DENVER — A federal agency killed one of Colorado’s newest collared wolves after the apex predator wandered into Wyoming and was suspected of killing sheep, government officials confirmed Thursday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services shot and killed the wolf on Saturday after connecting it to a report of livestock depredations on private land in north-central Wyoming, USDA spokeswoman Tanya Espinosa said in an email Thursday.

Five sheep had been killed and investigators found evidence of wolf presence, including wolf tracks and bite marks on carcasses consistent with wolves.

Wildlife Services staff did not know the wolf was one of Colorado’s collared individuals until after they killed it, Espinosa said.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife on Sunday received a mortality alert from the collar of one of the wolves relocated in January from Canada to Colorado, the agency said in a news release. The killing of the male wolf — collar identification 2505-BC — reduced the number of collared wolves under CPW management to 27.

Gray wolves are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act in Colorado, but lose those protections if they wander into other states where they are not federally protected, like much of Wyoming.

Wolf advocates condemned the killing and said it undermined the restoration of the native species to Colorado.

“This senseless killing was avoidable,” said Rob Edward, president of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project. “Wyoming ranchers and federal agencies have the tools and knowledge to prevent livestock losses without resorting to lethal measures in most cases. Their refusal to implement these practices is reckless and undermines the hard-fought efforts to restore wolves in Colorado.

“We cannot allow the progress made in Colorado to be undone by Wyoming’s failure to act responsibly,” he said.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has jurisdiction over the gray wolf population outside of the boundaries of the two national parks in the state and the Wind River Indian Reservation.

In the northwest corner of the state, the species is managed as a trophy game species and killing of the animals is controlled by hunting regulations. In the vast majority of the state, however, gray wolves are classified as predators and can be killed year-round without a license.

USDA’s Wildlife Services works with farmers and ranchers to abate damage caused by wildlife, such as beavers flooding fields and predators killing livestock. The service can relocate or kill wolves killing livestock, according to its website.

In 2023, the service killed 305 gray wolves and relocated 64 more across seven states in the Rocky Mountains and Great Lakes regions, according to agency data.

CPW inked agreements with three states that allow the agency to capture wolves that wander from Colorado into Utah, Arizona and New Mexico and return them to the Centennial State. The agreements were intended to keep Colorado’s gray wolves from mixing with those states’ Mexican gray wolves, which are a subspecies that is managed separately under the Endangered Species Act.

Colorado does not have such an agreement with Wyoming.

It’s not surprising that a wolf made its way to Wyoming and was killed since unregulated wolf killing is the norm across much of the state, said Kaitie Schneider, Colorado representative for Defenders of Wildlife.

Colorado could be an example for Wyoming and other Western states of how wolves and people can coexist by using nonlethal conflict mitigation tactics, she said.

“Lethal control should not be the first line of defense,” she said.

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