Colorado
US Fish and Wildlife backed Colorado plan to get wolves from Canada before new threats to take over program, documents show
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service backed Colorado’s plan to obtain wolves from Canada nearly two years before the federal agency lambasted the move as a violation of its rules, newly obtained documents show.
In a letter dated Feb. 14, 2024, the federal agency told Colorado state wildlife officials they were in the clear to proceed with a plan to source wolves from British Columbia without further permission.
“Because Canadian gray wolves aren’t listed under the Endangered Species Act,” no ESA authorization or federal authorization was needed for the state to capture or import them in the Canadian province, according to the letter sent to Eric Odell, CPW’s wolf conservation program manager.
The letter, obtained by The Colorado Sun from state Parks and Wildlife through an open records request, appears to be part of the permissions the state received before sourcing 15 wolves. The agency also received sign-offs from the British Columbia Ministry of Land, Water and Resource Stewardship and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna.
In mid-December, however, the Fish and Wildlife Service pivoted sharply from that position, criticizing the plan and threatening to take control over Colorado’s reintroduction.
In a letter dated Dec. 18, Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesvik put CPW on alert when he told acting CPW Director Laura Clellan that the agency violated requirements in a federal rule that dictates how CPW manages its reintroduction.
Colorado voters in 2020 directed CPW to reestablish gray wolves west of the Continental Divide, a process that has included bringing wolves from Oregon in 2023 and British Columbia in 2025.
The federal rule Nesvik claims CPW violated is the 10(j). It gives Colorado management flexibility over wolves by classifying them as a nonessential experimental population within the state of Colorado. Nesvik said CPW violated the 10(j) by capturing wolves from Canada instead of the northern Rocky Mountain states of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, eastern Oregon and north-central Utah “with no warning or notice to its own citizens.”
CPW publicly announced sourcing from British Columbia on Sept. 13, 2024, however, and held a meeting with county commissioners in Rio Blanco, Garfield, Pitkin and Eagle counties ahead of the planned releases last January. The agency also issued press releases when the operations began and at the conclusion of operations, and they held a press conference less than 48 hours later.
Nesvik’s December letter doubled down on one he sent CPW on Oct. 10, after Greg Lopez, a former Colorado congressman and 2026 gubernatorial candidate, contacted him claiming the agency violated the Endangered Species Act when it imported wolves from Canada, because they lacked permits proving the federal government authorized the imports.
That letter told CPW to “cease and desist” going back to British Columbia for a second round of wolves, after the agency had obtained the necessary permits to complete the operation. Nesvik’s reasoning was that CPW had no authority to capture wolves from British Columbia because they aren’t part of the northern Rocky Mountain region population.
But as regulations within the 10(j) show, the northern Rocky Mountain population of wolves “is part of a larger metapopulation of wolves that encompasses all of Western Canada.”
And “given the demonstrated resilience and recovery trajectory of the NRM population and limited number of animals that will be captured for translocations,” the agencies that developed the rule – Fish and Wildlife with Colorado Parks and Wildlife – expected “negative impacts to the donor population to be negligible.”
So despite what Nesvik and Lopez claim, “neither identified any specific provision of any law – federal, state or otherwise – that CPW or anyone else supposedly violated by capturing and releasing wolves from British Columbia,” said Tom Delehanty, senior attorney for Earthjustice. “They’ve pointed only to the 10(j) rule, which is purely about post-release wolf management, and applies only in Colorado.”
More experts weigh in
In addition to the 2024 letter from the Fish and Wildlife Service, documents obtained by The Sun include copies of permits given to CPW by the Ministry of British Columbia to export 15 wolves to the United States between Jan. 12 and Jan. 16, 2025.
These permits track everything from live animals and pets to products made from protected wildlife including ivory.
The permit system is the backbone of the regulation of trade in specimens of species included in the three Appendices of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, also called CITES. A CITES permit is the confirmation by an issuing authority that the conditions for authorizing the trade are fulfilled, meaning the trade is legal, sustainable and traceable in accordance with articles contained within the Convention.
Gary Mowad, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife agent and expert on Endangered Species Act policies, said “obtaining a CITES certificate is unrelated to the 10j rule” and that in his estimation, CPW did violate both the terms of the 10(j) and the memorandum of agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service, because “the 10(j) specifically limited the populations from where wolves could be obtained, and Canada was not authorized.”
Mike Phillips, a Montana legislator who was instrumental in Yellowstone’s wolf reintroduction that began in 1995, thinks “the posturing about a takeover seems like just casually considered bravado from Interior officials.”
And Delahanty says “Nesvik and Lopez are making up legal requirements that don’t exist for political leverage in an effort that serves no one. It’s unclear what FWS hopes to accomplish with its threatening letter,” but if they rescind the memorandum of agreement, “it would cast numerous elements of Colorado’s wolf management program into uncertainty.”
Looking forward
If Fish and Wildlife does as Nesvik’s letter threatens and revokes all of CPW’s authority over grey wolves in its jurisdiction, “the service would assume all gray wolf management activities, including relocation and lethal removal, as determined necessary,” it says.
But Phillips says “if Fish and Wildlife succeeds in the agency’s longstanding goal of delisting gray wolves nationwide,” a proposition that is currently moving through Congress, with U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s Pet and Livestock Protection Act bill, the agency couldn’t take over Colorado’s wolf program. That’s because “wolf conservation falls back to Colorado with (its voter-approved) restoration mandate.” And “the species is listed as endangered/nongame under state law,” he adds.
If the feds did take over, Phillips said in an email “USFWS does not have staff for any meaningful boots-on-the-ground work.” Under Fish and Wildlife Service control, future translocations would probably be “a firm nonstarter,” he added, “but that seems to be the case now.”
A big threat should Fish and Wildlife take over is that lethal removal of wolves “in the presence of real or imagined conflicts might be more quickly applied,” Phillips said.
But it would all be tied up in legal constraints, given that gray wolves are still considered an endangered species in Colorado, and requirements of the 10(j) and state law say CPW must advance their recovery.
So for now, it’s wait and see if CPW can answer Fish and Wildlife’s demand that accompanies Nesvik’s latest letter.
Nesvik told the agency they must report “all gray wolf conservation and management activities that occurred from Dec. 12, 2023, until present,” as well as provide a narrative summary and all associated documents describing both the January 2025 British Columbia release and other releases by Jan. 18., or 30 days after the date on his letter. If they don’t, he said, Fish and Wildlife “will pursue all legal remedies,” including “the immediate revocation of all CPW authority over gray wolves in its jurisdiction.”
Shelby Wieman, a spokesperson for Gov. Jared Polis’ office, said Colorado disagrees with the premise of Nesvik’s letter and remains “fully committed to fulfilling the will of Colorado voters and successfully reintroducing the gray wolf population in Colorado.”
And CPW maintains it “has coordinated with USFWS throughout the gray wolf reintroduction effort and has complied with all applicable federal and state laws. This includes translocations in January of 2025 which were planned and performed in consultation with USFWS.”
Leading the Way
Nate the Great
MacKinnon is tied for fifth in the NHL in points (10), while ranking tied for seventh in goals (4) and tied for ninth in assists (6).
All Hail Cale
Cale Makar is tied for first in goals (4) among NHL defensemen,
Toewser Laser
Among NHL blueliners, Devon Toews is tied for third in points (7) while ranking tied for fifth in assists (5) and tied for sixth in goals (2).
Series History
The Avalanche and Wild have met in the playoffs on three previous occasions, all in the Round One, with Minnesota winning in 2003 and 2014 in seven games while Colorado was victorious in six contests in 2008.
Making Plays Against Minnesota
MacKinnon has posted 16 points (4g/12a) in nine playoff games against the Wild, in addition to 70 points (27g/43a) in 55 regular-season contests.
Makar has registered three points (2g/1a) in two playoff contests against Minnesota, along with 26 points (6g/20a) in 29 regular-season games.
Necas has recorded five points (1g/4a) in two playoff games against the Wild, in addition to nine points (5g/4a) in 15 regular-season games.
Scoring in the Twin Cities
Quinn Hughes is tied for the Wild lead in points (11) and assists (8) while ranking tied for second in goals (3).
Kaprizov is tied for first on the Wild in assists (8) and points (11) while ranking tied for second in goals (3).
Matt Boldy leads the Wild in goals (6) while ranking third in points (10) and tied for fourth in assists (4).
A Numbers Game
4.50
Colorado’s 4.50 goals per game on the road in the playoffs are tied for the most in the NHL.
39
MacKinnon’s 39 playoff goals since 2020-21 are the second most in the NHL.
2.17
The Avalanche’s 2.17 goals against per game in the playoffs are the second fewest in the NHL.
Quote That Left a Mark
“It should definitely get you up and excited. It’s gonna be a good test. [It’s a] great building and [it’s] against a desperate team. It’s gonna be great.”
— Gabriel Landeskog on playing in Minnesota
Colorado
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signs state budget, with Medicaid taking brunt of cuts to close $1.5 billion gap
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Friday, May 8, signed into law a $46.8 billion state budget that cuts healthcare spending but preserves funding for K-12 education.
The budget applies to the 2026-27 fiscal year, which begins on July 1, and caps months of work by lawmakers, who wrestled with how to close a roughly $1.5 billion gap that ultimately forced reductions to Medicaid funding and other programs.
“This year was incredibly difficult and challenged each of us in a myriad of ways that put our values to the test,” said Rep. Emily Sirtota, a Denver Democrat and chair of the bipartisan Joint Budget Committee, which crafts the state’s spending plan before it is voted on by the full legislature. “It’s a zero-sum game. A dollar here means a dollar less over here.”
The state’s spending gap was the result of several factors.
The legislature is limited in how it can spend under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, an amendment to the state constitution approved by voters in 1992 that limits government revenue growth to the rate of population growth plus inflation.
Lawmakers are also dealing with the consequences of increased spending on programs they created or expanded in recent years, some of which have seen their costs balloon beyond their original estimates. Costs for Medicaid services, in particular, have surged, driven by inflation, expanded benefits and greater demand for expensive, long-term care services due to Colorado’s aging population.
Medicaid cuts
Medicaid recently eclipsed K-12 education as the single-largest chunk of the state’s general fund and now accounts for roughly one-third of all spending from that fund.
Lawmakers, who are required by the state constitution to pass a deficit-free budget, said they had no choice but to cut Medicaid funding as a result.
That includes a 2% reduction to the state’s reimbursement rate for most Medicaid providers. The budget also institutes a $3,000 cap on adult dental benefits, limits billable hours for at-home caregivers of family members with severe disabilities to 56 hours per week and phases out, by Jan. 1, automatic enrollment for children with disabilities to receive 24/7 care as adults.
The budget also cuts benefits and places new limits on Cover All Coloradans, a program created by the legislature in 2022 that provides identical coverage as Medicaid to low-income immigrant children and pregnant women, regardless of their immigration status.
That includes an end to long-term care services for new enrollees, a $1,100 limit on dental benefits, and an annual enrollment cap of 25,000 for children 18 or younger. The cuts come as spending on the program has grown more than 600% beyond its original estimate, going from roughly $14.7 million to an estimated $104.5 million for the 2025-26 fiscal year.
While the budget still represents an overall increase in Medicaid spending compared to this year, funding is roughly half of what it would have been had lawmakers not made any changes to benefits and provider rates, which total about $270 million in savings for the state.
Healthcare leaders say the cuts will exacerbate an already challenging environment for providers, who are bracing for less federal support after Congress last year passed sweeping Medicaid cuts and declined to renew enhanced subsidies for the Affordable Care Act.
For rural hospitals in particular, Medicaid is one of their key funding drivers.
“While a 2% (Medicaid reimbursement rate cut) doesn’t sound like a whole lot, when we already have close to 50% of our rural hospitals statewide operating in the red and 70% with unsustainable margins, facing another 2% (cut) on top of that is just devastating,” said Michelle Mills, CEO for the Colorado Rural Health Center, which represents rural hospitals on the Western Slope and Eastern Plains.
If the state provides less reimbursement for Medicaid services, Mills said it will lead to fewer providers accepting Medicaid plans. That in turn will mean fewer care options for people, particularly in Colorado’s rural counties, where healthcare services are already more limited.
“I feel like all of the decisions and cuts that they’re making are hitting everyone,” she said.
Rep. Rick Taggart, a Grand Junction Republican and budget committee member, said cuts to healthcare led to “a lot of tears.”
“This was a tough budget, and nobody won in this budget, but we did what we had to do by way of the (state) constitution,” he said.
While Medicaid saw some of the biggest cuts, lawmakers also trimmed spending from a suite of other programs, including financial aid for adoptive parents and grants providing mental health support for law enforcement.
Preserving K-12 education
One of the brighter spots for Polis and lawmakers in the budget is K-12 education.
After years of chronically underfunding the state’s schools, lawmakers in 2024 rolled out a revamped funding formula and abolished what was known as the budget stabilization factor, a Great Recession-era mechanism that had allowed the state to skirt its constitutional funding obligation to schools for more than a decade.
The new funding formula went into effect this school year, and the state is set to continue delivering higher levels of K-12 funding in the 2026-27 fiscal year budget. The budget allocates roughly $10.19 billion in K-12 funding, an increase of roughly $194.8 million, though the specifics of that spending are still being worked out in a separate bill, the 2026 School Finance Act, which has yet to pass the legislature.
The finance act guides how state and local funds are allocated to Colorado’s 178 school districts on a per-pupil basis. As it stands now, the bill is on track to increase per-pupil funding by $440 per student for the 2026-27 fiscal year, for a total of $12,314 per student.
“We are not returning to the days of underfunding our schools and a budget stabilization factor,” Polis said.
Still, there are challenges on the horizon for some districts.
Combined with a proposed three-year averaging model for student counts instead of the current four-year averaging, recent dips in student enrollment across the state will weigh more heavily on how much funding is allocated to each district. The shift to three-year averaging advances the state’s plan to gradually phase in the new school finance formula by 2030-31.
With several districts seeing decreased year-over-year enrollment and rising operational expenses like healthcare, some Western Slope school districts are poised to see less funding compared to this year, while others are seeing their increases eaten up by inflation.
A note on wolves
The topic of Colorado’s spending on gray wolf reintroduction hasn’t gone away, and while Medicaid headlined much of the budget discussions, lawmakers also used the spending plan to send a message on the future of the wolf program.
While the budget allocates $2.1 from the general fund to Colorado Parks and Wildlife to spend on wolf reintroduction, it also contains a footnote from lawmakers asking the agency not to use the money to acquire new wolves.
Footnotes are not legally binding, but rather serve as a direction or guidance from lawmakers to agencies on how they want certain funds spent.
Under the footnote, the wildlife agency could still use gifts, grants, donations and non-license revenue from its wildlife cash fund to bring additional wolves to Colorado. Most of the agency’s wolf funding goes toward personnel, followed by operating costs, compensation for ranchers and conflict minimization programs and tools.
Education reporter Andrea Teres-Martinez and wildlife and environmental reporter Ali Longwell contributed to this story.
A widespread cyberattack targeting the learning platform Canvas is disrupting thousands of schools across the country, including in Colorado. It’s hitting students at one of the worst possible times: finals week.
Cybercriminal group ShinyHunters claimed credit for the attack, breaching systems tied to Instructure, the company that runs Canvas. Canvas is used by 41% of higher education institutions across the country to deliver courses. Millions of K-12 students rely on the platform as well.
In Colorado, more than 20 schools, including Colorado School of Mines, Metropolitan State University of Denver, the University of Denver, the University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado State University, and the University of Northern Colorado, have been affected by the cybersecurity attack.
The group is attempting to extort the company, threatening to release massive amounts of student data if demands are not met.
For students like Flannery Headley, a political science major at MSU Denver, the disruption is more than an inconvenience — it’s a major source of stress.
“The moment I tried to click on something, it gave me this maintenance down page,” she said. “I started Googling things, and I saw this whole thing about the hack.”
Headley says she was working on assignments when Canvas suddenly stopped functioning.
MSU sent out guidance telling students not to log into Canvas and to wait for updates from professors.
Like many students, Headley is now left in limbo, unsure how finals will be submitted or graded.
“This final I’ve spent the last week working on might not matter,” she said. “At least one of my grades is hinging on another final, whether I’m going to pass or fail.”
The attackers claim to have stolen large amounts of data, including names, student ID numbers, email addresses, and academic records.
Experts say the real risk may not just be disruption, but what happens next.
“The worst they could do is release it,” said MSU Denver computer science professor Steve Beaty. “There’s been minor leaks and breaches and these sorts of things from time to time, but nothing on the scale of this.”
Beatty says the group claims to have terabytes of student data, which could include personally identifiable information protected under federal privacy laws. If released, that information could be used for scams, identity theft, or further cyberattacks.
Canvas is a cloud-based system used by thousands of institutions, meaning a single attack can have massive ripple effects.
“They took the entire Canvas infrastructure down,” Beatty said. “That affects about 9,000 schools, tens of thousands of people in Colorado alone.”
Right now, schools are scrambling to find workarounds, from email submissions to alternative testing methods.
There is no current timeline for resolution. The hacker group has set a May 12 deadline for the company to respond before potentially releasing the data.
Until then, students like Headley are left waiting, hoping their work doesn’t disappear.
“I’m going to keep working on my finals,” she said, “but I’m not sure what that’s going to look like.”
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