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Gray wolves to be reintroduced to Colorado in unprecedented vote
Voters narrowly approved a ballot initiative to reintroduce wolves into the southern Rockies, where there's plenty of suitable habitat.
In Colorado, the wolves are coming home.
Voters in the state narrowly approved a ballot initiative, Proposition 114, paving the way for gray wolves to be reintroduced into Colorado, where they were hunted to extinction by the 1940s. This is the first time a state has voted to reintroduce an animal to the ecosystem.
The Colorado Parks and Wildlife department will lead the effort to establish a sustainable population of the animals in the western part of the state beginning in 2022 or 2023. The Southern Rocky Mountains contain millions of acres of suitable habitat—where wolves once thrived—land that could support several hundred wolves or more, biologists say.
Opponents of the initiative conceded they had lost on November 5, but the vote was
