A Forced Reintroduction

With a total length of 382,894 square miles, the Rocky Mountains run from Canada, through Idaho, Montana, Colorado, and down to New Mexico.The Rocky Mountains are home to many mountains with elevations over 14,000 feet and are filled with diverse wildlife.Bears, deer, elk, moose, eagles, trout, beavers, minks, porcupines, hawks, and cougars cover the forests, and once mustangs and wolves ranged across most valleys.Over eighty-five years ago in Colorado, wolves were annihilated from the wilderness due to their perceived threat to humans and livestock.Bounties were placed for wolves by Stock Owners Associations and they "were trapped, shot, and hunted to their dens so that wolf pups could be dragged out and clubbed to death or perhaps secured to a rope or chain so they could whine and howl and draw their parents back to the den to be dispatched first.Then the cubs were killed" (Carhart et al. 204).Since the last wolf sighting in Colorado in 1935, the human populations have significantly increased, causing adverse impacts to the natural environment, and there is no end in sight.The passing of Colorado's Proposition 114 in 2020 approved the reintroduction of grey wolves into Colorado by 2024 and will greatly harm the existing wildlife.The fate of wolf reintroduction into Colorado should not have been decided by citizens of the state due to the general lack of public environmental awareness, and instead it should have been a decision made by leading biologists and environmental professionals.