operations.
Question: What about the compensation program, is CPW able to pay producers for direct losses and indirect impacts of wolf restoration?
Answer:
“CPW continues to provide fair market compensation to producers impacted by wolf depredation. This includes claims pertaining to direct losses and indirect claims as outlined in the approved Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan.
Additionally, CPW brought together a livestock record working group in the Spring of 2025 to address nonregulatory items in need of clarification on record types and timing for the filing of indirect/itemized claims. This effort resulted in increased clarity and an improved claims process.”
Dr. Ellen Brandell, CPW Wildlife Researcher
Question: What types of wolf related research is CPW pursuing?
Answer:
“CPW currently has several research projects related to wolves in Colorado in pilot or testing stages. Our goals are to refine these projects over the coming years so we can develop and deploy rigorous long-term research efforts.
Some of this research falls into my specialty of wildlife biology, while other projects cover a range of disciplines and topics that fall within the specialty of our colleagues such as livestock management and social science/human dimension studies.
The projects we are pursuing right now are based on priorities identified by CPW staff and Commission input, as well as public interest.
Included among ongoing research efforts are:
- Exploring the efficacy and effort related to the use of drones for wolf monitoring and nonlethal management through hazing,
- Development of a long-term study to examine the direct and indirect impacts of wolf re-establishment on prey populations and vegetation communities,
- Studying wolf and human influence on elk group sizes and movement patterns,
- Collecting baseline moose recruitment data,
- Assessment of the social outcomes associated with wolf restoration and the public’s involvement process in Colorado, and
- Continued efforts to evaluate efficacy and satisfaction with Colorado’s livestock conflict prevention programs.
Through these ongoing research efforts CPW is collaborating with partners at Colorado State University, Colorado State University Extension, the USGS Colorado Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, the USDA-APHIS National Wildlife Research Center, and livestock producers.”
Through these ongoing research efforts CPW is collaborating with partners at Colorado State University, Colorado State University Extension, the USGS Colorado Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, the USDA-APHIS National Wildlife Research Center, and livestock producers.”
Question: Is there evidence of wolves having widespread impacts on Colorado ecosystems?
Answer:
“This is an overarching question driving many of my planned research studies. As of now, the wolf population in Colorado is too small and too new to the landscape to draw conclusions about the long-term effects of restoration. As these projects progress we hope to better understand the impacts of wolves on the flora and fauna of Colorado, as well as how human perspectives about wolf restoration change as the program progresses and wolves establish.”
Written by Luke Perkins, a Statewide Public Information Officer for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
