Colorado
Colorado officials relent to rancher pressure to remove pack formed by released wolves
Video is first look of pups from Colorado’s released wolves
Colorado resident Mike Usalavage happened upon the Copper Creek pack at an undisclosed location the week of Aug. 11-17, 2024, and provided this video to the Coloradoan.
Colorado’s only wolf pack produced by released wolves is being removed from its Grand County location.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife along with technical support from federal partners have begun an operation to capture and relocate wolves from the Copper Creek pack, the state wildlife agency announced in a Tuesday night news release.
The pack consists of two parents from among 10 wolves captured in Oregon and released in Colorado in late December of 2023 and at least three wolf pups the pair had this spring. “The decision to capture and relocate the Copper Creek pack was made with the careful consideration of multiple factors and feedback from many different stakeholders,” Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Jeff Davis stated in the news release. “Our options in this unique case were very limited, and this action is by no means a precedent for how CPW will resolve wolf-livestock conflict moving forward. The ultimate goal of the operation is to relocate the pack to another location while we assess our best options for them to continue to contribute to the successful restoration of wolves in Colorado.”
The option to remove the wolves is allowed under the federal 10(j) rule issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which designates Colorado’s released wolves as an experimental population.
The parents of the pack have largely been responsible for 16 confirmed wolf depredations of cattle and sheep near the pack’s den and rendezvous sites in Grand County since April 2, according to area ranchers.
The Middle Park Stockgrowers Association, which represents Grand County ranchers, has repeatedly asked the state wildlife agency to remove at least the parents of the pack over the past several months, and later the pups as well. The latest request from the association and other stockgrowers groups was sent to Gov. Jared Polis and Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Jeff Davis on Aug. 15.
The agency has repeatedly refused the request, citing the need to grow the state’s wolf population in accordance to the state’s wolf recovery plan before finally relenting to ranchers’ pressure Tuesday.
That state’s recovery plan calls for releasing 30 to 50 wolves over the next three to five years with a goal of a minimum of 150 to 200 wolves.
“Colorado Parks and Wildlife is committed to fulfilling the will of Colorado voters to successfully restore the gray wolf population while meeting the needs of Colorado communities,” the release read. “As we have throughout the implementation of the Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan, CPW is working with wildlife biologists, federal partners and producers to develop solutions that will reduce the risk of additional wolf depredations.”
Tim Ritschard, a Grand County rancher and president of the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association, said the association is pleased with the decision.
“If a wolf wanders in and kills a cow or calf, that’s tolerable, “Ritschard told the Coloradoan on Tuesday night. “When they set up camp and repeatedly depredate on livestock that’s where the problem is.
“I’m glad the feds stepped in and took action before a rancher or local Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff had to. Hopefully CPW can learn from this and prevent something similar happening in the future.”
The Coloradoan reached out to pro wolf groups for comment. Those messages were not immediately returned.
Ritschard questioned what the state wildlife agency will do with the wolves.
That was not detailed in the agency’s news release.
“For the safety of these animals and staff, CPW will not be sharing the location of the pack members or operation,” the agency’s news release read. “CPW will provide more information and details at the conclusion of the operation.”
The news of the pack removal comes days after the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission was told by Colorado Parks and Wildlife the next planned wolf release would occur in the the same general area as the first releases in Grand and Summit counties.
Reid DeWalt, Colorado Parks and Wildlife assistant director, told the commissioners at their Friday meeting in Colorado Springs that the next release will take place in the northern zone.
The northern zone roughly encompasses from Glenwood Springs on the west, Kremmling on the north, Vail on the east and Aspen on the south. The area includes Interstate 70 running through the middle.
First, though, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has to secure wolves for its next release planned for late this year or early next year. Something which has been difficult to do.
That sourcing was made more difficult after the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington notified Colorado Parks and Wildlife in a June letter that it was rescinding an earlier agreement to send 15 wolves to Colorado later this year and in early 2025.
The Farnik family lives in Raymer in Weld County and is touring the damage after severe storms struck Tuesday afternoon. That part of northeastern Colorado was hit by severe storms and at least one tornado.
CBS
“My dad starts screaming, ‘Tornado! tornado!’” said Marrek Farnik.
According to First Alert Meteorologist Joe Ruch, a destructive combination of high humidity and warm temperatures spawned tornadoes that hit near the small town of Raymer on Tuesday.
“I look up to the north and there’s a beautiful translucent rope tornado just dancing through the fields, just drifting through the north,” said Jeff Farnik.
CBS
The tornado skipped over open fields and eventually struck the family’s shed, leaving it in pieces.
“It was pretty close! A few more feet and it would have taken our roof instead of the roof of the old grainery,” said Margaret Farnik.
“This is northeast Colorado. Weird stuff happens out here between the Palmer and the Cheyenne,” said Marrek Farnik.
CBS
No one was injured in the storm, and there has been only one confirmed tornado report.
The Colorado River basin has lost 27.8m acre-feet of groundwater in the past 20 years, an amount of water nearly equivalent to the full capacity of Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, a new study has found.
The research findings, based on Nasa satellite imagery from across the south-west, highlight the scale of the ongoing water crisis in the region, as both groundwater and surface water are being severely depleted.
“Groundwater is disappearing 2.4 times faster than the surface water,” said Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist at Arizona State University and the study’s senior author.
“Everyone in the US should be worried about it, because we grow a lot of food in the Colorado River basin, and that’s food that’s used all over the entire country,” he added. “These days, we’re also supporting a number of data centers and computer chip manufacturers, and these are essential to our economy.”
The Colorado River basin provides water to approximately 40 million people across seven US states, as well as to millions of acres of farmland. Most of the groundwater losses since 2003 occurred in the Lower Colorado River basin, including Arizona, Nevada and California, the study found.
The decreasing availability of surface water is easy to visualize across the west. There are the stark photographs of the dropping levels of water in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and images of the Colorado River, whose flow has decreased approximately 20% in the past century.
But groundwater is different, Famiglietti said: “It’s invisible. It’s mysterious. The average citizen doesn’t really understand it.”
With less visibility has come less regulation: California only instituted statewide management of its groundwater in 2014, and before that, groundwater use was largely unregulated. Arizona, which has seen big groundwater decreases, still does not regulate groundwater usage in the majority of the state, Famiglietti said, which means that most property-owners can simply pump out as much groundwater as they want.
“Overpumping” is the main cause of groundwater losses over the past 20 years, he said. “There’s nothing illegal about it, it’s just unprotected.”
Most water across the west is used for agriculture, and as “large-scale industrial farming” has expanded in the south-west, and particularly in Arizona, so have the resources for farmers to dig deeper and bigger wells to extract groundwater, Famiglietti said. In Arizona, many of the new farms grow alfalfa, which is used as hay to feed cows. Data centers, though a much smaller overall factor than agriculture, also are a growing business that require water.
The new study found that the depletion of water storage in the Colorado River basin has sped up in the past decade. Since 2015, the basin has been losing freshwater at a rate three times faster than in the decade before, driven mostly by groundwater depletion in Arizona.
While the researchers are advocating for better management of groundwater supplies in the future, Famiglietti also said that the efficacy of groundwater regulations so far was still unclear.
The effects of the climate crisis, including rising average temperatures and more frequent and severe droughts, are expected to make the region’s water shortages worse in the future.
Colorado
Colorado first responders help deliver newborn, mother and baby okay after roadside delivery
Sunday was a day some Colorado firefighters and sheriff’s deputies will never forget.
South Adams County Fire
South Adams County Fire Department’s Engine 23 team responded to what they initially thought was a vehicle crash. It turned out to be a childbirth in progress.
Deputies from the Adams County Sheriff’s Office had arrived moments earlier, and when the firefighters got there, they said “they found a (deputy) holding a newborn baby, delivered moments before.”
The firefighters quickly provided care to the new mother and baby girl. They helped to cut the umbilical cord and heard the baby’s first cry.
Once the baby and mother were taken to the hospital, a physician praised the first responders for providing great care.
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