Colorado’s reintroduced wolves continue to roam widely across the state in the last month, though wildlife officials who released a tracking map said the geolocating collar for one of the canines was no longer working.
The 12 wolves known to live in Colorado, including 10 released in December, spent time in a large swath of the state, according to a new map of wolf activity released Wednesday by Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
Their range stretched from the Wyoming border near Walden to just south of Avon, and from Meeker in the west to east of Granby.
The map tracks which watersheds the wolves have been present in since Feb. 28. If a watershed is included on the map, that means at least one wolf entered that area over the last month.
The wolf may or may not remain there, and it may not have traversed every part of that watershed, CPW says.
While a wolf was recorded in February crossing the Continental Divide into Larimer County, the wolf has since moved back west across the divide and out of the Front Range county, the map indicates.
Ten of the wolves were captured in Oregon and released into Colorado in December as part of the state’s historic, voter-mandated reintroduction of the apex predator. The two remaining wolves are what remains of a pack that established itself after migrating south from Wyoming.
A collar on a wolf released in December stopped functioning this month, CPW officials said in a news release Wednesday. That wolf is traveling with another, however, and wildlife officials have continued to monitor the wolf with a broken collar.
They confirmed it was still alive by spotting it from an airplane.
A collar on another wolf is only partially functioning and may stop working soon, CPW officials said in the news release.
All 12 wolves remain alive and there have been no reported kills or injuries to livestock, according to the release.
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