TAOS — Colorado is on track to begin reintroducing gray wolves into the wild by the end of this year, but don’t expect to see packs of the animals crossing the border into New Mexico anytime soon.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s plan for the reintroduction program, released Sept. 15, designates all of Colorado as the new gray wolf experimental population area, allowing the animals to disperse naturally throughout Colorado but not outside of it.

A statewide ballot measure approved by a thin margin of mostly urban Colorado voters in 2020 mandates gray wolves begin to be reintroduced — west of the Continental Divide only — by the end of this year. It remains unclear, however, if the state will find wolves to introduce by the deadline.

Idaho, Montana and Wyoming have signaled reluctance or outright refusal to allow Colorado to capture and transfer their gray wolves. Neither Washington nor Oregon has committed to providing wolves by the end of the year.

If the Colorado gray wolf population is established and successful, gray wolves inevitably will migrate into neighboring states, including Northern New Mexico.

“The state of Colorado is working with surrounding states to discuss their plan to handle gray wolves that leave Colorado,” according to a Fish and Wildlife Service fact sheet. “The service supports these efforts and anticipates continued close coordination with Colorado and the surrounding states.”

The program is similar to one the Fish and Wildlife Service and several partner agencies created in Southern New Mexico, where Mexican gray wolves began to be reintroduced in 1998.

Mexican wolves are confined to a single nonessential experimental population area in New Mexico and Arizona south of Interstate 40. Under the current recovery plan management rule, any Mexican gray wolf that migrates north of I-40 must be returned to the designated area below the interstate. Last year, a Mexican gray wolf named Asha was captured east of Taos and eventually returned to Southern New Mexico.

A spokesperson for the Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledged Colorado gray wolves and Mexican wolves would naturally intermingle without human intervention.

“Interbreeding between the two subspecies is expected to occur in areas where they overlap,” the spokesperson told The Taos News last year.

Still, Fish and Wildlife does not anticipate expanding the Mexican wolf boundary or allowing Colorado’s gray wolf population to live outside the state.

With the exception of Minnesota and in the Northern Rocky Mountains, where they are designated as threatened, gray wolves are protected as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act in the contiguous states.

The species was nearly extinct before being reintroduced in Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park in 1995. After that, several wolves migrated into northern Colorado.

Wolf depredations on cattle in northwest Colorado in recent years have spurred the state to allow ranchers to use nonlethal means to deal with the threat to livestock.

The Colorado program will feature a number of regulatory measures specifically intended to reduce the impact of wolf depredations. The wolves’ designation as a “nonessential experimental population” under the Endangered Species Act relaxes prohibitions on harming, killing or capturing one.

Ranchers, for example, may submit evidence of recent wolf depredation and apply for authorization to harass or kill a wolf on both private land and on public land with a grazing permit. Anyone can harass or kill a wolf in defense of a life, and Fish and Wildlife may remove any wolf deemed to be “a threat to human life or safety.”

Landowners may also harass or kill a gray wolf that is “in the act of attacking livestock or working dogs on private land” if they can provide proof their animal was harmed by a wolf within 24 hours.

A version of this story first appeared in The Taos News ,a sister publication of The Santa Fe New Mexican.