Colorado’s first litter of gray wolf pups since the 1940s has grown to include six pups.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife said Thursday that staff spotted the pups living in a den with two collared wolves known as John and Jane in northern Colorado, KCNC-TV reports.
The agency first announced June 9 that staff had spotted three pups in the pack. The discovery comes after Colorado voters narrowly approved a ballot measure last year that requires the state to reintroduce the animal on public lands in the western part of the state by the end of 2023.
Gray wolves were hunted, trapped and poisoned into extermination in Colorado in the 1940s.
Officials last year confirmed the presence of the small pack of wolves in northwestern Colorado after a number of sightings since 2019. The animals were believed to have come down from Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park.
Wildlife advocates see reintroduction in Colorado as a vital step in restoring the wolf more quickly to habitat stretching from the Canada to the Mexico border. Wolves were reintroduced in the Northern Rockies in the 1990s, and some 3,000 of the animals now roam portions of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Northern California.
Colorado is bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas to the east, Oklahoma to the southeast, New Mexico to the south, Utah to the west, and touches Arizona to the southwest at the Four Corners. Colorado is noted for its vivid landscape of mountains, forests, high plains, mesas, canyons, plateaus, rivers, and desert lands. Colorado is one of the Mountain States and is a part of the western and southwestern United States.
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Colorado Parks and Wildlife said Thursday that staff spotted the pups living in a den with two collared wolves known as John and Jane in northern Colorado, KCNC-TV reports.
The agency first announced June 9 that staff had spotted three pups in the pack. The discovery comes after Colorado voters narrowly approved a ballot measure last year that requires the state to reintroduce the animal on public lands in the western part of the state by the end of 2023.
Gray wolves were hunted, trapped and poisoned into extermination in Colorado in the 1940s.
Officials last year confirmed the presence of the small pack of wolves in northwestern Colorado after a number of sightings since 2019. The animals were believed to have come down from Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park.
Wildlife advocates see reintroduction in Colorado as a vital step in restoring the wolf more quickly to habitat stretching from the Canada to the Mexico border. Wolves were reintroduced in the Northern Rockies in the 1990s, and some 3,000 of the animals now roam portions of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Northern California.
Source
🐺 Gray Wolf Update We have an exciting update from our breeding pair of Gray Wolves. Since originally spotting three wolf pups, our staff have now spotted SIX wolf pups on the ground. We are observing from a long distance so that the pack has the best chance for survival (1/2) pic.twitter.com/MlZTnsxLFB
— Colorado Parks and Wildlife (@COParksWildlife) July 8, 2021
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