GRAND COUNTY, Colo. — Another calf has been killed by a wolf or wolves in Grand County, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
The Middle Park Stockgrowers Association and Grand County Commissioner Merrit Linke said the calf was killed at the same ranch where four yearling cattle deaths were reported earlier this month.
"I talked to him personally this morning," Linke said. "Tracks everywhere, saw the wolf and the kill is consistent will the four others in the same place.”
CPW was at the ranch near Kremmling Sunday morning investigating this kill.
"It really didn’t surprise us," said Tim Ritschard, the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association president. "[Wolves have] still been in the area, and we’ve still been seeing them at night."
CPW confirmed this month that some of the wolves in the area during the previous livestock deaths were from the reintroduced wolves that CPW brought to the area from Oregon in December 2023. CPW will not say which wolves they were. 9NEWS reported in December that at least three of the reintroduced wolves came from packs that killed livestock in Oregon.
Both the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association and North Park Stockgrowers Association have asked CPW to kill the wolves that were responsible for the cattle deaths in Grand County. CPW and the governor's office rejected those requests.
“We’ve got to keep up the pressure," Ritschard said. "That’s all we can do right now, putting pressure towards CPW, but I don’t know. I really don’t know where we go now."
Ritschard said the ranch where the most recent kill occurred is going to continue trying nonlethal methods to prevent attacks.
"How many more are we going to have until something’s done?" he asked. "Are we gonna have a yearling, or two yearlings, killed every 10 days?"
A map released Wednesday by CPW shows that gray wolves have crossed into watersheds east of the Continental Divide and onto the Front Range.
“They’ve still been in the area, and we’ve still been seeing them at night,” Ritschard said.
The new CPW map shows collared wolf activity between March 26 and April 23. The map shows that over the past month, at least one wolf with a GPS collar traveled in watersheds in Larimer County.
CPW also said on Wednesday that it has launched a website for wolf depredation reports to keep the public informed about confirmed livestock deaths by wolves.
CPW confirmed the latest cattle death Sunday evening on its website. The agency did not respond to 9NEWS' questions.
Wolves have now killed six cattle in Grand County this month.
“At the rate this is going, there isn't going to be any livestock left in this country,” Ritschard said.
Ritschard was told there is a male wolf and pregnant female wolf denning in Grand County. He’s worried about what’s going to happen when the pups are born.
“I think the fear one year from now is - I don’t know how many pups she’s having,” Ritschard said. “Say she has four to six, and we have five to seven wolves running around killing livestock. So now instead of having one or two dead a day, we’re going to find seven, eight, 10 a day.”
Anne Herbst and Jennifer Campbell-Hicks contributed to this report.
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