When it comes to wildlife management programs, there’s perhaps none more contentious than the Colorado wolf reintroduction effort that was set into motion back in 2020. It was then that voters narrowly approved Proposition 114, mandating the reintroduction of gray wolves west of the Continental Divide. The measure passed by a thin margin, surviving on about 57,000 votes out of more than 3 million that were cast.
As many expected, rural counties where the prospective wild canines would soon call home overwhelmingly rejected the measure, leaving it to be carried by urban and Front Range voters. Now, six years later with wolves on the ground, sky-high depredation claims, and a program that is literally on life support, a new challenge is now landing on federal desks arguing that the whole damn thing was built on sand.
Seth Keshel, a retired Army intelligence captain and election data analyst, known for his deep dives into voting patterns, has since been commissioned by the Colorado Conservation Alliance and the Colorado Independent CattleGrowers Association to examine the 2020 results. His results, which were released just last week, are now casting doubt over the legitimacy of the very votes that brought wolves back to the Centennial State.
In his report, Keshel contends that alleged irregularities and "fortification" around the presidential race (favoring Biden by a wide margin) created a spillover effect on down-ballot measures. Adjusting for what he sees as a more realistic statewide margin, his estimates indicate that Prop 114 would have failed by 5.7%.
CPW
On June 5th, Colorado Conservation Alliance Chairman Michael Clark submitted the analysis to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, asking them to reconsider the state's wolf program implementation agreement while the "will of the people" claim is reviewed.
“Therefore, if USFWS is concerned to know how CPW has communicated and managed the 10(j) implementation which Proposition 114 mandated, then USFWS should also be concerned to know Proposition 114 — the validation behind Colorado’s entire wolf program — did not pass with a 1.8% margin—it failed!” Clark wrote in a letter to USFWS Director Brian Nesvik. “The result of Prop 114 was a 5.7% margin in favor of the NO vote.”
Whatever one thinks of Keshel’s election analysis, the downstream effects of wolf reintroduction have been significant for both ranchers and hunters in western Colorado. Livestock depredations, compensation costs, and added pressure on elk herds have reignited long-standing debates over ballot-box biology.
Whether Keshel’s statistical arguments hold up under scrutiny or not, the broader question remains relevant: when a policy with such localized impacts passes by a narrow 1.8% margin, perhaps it’s not unreasonable to believe that the data deserves a hard second look.
