New map will help inform Coloradans on general areas inhabited by gray wolves in Colorado

A map published earlier this week on Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s website will inform the public, recreationists and livestock producers on where wolves have been in the past month. This map will be updated with new information on a monthly basis, produced on the fourth Wednesday of every month, and will reflect data for the prior month, give or take several days.

These maps are created using GPS collar data collected from all 12 collared wolves in Colorado. This includes the 10 animals reintroduced from Oregon, as well as the two collared wolves in North Park.

This map depicts watersheds where the 12 collared wolves in Colorado have been for the last month. A watershed is a geographic unit that drains water into a specific waterbody. These are also known as Hydrologic Unit Codes (HUC). Information is shared at the HUC 10 level. Watersheds are the appropriate mapping unit to display wolf activity information because wolves are far more likely to use geographic features to affect their distribution than they are political boundaries.

In order for a watershed to indicate wolf activity, at least one GPS point from the wolf collars was recorded within the boundaries of the watershed. Simply because a watershed indicates wolf activity, it does not mean that a wolf or wolves are present throughout the entire watershed nor that they are currently in the watershed. For example, a wolf has not yet been located south of I-70, even though the watershed in which a wolf was detected spans both north and south of the Interstate.



Jeff
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