An apex predator has “spent some time” in the iconic Colorado lands where the elusive creatures first roamed — before populations vanished from the state entirely.
The gray wolf wandered through Rocky Mountain National Park in August, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s monthly wolf tracking map.
The most recent map shows a wolf roamed through watersheds in the northwestern corner of the park near Trail Ridge Road, which runs east to west across the park and the Continental Divide, a majestic mountainous divide that separates watersheds that drain into the Pacific Ocean and river systems that drain into the Atlantic Ocean.
Wildlife officials use watersheds to track wolf movement because “wolves are far more likely to use geographic features to affect their distribution than they are political boundaries.”
The map shows collared wolf activity between July 23 and Aug. 27.
The wolf’s presence marks the first time one of the predators has been documented inside the iconic park’s boundaries in its 109-year history, a park spokesperson told the Denver Post.
Wolves first had to deal with a dwindling food supply in the late 1800s as western settlers began hunting elk and deer, according to Colorado State University researchers. Settlers then set their sights on the wolves themselves as the predators attacked livestock as a new food source, eventually leading to their eradication by the 1940s.
The wolves are native to Colorado, Rocky Mountain National Park and the greater Rocky Mountain region, the National Park Service said. Wildlife management officials figured the keystone species would “naturally return to the park” after Colorado Parks and Wildlife reintroduced 10 gray wolves to the state in December, the park service said.
“Gray wolves are important apex predators that play a critical role in healthy, functioning ecosystems,” the park service said. “The extirpation of wolves is one of several stressors that has led to degraded wetland ecosystems in the park.”
Some of the stressors include: “land use changes, an overabundant elk population, moose introduction outside of the park and climate change,” but the presence of gray wolves alone probably won’t restore healthy wetlands to the park, officials said.
Other updates for the most recent wolf activity map are that nine of the 10 reintroduced wolves are still alive. Colorado Parks and Wildlife are working on confirming the number of pups the wolves have had.
