Colorado Parks and Wildlife has just killed three young wolves in a single week: a female wolf from the One Ear pack, whose territory spans Grand County, on Sept. 9, plus two more yearlings killed on Sept. 7 in Rio Blanco and Pitkin counties. This comes after the agency killed another One Ear pack yearling back in August, following livestock conflicts on remote, public grazing land where officials never confirmed which wolf actually caused the harm.

Coloradans voted to bring wolves back because they wanted a real, lasting recovery — and state law requires it. Colorado Parks and Wildlife has a legal duty to make that recovery succeed, not just to respond to every rancher complaint with a bullet. "Colorado has a statutory obligation to restore a sustainable population of wolves to Colorado, but Colorado Parks and Wildlife's lethal actions are undermining wolf recovery in our state," said Delia Malone, ecologist and board president of ColoradoWild.

With so few wolves in Colorado and no new reintroductions planned, every killing pushes recovery further out of reach. And when the state can't even confirm which wolf caused a conflict, killing one anyway does nothing but shrink a population it's legally obligated to protect.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife needs to pause further lethal removals from vulnerable packs like One Ear and lean on the non-lethal coexistence tools its own wolf management plan calls for.

Sign the petition demanding Colorado Parks and Wildlife honor its legal duty to recover wolves — before this fragile population pays the price.