Colorado voters narrowly were favoring a potentially precedent-setting ballot measure that would direct wildlife managers to reintroduce wolves on former habitat in the state west of the Continental Divide.
Proposition 114, the Gray Wolf Reintroduction Initiative, was leading with 50.3% of the vote in favor and 49.7% against, with 89% of votes counted Wednesday night — a difference of 17,213 votes.
Betsy Hart, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office, said the vote difference Wednesday morning was “not within the range of requiring a recount.” But ballots “are still being processed.” State law requires a recount when the difference is less than 0.5% of votes.
Most of the votes still left to be counted come from urban areas including Denver and Boulder, where strong majorities have supported reintroducing wolves. Voters in rural areas strongly have opposed the measure.
This neck-and-neck ballot battle over an environmental issue in Colorado has mirrored the too-close-to-call national tussle for the presidency.
The measure would require Colorado Parks and Wildlife to create a plan based on the best science and reintroduce a sustainable number of wolves, by the end of 2023, on designated public land west of the Continental Divide. If passed, it would be the first time voters in a state have forced efforts to recover an imperiled species.
Reintroducing wolves in Colorado also could expand a wolf comeback along the Rocky Mountains from Alaska to Mexico that began in 1995 with reintroductions in Yellowstone National Park. More than 1,700 wolves now reside in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming.
Colorado officials charged with managing wildlife repeatedly have rejected the idea of reintroducing wolves, which have benefited under federal protection as an endangered species. That protection was lifted last week. Wolves’ fate in Colorado and in states where thousands are established depends increasingly on state-level management plans.
“We’ve been compelled to go directly to voters and cut politicians out of the picture. Wildlife agencies work for us, in theory, but in the case of certain species, the people have not been listened to,” Defenders of Wildlife Rockies and Plains program director Jon Proctor said, citing rapid worldwide extinction of species due to human activities.
“If wolves are restored to Colorado and habitat connectivity is restored, we will have restored a large carnivore, the wolf, from Alaska to Mexico — a restoration of global significance. It means we’re willing to restore biodiversity that we’ve lost. If Prop 114 passes, it shows that people are willing to help reverse that trend where we can.”
Opponents argue wolves will hurt cattle and sheep ranching and disrupt collaborative landscape conservation in the face of a human population growth and development boom.
“Yellowstone doesn’t have big buildings, highways, industry, transmission lines, subdivisions and ski areas — things that make Colorado what it is,” said Shawn Martini, spokesman for Coloradans for Protecting Wildlife, which has fought the measure with support from ranchers, county commissioners and chambers of commerce. “We have an established system for wildlife conservation. This wolf initiative does an end-run around that process. They’ve short-circuited it. They’re trying to get what experts in the state agency have told them they cannot have.”
Colorado residents historically haven’t shied from approving ballot measures to drive change. They voted to keep the Winter Olympics out of the state (1972), prohibit underground nuclear explosions except with prior voter approval (1974), ban the use of state money for abortion (1984), and legalize marijuana by amending the state constitution (2012).
