Travelers and skiers heading to Colorado may see some new wildlife this year. Last month, Colorado Parks & Wildlife released its second batch of gray wolves in a multiyear effort to create a permanent, self-sustaining wolf population.

Fifteen wolves were translocated from the central interior of British Columbia to Colorado. Ten other wolves from Oregon were released in Colorado in December 2023.

The releases are part of the Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan . Colorado voters in November 2020 called for the state’s parks and wildlife department to develop the plan which calls for 30-50 wolves to be released in three to five years.

The wolves are being released in western Colorado — west of the Continental Divide. By law, the releases must be done at least 60 miles from Colorado’s borders with Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico and tribal lands in the southwestern portion of the state.

A wildlife crew captures a gray wolf last month in British Columbia that was later released in Colorado.

The first 10 wolves released were put on public lands in Summit and Grand counties, and two were illegally shot and killed. Summit County is a popular tourism attraction with such well-known ski areas as Vail, Breckenridge, Arapahoe Basin, Copper Mountan and Keystone. Silverthorne is the county’s largest town, dethroning Breckenridge in recent years, says Krystal Media, which operates three local radio stations.

Grand County’s largest town, according to the World Poulation Review, is Granby, which sits near an entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. The county’s most well-known town is Winter Park, a popular ski area.

In January 2024, the Summit Daily reported that the wolves traveled into three other counties — Jackson, Routt and Eagle — but had not gone south of Interstate 70. The wolves have tracking collars that record their position every four hours.

The 15 wolves released last month were put in Pitkin and Eagle counties. Pitkin attracts large numbers of tourists and skiers every year, because Aspen is its largest city, according to the World Population Review. Edwards is the largest town in Eagle County, and Eagle is the county seat.

A gray wolf runs in British Columbia as a crew to capture and take it to Colorado hovers above in a helicopter last month.

Tourists and local residents should ordinarily be unconcerned about their safety when encountering a gray wolf. Attacks by wolves on humans are exceedingly rare, Colorado Parks & Wildlife says. In North America, there are no documented accounts of humans killed by wild wolves between 1900-2000, the department says.

“Wolves generally fear people and rarely pose a threat to human safety,” the agency says. “Activities in Colorado where humans are most likely to interact with wolves include recreation — camping, hiking, hunting, fishing, wildlife viewing — and forest and rangeland work.”

Gray wolves once roamed most of America in abundant numbers. After European settlers arrived, their numbers were substantially reduced, and, by the 1880s, wolves were gone from eastern and central USA, says Colorado Parks & Wildlife. The northwestern states were occupied by gray wolves until the early 1900s.

“Pressure from the livestock industry and a generalized public fear led to the widespread persecution and eventual near total extirpation of gray wolves from all western states,” the parks and wildlife department says. “The gray wolf historically inhabited all counties in Colorado and was extirpated from the state in the mid-1940s.”