Why are wolves on the ballot? Because out-of-state dollars made it happen

Wildlife officials have already determined that the toothy new interlopers have taken to dining out on the local elk population in and around Irish Canyon, just down the road a piece from Cold Springs Mountain, arguably the state’s highest quality game management unit where it takes at least a third of a lifetime – a quarter century or so – to draw a big game tag.

Now, ideally there should be a place for everything on God’s green earth. And clearly there is an indisputable romantic appeal in experiencing the sudden frisson of hearing a distant wolf howl while camping out under a dark, high-country sky. So, who wouldn’t welcome a return of wolves to the state? Consequently, who wouldn’t support Initiative 107, a first-in-the-nation, to-hell-with-the-biologists, citizen-driven, ballot initiative requiring the reintroduction of a particular wildlife species?

Well, certainly not the denizens of the tiny ranching community of Maybell, a few miles south of Irish Canyon. Nor would Meeker. Nor would Kremmling. And, sooner or later, nor would Estes Park, where backers of Initiative 107 have so solicitously sought to reassure Eastern Slope residents that wolves will stay planted right where Initiative 107 demands they be planted – on the Western Slope.

And certainly not me. No siree, not me. Recent forbears of the wolves that just entered northwestern Colorado introduced themselves to me and some fishing buddies about a dozen years ago, near the banks of the Henry’s Fork River outside of Ashton, Idaho. Those two Canadian gray wolves were about the size of Shetland ponies, A-grade, senior varsity wolves. Those wolves had it all over their smaller, junior varsity Mexican wolf cousins that were reintroduced to Arizona and New Mexico a few years ago and which seem destined to migrate up to Cortez, Durango and the San Juans sooner or later.

Time once was, as recently as 20 years ago and less than a decade after Canadian gray wolves were introduced into Yellowstone National Park, elk in the park seemed thicker than Bernie Sanders supporters at a government giveaway. If my own last visit to Yellowstone two years ago is typical, today one can expect to find more Mitt Romney supporters at a Trump rally than the number of elk grazing amid the open meadows along Yellowstone’s once busy Madison Junction at the height of the September rut.

Introducing an apex predator into any ecosystem will do that. According to National Park Service statistics, reintroducing wolves in Yellowstone reduced the park’s elk population by roughly 75 percent, from almost 20,000 elk 30 years ago to roughly 5,000 or less today. The same principle applied when an apex predator, mackinaw trout, was surreptitiously or somehow mistakenly introduced in Yellowstone Lake. The park’s native cutthroat trout population was decimated, triggering all manner of unwanted ecological consequences.

At some level, most Coloradans – including, I suspect, Coloradans living along the Boulder-Denver-Colorado Springs, Front Range axis – recognize that more wolves mean fewer elk and fewer sundry other big game animals. Not to mention the semi-regular predation wolves inflict on ranching communities. In the event that the local elk population doesn’t sate a wolf’s penchant for going on a recreational killing spree, there’s always a rancher’s livestock to suffice. Amid those realities, there really hasn’t been a political groundswell in Colorado demanding wolves be reintroduced in the state, particularly at a time when wolves are already are on our southern doorstep and have entered the state’s front door on the north.

And yet, somehow Initiative 107 magically appeared on this fall’s election ballot. How in the hell did that happen? Well, it happened because hundreds of thousands of out-of-state dollars made it happen.

According to political contribution data filed with the Colorado Secretary of State’s office, precisely $1,228,742 has been collected throughout the last quarter of 2019 in support of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund, the registered issue committee for proponents of the reintroduction effort. Some of that money came in the form of scores of small-dollar contributions ranging from $10 to $100 from individual Colorado citizens, the vast majority from the usual suspects in Boulder, Denver and Colorado Springs. (Hey Carbondale, it appears you’re leading the list of West Slope supporters with 8 or 9 donors.) Similar levels of support came from individuals throughout the country, literally from New York to Hawaii, Alaska to Arizona.

As significant as those small-dollar contributions are, they won’t get you close to raising more than $1.2 million in just three months. No, what will enable wolf lovers to do that is, among other large donations, a $333,649 contribution from the San Francisco-based Tides Center.

So, you never heard of the Tides Center? Well, neither did I. But you can look it up. The organization’s right-wing critics call Tides a black-money laundering enterprise that uses donations from other major philanthropies for purposes expressly directed by the initial donor. And that’s essentially what it is. It’s all perfectly legal, of course. Among the hundreds of entities that Tides has supported are the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace. Consequently, you won’t find too many entities that Tides deems worthy of support that show up on a list of entities supported by, let’s say, the Koch Foundation.

And then there is the contribution of $230,000 from the Washington, D.C.-based Defenders of Wildlife, not to be confused with the Reston, Va.,-based National Wildlife Federation. Which is good because I’ve been sending $100 a year to the NWF for most of my life and I’d hate to see my money used to make it all the harder to whack a wily wapiti each fall.

Not surprisingly, there is the $35,000 kicked in by the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Ariz., and the $30,235 by the Colorado Sierra Club. What is surprising is the $100,000 contributed by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums in, of all places, Silver Spring, Md.

The Bozeman, Mt.-based Turner Conservation Trust was in for a relatively meager $3,776, less than the $5,375 contributed individually by Liberty Godshall, identified by the secretary of state’s office as “an LA writer.” Liberty is too modest. She is the creative genius behind the hit 1980s television show, “Thirtysomething.”

Initiative 107 is to an organic, homegrown ballot initiative as up is to down. In other words, it’s not. And if all the early polling data are to be believed, it is likely to pass, eventually to be implemented by the license fees paid by elk hunters, anglers and everyone else who purchases a license of any kind from Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

Fans of introducing another apex predator in the wilds of Colorado could have done better than Initiative 107. They could have swapped wolves for wolverines. Wolverines are the Hobbesian emissaries to the great outdoors – nasty and brutish. I’d bet a wolverine over a wolf any day. And wolverines don’t run in packs and don’t decimate elk populations as wolves do. I would have signed that petition. Wolverines, not wolves!

(The writer was formerly the editor and publisher of The Daily Sentinel from 1985 to 2008. He is a lifetime member of Trout Unlimited and annual supporter of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.)