Another wolf has died in Colorado, the 14th wolf death since the start of the state’s controversial and troubled wolf reintroduction program.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife announced the death Friday, saying the female wolf’s collar on Wednesday sent a “mortality signal,” meaning the animal was no longer moving.
The wolf, wearing collar number 2310, was the mother of the King Mountain pack in northwestern Colorado. The state wildlife agency, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will conduct a necropsy to determine the cause of death. State wildlife officials released no other details.
More than half of the 25 gray wolves translocated to the state since the reintroduction program that began in 2023 are now dead.
It’s the third wolf death so far in 2026. The second died in January while CPW biologists were trying to fit it with a tracking collar. He was a breeding male also from the King Mountain pack. Wildlife officials confirmed the pack had three pups, genders unknown, in June and released a video of them playing in the forest in July.
The first death this year was a female wolf that died in January.
State wildlife officials have said from the start that they expected high mortality rates of wolves, but the mortality rate is now higher than 50%.
The state agency’s management plan said a survival rate of less than 70% six months after release would “initiate a protocol review” and if there were an unusually large number of losses during the first year of releases “or following any modification to established protocols,” it would trigger a review of management procedures.
Wolves have been released twice, in 2023 and 2025. The plan had called for releasing 30 to 50 animals over three to five years. But state officials announced in January that they would not bring any more wolves into the state this year. That announcement followed an October cease and desist order from federal officials, prohibiting the state from getting any more wolves from British Columbia.
CPW on Thursday announced it was giving up an effort to kill a pup that was left behind when the first pack to form in the state, the Copper Creek pack, was captured in 2024.
The uncollared wolf had preyed on livestock in Rio Blanco County enough times to meet the agency’s chronic depredation definition. CPW staff used drones and thermal imaging to search for the wolf between Jan. 24 and Feb. 22. But CPW Director Laura Clellan said lack of snow and challenging terrain made it too difficult to keep searching.
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