West
Blue state ranchers thrown ‘to the wolves’ seek President Trump’s rescue
Editor’s note: This story contains content some readers may find disturbing. It is the second story in a series about Colorado’s wolf reintroduction efforts and the effects on agricultural producers. Read part one here.
GRAND COUNTY, Colo. — Splintered bone protruded above the intestines and other viscera spilling out of the cavity where the calf’s hind leg had been torn away. Blood pooled, dark and mirror-like in the pit of the animal’s remaining hindquarter. The front half of the calf looked untouched, its legs curled in a futile last effort to escape.
Across the field, dozens of cows huddled together, looking toward the tiny, mangled carcass. It was the fourth dead calf the Farrell family had discovered in the last 24 hours.
“We didn’t have any idea what a wolf kill would look like until this point,” rancher Conway Farrell said of the grisly find last April. “It’s the sickest thing you ever seen.”
Farrell and other ranchers on Colorado’s Western Slope feel their way of life has been threatened after wildlife officials began a voter-mandated reintroduction of gray wolves in late 2023. Now, they’re hoping the Trump administration will intervene on their behalf.
Conway Farrell said his family discovered four dead calves in a single day on their ranch last April. (Courtesy Middle Park Stockgrowers Association)
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Colorado wildlife officials released 10 wolves on public land west of the Continental Divide in December 2023. Livestock slayings began just a few months later.
Rob Edward of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Foundation, which spearheaded the ballot measure bringing wolves back, said that was to be expected.
“I would have been shocked if we hadn’t seen at least a dozen or more cows and/or sheep taken by wolves out of that first year,” Edward told Fox News Digital. “The sky isn’t falling, right?”
In the Northern Rockies, where gray wolves were reintroduced 30 years ago, wolves kill less than 1% of the cattle they share land with. In general, wolves are responsible for less than half as many cattle deaths as dogs, according to USDA data.
“Even though that’s the case, we know that an individual rancher losing livestock to wolves is a big deal,” Edward said. “It hurts economically. And so that’s why when we brought Proposition 114 to the ballot, we built in a compensation component.”
Ranchers file more than $580,000 in claims
The state is legally required to pay livestock owners for losses if their animals are injured or killed by wolves, up to $15,000 per animal.
But ranchers say it’s not that straightforward. Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) biologists must first confirm that a wolf was responsible for an animal’s death, called a “depredation.” To do that, they need a body. One that’s still in good shape.
“It’s going to be really difficult, especially in the summer, to find a carcass in time,” rancher Caitlyn Taussig said. “If you are not finding it within the first few hours, it’s being scavenged or eaten by other animals to the point that it’s impossible to know what happened.”
In late December, ranchers in Grand County sent CPW a $582,000 bill for wolf kills and related losses. More than $420,000 of that came from a single ranch: Farrell’s.
Compared to an average year, 65 extra calves never returned from the summer pastures. The ranch recorded nine extra missing cows and 14 sheep. Cattle were also 40 pounds lighter on average and conception rates dropped, which Farrell attributed to stress.
“All from a couple little packs of wolves,” he said.
As of Feb. 1, Farrell said he had not received any compensation.
“I hope they pay for it,” he said. “Otherwise we might not be in business in a year.”
Conway Farrell’s son holds one of his lambs as a CPW agent conducts a necropsy on a sheep. (Courtesy Conway Farrell)
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Asked about livestock claims, a CPW spokesperson directed Fox News Digital to a list of confirmed wolf depredations current through Sept. 9. The claim for the first calf killed on April 2, 2024, was still listed as “pending.”
A pair of wolves that bred and formed the Copper Creek pack was responsible for the majority of livestock killings in the claims, according to ranchers.
The female and four pups were ultimately relocated in an effort to cut down on livestock depredations. The male died from a gunshot wound shortly after he was captured by wildlife authorities. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and wolf advocates are offering rewards for information on the shooting, since gray wolves are currently listed as endangered both federally and in Colorado.
Ranchers seek presidential attention as local authorities deny their petition for pause on wolf releases
Tim Ritschard unfolded the American flag and then plucked a zip tie from between his teeth, using it to secure the corner of Old Glory to the metal fence post. The biting January wind soon had both flags billowing, bookends for a huge white banner that read “Gov. Polis is throwing us to the wolves! President Trump, please help!”
“There’s kind of a love-hate relationship between the president and our governor,” said Ritschard, a fifth-generation rancher and president of the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association. “So I think that this is where we thought we could maybe get his help and get this out there.”
Trump and the Colorado governor have sparred over subjects like tariffs and immigration, with then-candidate Trump calling Polis a “coward” and a “fraud” during a campaign trip to Aurora, Colorado. Polis, a Democrat, said ahead of Trump’s inauguration that he would welcome the federal government’s help removing criminals and gang members, but opposes deporting otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants.
“A few [agricultural] producers have asked for the feds to step in already because [wolves] are a federally protected animal,” Ritschard said. “And so we wanted the feds to come in and take over this.”
Agricultural producers put up a large banner along Highway 9 in Grand County, Colorado, late last year, hoping to get then President-elect Trump’s attention. (Hannah Ray Lambert/Fox News Digital)
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All four of Colorado’s Republican U.S. House members have criticized wolf reintroduction, and in mid-January urged the incoming Trump administration to stop the “further importation of these foreign predators into the United States.” Two representatives are also seeking to remove the gray wolf from the federal endangered species list.
Ritschard spoke to Fox News Digital ahead of both the presidential inauguration and a pivotal local meeting: On Jan. 8, 2025, wildlife officials were set to decide whether to press pause on wolf reintroductions.
In late September, more than two dozen livestock and agricultural organizations petitioned the state to delay future wolf releases until depredations were addressed and conflicts with livestock could be mitigated.
After an hours-long meeting, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission voted 10-1 to deny the petition.
Within 48 hours, CPW agents were in British Columbia. As a transport helicopter landed on the snow and the roar of the rotor faded, wildlife agents heard a chorus of wolves howling. The Canadian province has “an abundant gray wolf population” somewhere between 5,300 and 11,600, according to CPW.
CPW captured 15 wolves and released them on three separate days between Jan. 12 and 16 in Eagle and Pitkin counties. There are now 29 wolves in total in Colorado, including some that wandered into the state from Wyoming.
Livestock industry fomenting ‘sense of victimization and outrage,’ needs to ‘adapt’
While Edward said he doesn’t want individual ranchers to have to worry about making a living, he accused the livestock industry of fomenting a “sense of victimization and outrage” rather than embracing solutions.
“If they cooperate with the state agencies, there’s plenty of resources to help them prevent future depredation. They just need to get in the game. It’s that simple,” he said. “They have a choice: They can fight, and they will lose ultimately, or they can adapt.”
Ranchers Fox News Digital spoke with broadly supported using range riders as a way to protect herds from wolves. Range riders patrol rough terrain on horseback, foot or ATV, and can use non-lethal deterrents to scare wolves. In 2024, the state hired four range riders, local outlets reported. This year, CPW hopes to hire up to a dozen range riders, using money from sales of Colorado’s wolf license plates, which had totaled $544,000 as of Nov. 1.
But Ritschard said other tools like fladry — bright flags hung along a fence line — are impractical.
“We have calving grounds that are 300 acres,” Ritschard said while driving down a remote country road near his family’s ranch. “We’d have to put three miles of fladry around the fence and that’s going to be pretty tough to keep up.”
Wolf reintroduction has taken an emotional toll on Taussig. She worries every day about the safety of her dogs and livestock. Even though she is ultimately raising animals for food, she said it’s her passion to ensure they have “wonderful lives” and a quick, painless death.
Caitlyn Taussig runs a calf-cow operation with her mom. She said they have not had any confirmed wolf depredations, but they are missing two calves. (Courtesy Caitlyn Taussig)
The idea of her “sweet domestic cattle” being chased down by predators and eaten alive made her pause to wipe a tear from her eye.
“I think people think ranchers are really wealthy people, but we work brutally long hours with not a lot of pay, and it’s a dangerous life,” she finally said. “Then to turn around and have to worry about something new, it’s just really hard to deal with.”
Read the full article from Here
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A Department of Justice official took a jab at a California state senator on Friday after the lawmaker, a Democrat running to succeed retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., erroneously claimed his state began enforcing a mask ban against federal immigration officers.
Jesus Osete, the No. 2 official in the DOJ Civil Rights Division, pointed out that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration agreed in court to temporarily hold off on enforcing the ban while a lawsuit over it plays out.
Osete’s remark came in response to San Francisco-based state Sen. Scott Wiener, who posted a video Thursday boasting that the ban was active.
“That’s not what @CAgovernor told a federal judge, my man,” Osete wrote on X.
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Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
The Trump administration sued California in November, arguing that two bills, including the No Secret Police Act introduced by Wiener, violated the Constitution’s supremacy clause, which says that when federal and state laws conflict with one another, federal laws win out.
U.S. federal agents working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detain immigrants and asylum seekers reporting for immigration court proceedings in an immigration court in New York, N.Y., July 24, 2025. (Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
The No Secret Police Act attempted to bar ICE officers from wearing masks in certain circumstances after a series of high-profile immigration raids in the state that involved some officers fully concealing their faces with ski masks.
As part of the lawsuit, California officials agreed in December to hold off on enforcing the mask ban against ICE agents until the court could hear arguments in the case.
Wiener claimed the mask ban went into effect on Jan. 1 in a video he shared online, contradicting what California’s attorneys told the court.
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State Sen. Scott Wiener of California (California Sen. Scott Wiener)
“It’s now illegal for ICE and other law enforcement to cover their faces in the state of California. Starting today, my new anti-masking law goes into effect,” Wiener said.
A federal judge is weighing whether to grant the Trump administration’s request for a preliminary injunction against the mask ban. But the briefing schedule stretches through next week, and a hearing on the matter is set for Jan. 12.
The judge could make a decision soon after the hearing, and if he were to rule in favor of California, the state could begin enforcing its ban at that point.
Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney in central California, also chided Wiener for his claim that the state law was enforceable.
“This isn’t true. California has no authority to regulate federal agents. This state law violates the federal Supremacy Clause. … California has agreed to put the law on hold and not enforce its unconstitutional mask ban, which is designed to allow radical leftists to dox federal agents enforcing immigration laws,” Essayli said.
Wiener doubled down on his remarks in a statement to Fox News Digital, saying Essayli was a “clueless Trump Administration lackey” making a “meaningless royal decree.”
“While the agents of the state did agree to hold off on enforcing the law until the injunction hearing, the No Secret Police Act is still very much in effect, and ICE agents who appear masked in California are still subject to civil suits for violating the laws of our state,” Wiener said.
California attorneys have been fighting the lawsuit, arguing in court papers that “armed, masked individuals” carried out arrests of alleged illegal immigrants and, in doing so, “caused terror throughout California, with the public unsure whether they were interacting with legitimate law enforcement or impostors.”
The Trump administration’s lawsuit “ignores [the] careful balance of power between the federal and state governments, seeking to invalidate two California laws. … Each law exercises the State’s historic and long-established police power,” state attorneys wrote.
Read the full article from Here
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I was on my way to dinner with friends on Christmas Eve when my westbound K Ingleside train was turned back at West Portal without explanation. I waited for the next train. It was turned back too. I asked one of the Muni drivers what was going on, and he said no M Ocean View or K Ingleside trains were running past the station.
I guessed it had something to do with the weather—the rain was coming down in sheets. I realized getting an Uber or Lyft at the station, with everybody else doing the same thing, probably wasn’t going to work. I had a good umbrella and rain coat so I started to walk down West Portal Avenue, ducking under awnings as I looked for a good spot to call a Lyft.
I didn’t get far before I saw why the trains were stopped, as seen in the lead photo.
I don’t know exactly how this blundering driver managed to bottom out his car on the barrier between the tracks. But, for me, it symbolized everything that’s wrong with San Francisco’s auto-uber-alles policies that continue to put the needs of individual drivers above buses and trains full of people. Mayor Lurie reiterated San Francisco’s supposed transit-first policy in his end-of-year directive. But if it’s a transit-first city, why are motorists still prioritized and permitted to drive on busy train tracks in the first place?
Why isn’t the barrier in West Portal positioned to keep drivers from using the tracks, as it was historically? Why do we even have pavement on the tracks? And why haven’t we banned drivers from using West Portal Avenue and Ulloa Street as thoroughfares in the first place, where they regularly interfere with and delay trains?
I should have stopped walking and summoned a Lyft. But being forced by the shitty politics of San Francisco, combined with a shitty driver, to call yet another car, pissed me off. I thought about all the people who got off those trains who can’t afford to call a ride-hail. I thought about the hundreds of people trapped inside trains that were stuck between stations. I continued walking and thinking about all the times I’ve visited Europe and been through similarly busy, vibrant merchant corridors such as West Portal with one major difference: no cars.
Yes, even on “car-free” streets in Europe, typically cars and delivery vehicles can still cross and access the shops directly for deliveries. But some streets are just not meant to be a motoring free-for-all. Anybody who doubts that merchants flourish in car-free and car-lite environments should either get a passport, or they should take a look at the merchant receipts after a Sunday Streets event. On the other hand, Papenhausen Hardware, which helped block a safety plan that prioritized transit movements through West Portal, went out of business anyway in 2024.
As I walked in the driving rain, my thoughts drifted to 2024’s tragedy, in which a reckless driver wiped out a family of four when she crashed onto a sidewalk in West Portal. San Francisco had an opportunity to finally implement a transit-first project and prevent a future tragedy by banning most drivers from the tracks and preventing them from using West Portal as a cut through. And yet, a supposedly safe-streets ally, Supervisor Myrna Melgar, aligned with a subset of the merchants in West Portal and sabotaged the project.
Since then, I’m aware of at least one other incident in West Portal where an errant driver went up on the sidewalk and hit a building. Thankfully, there wasn’t a family in the way that time. Either way, West Portal Avenue, and a whole lot of other streets that have hosted horrible tragedies, are still as dangerous as ever thanks to the lack of political commitment and an unwillingness to change.
I finally got to my friends’ house, 35 minutes later. They loaned me some dry clothes and put my jeans in the dryer. We had a lovely meal and a great time. My friend drove me to BART for an uneventful trip home (not that BART is always impervious to driver insanity).
In 2026, advocates, allies, and friends, we all need to raise the bar and find a way to make sure politicians follow through on transit first, Vision Zero, and making San Francisco safe. Because the half-assed improvements made in West Portal and elsewhere aren’t enough. And the status quo isn’t working.
On a closely related note, be sure to sign this petition, demanding that SFMTA finish the transit-only lanes on Ocean Avenue.
Denver will be the site of the United States’ first-ever American Indian Cultural Embassy.
Funding for the project was approved by Denver voters in the Vibrant Denver Bond measure.
The vision is for the embassy to welcome Native people back home to Colorado.
On the snowy day of CBS News Colorado’s visit, Rick Williams observed the buffalo herd at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge.
“These animals are sacred to us,” said Williams, who is Oglala Lakota and Cheyenne. “This was our economy. They provided everything we needed to live a wonderful lifestyle.”
Williams is president of People of the Sacred Land and a leader in the effort to build an American Indian Cultural Embassy.
“‘Homeland’ is a special term for everybody, right?” Williams asked. “But for people who were alienated, for American Indians who were alienated from Colorado, they don’t have a home, they don’t have a home community that you can go to, this is it. And I think that’s sad.”
The First Creek Open Space — near 56th and Peña, near the southeast corner of the Arsenal — is owned by the City and County of Denver and is being considered for development of the embassy.
“To have a space that’s an embassy that would be government-to-government relations on neutral space,” said Denver City Councilmember Stacie Gilmore, who represents northeast Denver District 11. “But then also supporting the community’s economic development and their cultural preservation.”
Gilmore said $20 million from the Vibrant Denver Bond will support the design and construction of the center to support Indigenous trade, arts, and education.
“That sense of connection and that sense of place and having a site is so important if you’re going to welcome people back home,” added Gilmore.
“What a great treasure for people in Colorado,” Williams said as he read the interpretive sign at the wildlife refuge.
He said the proposed location makes perfect sense: “Near the metropolitan area, but not necessarily in the metropolitan area, we would love to be near buffalo. We would love to be in an area where there’s opportunities for access to the airport.”
The Denver March Powwow could one day be held at the embassy.
Williams dreams of expanding the buffalo herd nearby and having the embassy teach future generations Indigenous skills and culture.
The concept for the embassy is one of the recommendations emerging from the Truth, Restoration, and Education Commission, a group of American Indian leaders in Colorado who began to organize four years ago to study the history of Native Americans in our state.
And the work is just beginning.
“We have to think about, ‘how do we maintain sustainability and perpetuity of a facility like this?’” Williams said. “So there’s lots of issues that are going to be worked on over the next year or so.”
Williams added, “One day our dreams are going to come true, and those tribes are going to come, and we’re going to have a big celebration out here. We’re going to have a drum, and we’re going to sing honor songs, and we’re going to have just the best time ever welcoming these people back to their homeland.”
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s staff sent the following statement:
“We are excited about the passing of the Vibrant Denver Bond and the opportunity it creates to invest in our city’s first American Indian Cultural Embassy. We are committed to working hand-in-hand with the Indigenous community to plan and develop the future embassy, and city staff have already been invited to listen and engage with some of our local American Indian groups, like the People of the Sacred Land. We are not yet at the stage of formal plans, but we are excited to see the momentum of this project continue.”
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