It is billed as the “restoration” of a species that once prowled our state — yet the proposal seems driven by sentiment rather than science.
Proposition 114 on the fall ballot would require the Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife to create a plan to reintroduce and manage gray wolves on designated lands west of the Continental Divide by the end of 2023.
Enthusiasts — led by the Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund and its well over $1 million in campaign contributions — argue vaguely that the initiative would restore needed balance to the ecosystem.
Critics foresee devastation to the state’s elk, moose and deer herds to say nothing of the collateral damage to livestock and the threat to humans.
Meanwhile, most of Colorado’s urban-suburban population — i.e., the vast majority of voters who will decide this matter — has at best a limited grasp of wildlife biology and management.
Which is why we have a Division of Parks and Wildlife, staffed with experts whose lifetime work is to study the state’s many species and draw conclusions on matters like reintroduction.
Unfortunately, Prop. 114 usurps and undermines that process, turning a complex consideration into feel-good politics — with potentially disastrous results.
For us, the measure’s wide-ranging and authoritative critics — including those in ag and livestock; in the outdoor recreation industry; wildlife biologists and even a former chief of the state’s Department of Natural Resources — make by far the more convincing case.
Not only does it appear likely that more wolves (Colorado already has some) will wreak havoc, but the measure’s proponents have yet to offer a clear case for why even they want to see the creatures carted back into our state in the first place.
The most compelling reason for voting “no” on 114, however, is simply that it never should have been sent to voters to micromanage. The measure’s opponents call it “ballot-box biology,” and rightly so.
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