Tony Vagneur wrote in a 2015 Aspen Times column, Saddle Sore, “By putting wolves back into the ecosystem, we are putting a balance on the natural order of things” and told Western states that wanted to get rid of wolves, “if you really think you have too many, send some down.”
Pitkin County got some wolves, although they weren’t from Idaho or Wyoming. A year after Colorado reintroduction began, wildlife officials between Jan. 12 and 16 released 15 wolves from British Columbia into Pitkin and Eagle counties. But even before officials let them go, the animals were already causing controversy.
Citing safety reasons, Colorado Parks and Wildlife refused to reveal release locations, which ranchers said would have given them a much-needed jump on launching nonlethal deterrents — from fladry to flashing lights to range riders — to protect their livestock.
Vaugneur changed his tune on wolf reintroduction after the first 10 wolves were released in December 2023. We wanted to know why, so we caught up with him as wolf release 2.0 was unfolding.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
The Colorado Sun: One of the things ranchers said prior to this release is if they knew where the wolves were going to be dropped off, they would have been able to start implementing nonlethal deterrents to keep them away. I’ve followed leads, not to scoop the location of the drop-off, but to see who might be affected. If they’re released in Pitkin County, where you live, who will be impacted?
Tony Vagneur: Well, there’s so many things about this, but you know as well as I do that if you try to keep something secret, you open yourself to conjecture. And I agree with the ranchers, of course. I was having this conversation with my daughter today, and she’s in the cattle business. If you know they’re going to release them, like, down the road, or in your neighborhood, then you have some time to prepare. You can go out there with a range rider, as they like to call it, with a spotlight in the night, and ride your herd. And you can go out and get a great Pyrenees dog. You can do a lot of things. But if the only clue you’re going to get is a dead calf or a cow in the morning, that’s not a very good way to do it.
Sun: So, say they do release them in the Hay Park area (near Old Snowmass and the newly closed St Benedict’s Monastery). How many ranchers could be, or would be impacted there?
Vagneur: On the west side of Hay Park, there’s probably three or four different ranches in a family that run their cattle. They have a substantial amount of cattle. And then on the east side, there’s two or three families with a substantial amount of cattle. Of course, they’re all down now getting fed, on the feed ground for winter. But if depredations started happening to those herds, it could really put a dent in the cattle business here. You know, they’re, like, $1,500 to $2,000 apiece, if you just go buy one off the street. So it doesn’t take long to put somebody out of business at that rate. A ranch is not a high-dollar operation anyway.
Sun: In 2015, you said you’d welcome wolves in Colorado. How do you feel now?
Vagneur: That was a long time ago. But yeah, I was a supporter of bringing the wolves back before the election in Denver. But now I’ve seen how this has been handled, and I don’t like it. It’s not working and there’s too many problems in my mind. And like we started this conversation, there’s no warning. Like, screw you, ranchers, we’ll just turn them loose where we want. That’s not the right attitude in my mind.
This area is overrun with hikers, bikers and outdoor people in the summer, and you’d have to go two, three days into the Frying Pan Wilderness Area to get away from people. The first thing that wolves don’t like is people. If they see a person coming down the trail, they’re gonna flee, unlike some of these people who are afraid they’re gonna get attacked from behind.
But it makes no sense to me that they would turn any of those animals loose in our area here in Pitkin County. Even in the winter, there’s snowmobiles out there and cross-country skiers. It just doesn’t make sense.
Tony Vagnuer is an Aspen native, rancher and author of the Saddle Sore column in the Aspen Times. (Tony Vagneur photo)Sun: What other problems have you seen in the past year?
Vagneur: Well, we haven’t had any problems around here with wolves.
Sun: What about the way CPW is handling reintroduction?
Vagneur: I wrote a column maybe six months ago saying that maybe the reintroduction should be put on hold for a while. And at that time, CPW did kind of get off the dime, and they started doing some seminars around the Western Slope, talking about ways that ranches could deal with wolf depredation, with fladry and range riders. But that’s what should have been done before they ever turned any wolves loose in Colorado. So that was a mismanagement step in my mind and it’s going to compound itself here.
Sun: What’s the sort of makeup with public land, private land, state and federal in PItkin County?
Vagneur: The majority of the ground is forest service, and there’s the Bureau of Land Management. There’s quite a bit of that. And there’s a lot of private land. But not many people ranch. You know, with the new world of big money, a lot of people buy large tracts of land just for privacy. And then, if you run some cattle in Pitkin County, you can get an agricultural exemption.
So, you know, a guy might have 100 acres, and they’ll put five head of cows out there for a month. A few people get by with running cows that way. He might have 50 head of cows, but you can farm them out five or 10 here and there. So anyway, it’s kind of a — I can’t think of the word I want to use — but a symbiotic relationship. It doesn’t really have anything to do with ranching, but it has a lot to do with privacy and low taxes.
Sun: What do you think the reaction will be if there is a private rancher out there who said, release them on my land?
Vagneur: Somebody called me this morning and asked me, how many wraps do you put in the hanging noose?
Sun: Really?
Vagneur: [Laughs.] No, I’m kidding you.
I honestly believe, for the ranchers I know around here, and I think I know them all, that they will abide by the rules. I don’t think anybody that’s a rancher is going to do something stupid. You’re not going to go out there and try to shoot them, but they’re going to try to protect their livestock, sure, and so they’ll do whatever they can, but they’ll stay within bounds. You know, there’s that one wolf from, I can’t think of the pack …
Sun: The Copper Creek pack?
Vagneur: Yeah. You know, somebody shot one of those wolves that later died, and now some group has a $100,000 reward out for that. And so you need to take it seriously. I mean, you can’t just go out and start shooting stuff or you’ll get in some real trouble.
Sun: It sounds like you have a lot of respect for wolves as a creature and a predator. Am I understanding correctly? Like, it’s not the wolves that are the problem? It’s the way they’re being managed?
Vagneur: Yeah, I think so. I mean, the wolves are the wolves. You can’t talk to them, you can’t reason with them and they have their natural instincts. And part of the problem I see, honestly, is we killed all the buffalo back when we thought that was the intelligent thing to do, so then the wolves started turning to domestic livestock because there was nothing else to eat. Then we tried to extirpate them from the whole landscape, because we just didn’t want them messing with us.
And then we created the situation we have today, where there are supposedly no or very few wolves in Colorado. But by them being gone, we’ve changed the interaction of all the species. So I think it’s naive to think that you can just turn wolves out in Colorado, and with a little luck, think we’re going to revert back to the natural days we had before we tried to kill them all off. I don’t think we have the necessary nature in place to really make that work. I hope I’m wrong, but I think that’s a real impediment to success.
Sun: Interesting.
Vagneur: And with the cattle, I mean the way they run in the range now, they have their domains that they are used to. There are also very few lynx, if any, in this area. We don’t know what the mountain lion population was 100 years ago. But I mean, even down to chipmunks and coyotes, the whole interaction in the natural world changed when you got rid of the wolves.
Every time we do something stupid with the environment for our benefit, it has an effect beyond what we do. So if you just put one component, like the wolf, back into the natural environment that we have changed immensely over the last 100 years, expecting everything to work as we think might be too much of a positive thought.
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Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( A Pitkin County rancher welcomed wolves in 2015. After reintroduction started, he changed his tune. )
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