Denver’s nonstop international flights will increase this winter and Denver International Airport officials anticipate global connections will push DIA’s annual traffic above 100 million passengers sooner than expected with a projected record-high 82 million passengers this year.

The new flights will carry travelers to Mexico, France and Iceland.

They build on the launch earlier this year of a 13-hour nonstop flight from Denver to Istanbul, Turkey. DIA officials have prioritized the expansion of international flights and they’re exploring more routes, including one linking Denver with Ethiopia, increased flights to Japan, and a nonstop flight to Amsterdam.

International air travel increased by 17.2% during the first half of 2024 compared with 2023, a factor in the overall increase from 77 million passengers in 2023 to a projected 82 million, DIA chief executive Phil Washington told city council members this month. A monthly record 7.6 million passengers boarded planes at DIA in June. “We think we might break the June record around the Labor Day time frame,” Washington said.

DIA officials have been planning on 100 million passengers a year as soon as 2027. The airport was built to accommodate 50 million. Current construction includes the installation of an expanded, 17-lane security checkpoint.

Starting this winter, DIA  will offer 14% more flights to European destinations.

Here’s the expanded service travelers will see, according to information provided by DIA communications manager Michael Konopasek:

— Air France nonstop flights to Paris. The summer seasonal service will expand to year-round service with flights three days a week between November and March

— Icelandair nonstop flights to Reykjavik. Icelandair Air will run flights on four days a week from January through mid-February, then ramp up to five days a week through the end of winter, increasing to as many as 11 flights a week during peak summer months. In recent years, Icelandair didn’t run flights between early January and late March.

— Aeromexico will add a flight to Monterrey, Mexico starting on Dec. 21 (one day a week on Saturdays through mid-April). This adds to the Viva Aerobus nonstop service between Denver and Monterrey.

“It’s a big deal,” Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce president J.J. Ament said. The new flights “show that we continue to emerge as a place where you can do business around the world, taking advantage of Colorado’s highly-trained workforce and deploying it globally,” Ament said.

“The airlines wouldn’t be doing this if the routes were not performing economically. And it is a testament to the vision our airport officials have for the future.”

DIA is the third busiest airport in the United States and the sixth-busiest in the world, with passenger numbers increasing from 69 million in 2019, according to the latest data from the Airports Council International.

Originally Published: August 28, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.

Colorado wildlife officials are relocating two reintroduced wolves and their pups after a series of livestock depredations — a setback for the historic and controversial reintroduction program launched late last year.

The pack of wolves, called the Copper Creek pack, will be captured from the wild in Grand County, Colorado Parks and Wildlife announced Tuesday night. The agency did not disclose where the pack will be moved to, citing the need to protect the wolves and CPW staff.

“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,” CPW Director Jeff Davis said in a statement. ”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 relocation announcement comes less than 10 days after the wildlife agency announced proof of at least three pups born this spring and shared a video showing the pups playing in a puddle. The pups are the first born to wolves released in December as part of a voter-mandated reintroduction of the predator species extirpated from Colorado nearly a century ago.

Agency leaders will provide more information about the relocation after the targeted wolves are captured, according to the statement.

The agency’s statement about the relocation raises more questions than it answers, said Michael Saul, director of the Rockies and Plains Program at Defenders of Wildlife, which advocated for the reintroduction. Saul wanted to know whether CPW will keep the pack together during the capture and relocation effort, where they will be taken and where they will be released back into the wild — if at all.

“This reintroduction is in its tenuous, early stages and I just don’t understand how it makes sense to give up on the one reproducing pack we have,” he said.

The Copper Creek pack’s wolves, including the known pups, are among at least a dozen of the animals now roaming Colorado’s mountains. Eight other adults were released in December after their capture and relocation from Oregon, and a pair of Wyoming-based wolves naturally migrated into the state earlier. One of the relocated wolves was found dead in the spring.

Colorado voters in 2020 narrowly voted in favor of the reintroduction program, fueled primarily by voters along the urban Front Range. Many ranchers have opposed the effort and have said the return of wolves threatens their livelihoods and ways of life.

Colorado is the first state to reintroduce the apex predator.

Since the reintroduction, wolves have killed or injured at least nine sheep and 15 head of cattle, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s list of confirmed depredations. Most of those depredations were caused by the paired wolves in Middle Park, which formed the Copper Creek pack, said Reid DeWalt, CPW’s assistant director for the agency’s Aquatic, Terrestrial and Natural Resources branch, on Friday during a Parks and Wildlife Commission meeting.

“We have had a few other depredations from the other wolves, but nothing to the level we’ve seen in Middle Park,” he said.

Ranchers in Middle Park repeatedly have asked the agency to take action to stop the wolf depredations, but the agency until now has declined to intervene beyond providing more nonlethal deterrent resources. The Middle Park Stockgrowers in the spring requested a permit that would allow ranchers to kill depredating wolves, but the permit was denied.

DeWalt offered an update on the wolf reintroduction effort during the commission meeting but did not mention the possibility of relocating the wolves. Davis, CPW’s director, also did not mention the relocation during his update to the commission.

The agency still plans to release more wolves this winter, DeWalt said Friday. CPW has not yet found a state or government willing to supply wolves after a Washington tribe reversed its agreement to provide the canines.

But DeWalt said staff members were confident they’d be able to find another source. The agency plans to release the next batch of wolves in the same northern zone they used late last year so that they’ll increase the wolf population in the area, DeWalt said.

The agency has hired five predator damage conflict specialists. Their job is to focus primarily on wolf issues, but they will also work on predations with bears and mountain lions, DeWalt said.

The five specialists and other CPW staff attended a two-week training in Oregon and Idaho to learn about wolf management and how to deter depredations, he said.

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Originally Published: August 27, 2024 at 8:11 p.m.